Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

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Iran to build five refineries in Asia



Kuala Lumpur, June 12 (Xinhua) Iran is finalizing details on five proposed refinery projects in Asia, with a total capacity of 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd), Iranian Petroleum Minister Seyed Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh has said.

The refineries would be built in China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, the New Strait Times reported Tuesday, quoting the minister. Some of the project details have been finalized, while others are still being discussed, Seyed Kazem said. 'There is no specific timetable,' he told journalists after delivering a keynote address on the political and economic scenario facing the energy industry at the 12th Annual Asia Oil and Gas Conference in Kuala Lumpur. The partnerships are 'to bring to the Asian countries the synergy for mutual relationships as we provide them with the crude oil', he said. Earlier in his keynote address, Seyed Kazem called on oil-consuming countries from Europe and Asia to invest in Iran's energy sector.

'With 136 billion barrels of reserves and 28.2 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, we are the second largest world producer and capable of playing an important role in the world energy industry,' he said. He added that Iran's oil production is expected to reach 5.3 million bpd. 'We aim to maintain our position in the international energy market and play a greater role in ensuring supply,' he said, adding that Iran will need $93 billion dollars foreign investment 'as we cannot meet this on our own'. Iran currently has a refining capacity of 1.65 million bpd and will grow to 2.9 million in five years. This will require an estimated investment of $12 billion, he said.

Source: http://story.malaysiasun.com/index.p...d/256108/cs/1/

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Re: Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

Regardless of who performed the shrine bombing, Tehran will in the longterm benefit from the act. Generally speaking the majority Shiites of Iraq have thus far been calm due to the mere fact that they control the central government and the police/military force of the country. These anti-Shiite acts are meant to drive a permanent wedge between the Shiite and Sunni population of Iraq, forcing the Shiites into the Iranian camp. Having said that, I would not be surprised if Iranian intelligence services conducted the bombing, for it does not serve the interests of Western forces nor does it serve the interests of the Sunnis.

Iraq shrine bombing a 'serious blow'


The al-Askari shrine's two minarets collapsed following explosions. The dome of the same mosque, one of the most important sites in Shia Islam, was destroyed in a bombing in 2006

The head of US forces in Iraq has called the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine a "serious blow" to military efforts. In an interview on US television, General David Petraeus says there is little doubt the attack on the Al-Askari mosque in Samarra was an Al Qaeda operation. The bombing brought down two slender minarets that had stood above the mosque's golden dome, which was destroyed in an attack early last year. That assault unleashed a wave of sectarian violence that continues to this day. The latest attack in the largely Sunni town north of Baghdad has raised fears of a resurgence in intercommunal violence, with indefinite curfews imposed in Samarra and Baghdad.

"This is a serious blow," General Petraeus told America's ABC News from Baghdad. "But frankly, it is our hope that this can galvanise the Iraqi leaders to unite against this form of extremism."

In a joint statement released earlier, General Petraeus and the US ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, said the blast was an attempt by Al Qaeda to divide Iraqis.

"This brutal action on one of Iraq's holiest shrines is a deliberate attempt by Al Qaeda to sow dissent and inflame sectarian strife among the people of Iraq," the statement said.

"It is an act of desperation by an increasingly beleaguered enemy seeking to obstruct the peaceful political and economic development of a democratic Iraq."

General Petraeus told ABC that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has already ordered measures to prevent any sectarian reprisals and that US forces are helping.

"When we met earlier today, a number of provisions were immediately ordered by Prime Minister Maliki," he said.

"Our forces have helped Iraqi forces put those in place. We're helping to move reinforcements to Samarra from the Iraqi national police."

A full investigation will be launched to determine who planned the bombing. Mr Malki is urging Iraqis to stay calm but hours after the Samarra attack, Iraqi police say four Sunni mosques were attacked in Baghdad and the town of Iskandiriyah south of the capital in apparent retaliation. Meanwhile, the White House has seemed to back off previous statements, including some by US President George W Bush, that September will be a critical time to assess the US-led security crackdown in Baghdad.

"It is humanly impossible to solve all this before September," spokesman Tony Snow said. Mr Snow says September will be "the first opportunity" to judge the plan, rather than "a pivotal moment".

Meanwhile, a coalition of non-governmental organisations, the Global Policy Forum, has released a report condemning the UN Security Council for its "shocking silence" on alleged violations of international law by US-led forces in Iraq and urged an early end to their mandate.

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems...6/s1950787.htm

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If attacked, Tehran will strike US and Israeli interests worldwide, says an Iranian official. Oil may hit $250

Iran’s deputy interior minister on security, Mohammad Bager Zolghadr, issued this warning Sunday, June 10, with an eye on the joint US-Israel air maneuver which began the same day in the Negev. The unusually explicit threat by a senior Iranian official was prompted, say DEBKAfile’s Tehran sources, by his government’s interpretation of the seven-day Negev exercise as a preparatory step for a US-Israeli air attack on their nuclear sites. His threat to send oil prices skyrocketing to $250 a barrel hinted that Iran could block the Strait of Hormuz to oil exports from the Gulf. Last week the American carrier USS Stennis and its strike group practiced fending off small fast boats carrying explosives, torpedoes and missiles in the strategic strait, after Tehran announced the expansion of its fleet of small vessels.

Exercise commander Lt. Kevin Ralston said the threat was real. “We all remember the USS Cole [rammed by suicide bombers in a fast explosives-laden boat in Aden Port seven years ago]. Speaking to a gathering of Iranian internal security units, Zolghadr remarked that Iran had spread sabotage networks across the world capable of striking US and Israel interests at any point on the globe. They may take the offensive, he said, but they will not keep control up until the end, and the damage they suffer will be harsh and painful.

