IRAN’S ROLE REVISITED YET AGAIN….Over at the Prospect, Laura Rozen interviews Mark Perry, co-director of the Conflicts Forum, a group that has set up frequent discussions with Hezbollah over the past three years. Here’s what he has to say about Iran’s involvement with the recent attacks on Israel:
We?ve been hearing the theory that the timing of Hezbollah?s Tuesday kidnapping of the two Israeli Defense Force soldiers was planned well in advance and with coordination from Tehran or Damascus. Can you speak to that?
Oy vey. There are a lot of people in Washington trying to walk that story back right now, because it?s not true.
Hezbollah and Israel stand along this border every day observing each other through binoculars and waiting for an opportunity to kill each other. They are at war. They have been for 25 years, no one ever declared a cease-fire between them….They stand on the border every day and just wait for an opportunity. And on Tuesday morning there were two Humvees full of Israeli soldiers, not under observation from the Israeli side, not under covering fire, sitting out there all alone. The Hezbollah militia commander just couldn?t believe it ? so he went and got them.
I think that’s about the end of this discussion for me ? at least for the time being. It’s evident that the most knowledgeable people around have wildly different opinions about this, but also that those same people have no specific evidence one way or the other. Iran and Syria are sponsors of Hezbollah and Hamas and are obviously closely aligned with their actions, but whether they actively approved of the recent kidnappings appears to be unknown. And, for now anyway, unknowable.
