The Hezbollah foiled terrorist attack against the Israeli embassy in Bangkok in the service of Hezbollah has much larger implications than the organization’s attempt to avenge the death of its operational leader Imad Moughnieh.
It shows that Hezbollah, and Iran, are ready to stage a huge terrorist attack that could represent a casus belli for Israel and compel it to start a war against Lebanon, but could also be used as incentive to strike at the Iranian nuclear facilities.
Hezbollah and Iran have also learned from the past experiences, in 1992 and 1994 in the attacks in Buenos Aires and 1994 in Bangkok, that they get out of such deadly operation with paying a serious political price.
The attacks on “soft belly” targets in countries which have no experience in dealing with this Middle Eastern threat and have no political stamina to punish the perpetrators, on the political diplomatic and economic level, should be a reminder to the international community that this could happen soon everywhere, in Argentina or Thailand, Nigeria or Gambia (where Iran sent large containers with weapons, for whom exactly?), in the Philippines or Indonesia (where it recruited local Sunnis for terrorist attacks in South-East Asia).
On this background see two eye-opening articles:
“Security and Defense: Taking the battle overseas,” by Yaakov Katz in The Jerusalem Post:
http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=254393
and “Hizballah Poised to Strike in Southeast Asia,” by Mathew Levitt at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy:
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/print.php?template=C05&CID=3443
Best regards
Ely Karmon, Ph.D.
Senior Research Scholar
International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) and
The Institute for Policy and Strategy (IPS) at
The Interdisciplinary Center (IDC)
Herzlyia, Israel
Tel.: 972-9-9527277
Cell.: 972-52-2653306
Fax.: 972-9-9513073, 972-9-771665
E-mail: ekarmon@idc.ac.il
Web: http://www.ict.org.il/
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