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Monday, October 1, 2007

Three interesting entries at NRO: Iranian Soldiers in Lebanon

...Between 2,000 and 3,000 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (Pasdaran) are currently in Lebanon. Here, these Iranian soldiers are supporting Lebanese Hezbollah fighters — actual numbers are unknown — with weapons, military equipment, and cash. They are also training them in camps (at least five such camps in the Bekaa Valley and two or three in southern Lebanon) in a variety of infantry/commando operations and terror-bombing techniques...

Also: Hezbollah's 'Show of Force'

BEIRUT – Hezbollah is rehearsing for something big here. Not sure what or when. But a few days ago, between 4,000 and 5,000 HezB gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling “show of force,” positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city. Two additional objectives were achieved: First, the operation served as a probing action to determine local reaction. Second, it served as an exercise to gauge the time required (speed, synchronization, etc.) to achieve the key points and intersections.

Amazingly, there was no response from the police or the army.

HezB is also jamming cell-phone signals almost daily. Their lookouts are everywhere, at least from my vantage point, because they are watching the people I'm with and me...

Finally (Michael Totten has also written about this, though there is some new detail here: Hezbollah is Secretly Building Battle Positions

JUBAL LUBNAN (east of Beirut) – I write this with some acceptance of risk (everything is a risk here). But it's something that must be published.

I know for a fact that Hezbollah is building defenses and fortifications from which they can launch attacks in the south (where I was two days ago), in the Bekaa Valley, and in Al Dahiyeh (the Hezbollah security square in Beirut, which we covertly entered and moved through twice during our photo-reconnaissance a few days ago). This is not hearsay: This is reality.

The construction (some of which I have seen with my own eyes) is being contracted through the Lebanese government with Wa'ad, a Hezbollah-owned company created – as both a front and a company based in Lebanon — from Jihad Al-Bina, an Iranian-based company on the U.S. terrorist-watchlist.

Wa'ad ("the promise") is 100-percent owned and operated by Hezbollah. And the company is reconstructing houses and commercial buildings, which were destroyed during the war in 2006. But the houses are being rebuilt – as they were — with secret interconnecting corridors linking the houses together in a link-by-link network of fighting positions. There are tunnels running beneath the houses linking them with other buildings and adjacent neighborhoods, as well as to huge underground command posts. And there are walls being constructed with concealed weapons-storage spaces...

...and that, kids, is why so many "civilians" (with and without the scare-quotes) end up dead down there.  It's designed that way. 

Update 12-2-07: The reporting at NRO from W. Thomas Smith, Jr. has been seriously called into question for its accuracy.

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