Iranian leaders have also taken to heart transport minister Shaul Mofaz’s remark after his strategic talks in Washington last week that no options can be ruled out, including the military option. DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources have learned add that the Islamic Republic’s rulers have been sounding out “revolutionary” Latin American governments about creating joint anti-US terrorist cells for attacks in North and South America. The subject came up in talks with Nicararagua’s Daniel Ortega when he arrived in Tehran Sunday and in discussions with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

Neither is enthusiastic about getting involved in violent terrorist activity against the United States, although not averse to stepping up anti-US propaganda. Before Ortega took off for Tehran, Israeli parliamentarian Effie Eytam visited Managua and cautioned Nicaraguan lawmakers about the detrimental implications of close relations with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran. However, Ortega is angling for economic aid from Tehran. On arrival at Khomenei airport, he said he is looking forward to fruitful ties of cooperation with Iran in the war on poverty.

Source: http://www.debka.com/headline_print.php?hid=4292

[Sip]

Re: Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

If attacked, Tehran will strike US and Israeli interests worldwide, says an Iranian official. Oil may hit $250

OMG it is joke they don't have the capability lol Russia is laughing and US is using this as excuse OMG OMG long live Islam yay.

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Re: Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

Russia sees no missile threat from Iran

Russia sees no threat from Iran's ballistic missiles and does not understand why the United States needs to speak of such a menace to justify the presence of a US missile defence system in Europe, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday. "We do not see any kind of threat from Iran," Lavrov told a news conference after a meeting in Tehran of foreign ministers from Caspian Sea states.

"Thus, we do not understand why in order to justify the installation of a US anti-ballistic missile system in Europe you have to bring up the pretext of a genuine Iranian threat," he added. The United States plans to locate a powerful missile-tracking radar in the Czech Republic as well interceptor missiles in Poland to combat what it says are threats to global security. Russia vehemently opposes either location for the planned US system.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070620...s_070620160201

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Iran is America's best hope for stability in the Gulf
By Selig Harrison



Iran is ready to help the US stabilise both Iraq and Afghanistan, but only for a price: a gradual accommodation between Washington and Tehran, starting with the complete cessation of CIA and Pentagon covert operations designed to promote "regime change". "The United States is like a fox caught in a trap" in Iraq, said Amir Mahebian, editor of the conservative daily Reselat, in a recent Tehran conversation. "Why should we free the fox so he can make a dinner out of us?"

In the most widely reported covert operations under way in Iran, the US is smuggling weapons and money to disaffected non-Persian ethnic minority factions. But at the recent Iran-US talks in Baghdad, Iranian delegates focused on less publicised sabotage and espionage missions in the Persian heartland of Iran by a US-backed militia of Persian exiles known as the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK). The MEK backed Saddam Hussein in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and its 3,600 fighters stayed on in Iraq afterwards. Since the invasion of Iraq, US intelligence agencies have disarmed the fighters but have kept the base camps intact and have used MEK operatives for missions in Iran, even though the State Department lists it as a terrorist organisation.

In the Baghdad talks, Iran rejected a US offer to transfer the camps to Morocco, aides to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, told me. What Tehran wants is a complete dismantling of MEK paramilitary forces, starting with a screening process in which the Red Cross would arrange reunions between MEK members and their families. Members opting to return to Iran would get an amnesty.

Dismantling the MEK would be the best way to signal US readiness for an accommodation with Tehran, since it is the only militarised exile group seeking to overthrow the Islamic Republic and is the darling of the Washington "regime change" lobby. Alireza Jafarzadeh, chairman of an MEK front group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, appears regularly on Fox News and is playing a role like that of Ahmad Chalabi in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, rallying congressional and media support for bombing the Natanz nuclear site.

The dominant impression emerging from a week of high-level conversations in Tehran cutting across the ideological spectrum is that Ayatollah Khamenei and the pragmatists in his National Security Council, not the fire-breathing president, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, control foreign and defence policy; and that most outstanding issues, including the nuclear issue, can be defused over time if the US moves towards recognition of the Islamic Republic and keeps out of the internal Iranian struggle between hardliners and moderates.

It was a naive blunder for George W. Bush, US president, to announce that $75m was being funnelled to Iranians "seeking to promote openness and freedom for the Iranian people". This gave hardliners their excuse for the unconscionable recent arrests of four Iranian-American dual citizens. Similarly, hardline elements are strengthened by pressure tactics on the nuclear issue, such as United Nations sanctions, harassing Iranian banks and stationing two aircraft carriers equipped with nuclear-capable aircraft off Iran's coast.

What, specifically, is Iran prepared to do in Iraq and Afghanistan? The quickest pay-off would come in intelligence-sharing, help in training security forces and reconstruction assistance. In Iraq, Iranian officials say, they would help in breaking up Sunni terrorist networks and, as relations with Washington improved, in moderating the role of the Shia militias. Iran agrees with the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, they say, that a timetable for the departure of US combat forces is necessary to calm the nationalist passions that fuel insurgent activity. In Afghanistan, said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chairman of the Majlis (parliament) foreign affairs commission, Iran is ready to expand its economic aid, accelerate anti-narcotics operations and intensify co-operation against the Taliban. What he did not say is that, if US covert operations continue, Iran can retaliate by helping the Taliban.

Even with Iranian help, the future in both Baghdad and Kabul is likely to be tempestuous, but co-operation between Washington and Tehran offers the best hope for damage limitation. This is especially true in Iraq, where the destruction of the Sunni-dominated Saddam regime predictably set the stage for an Iran-tilted Shia majority regime and has made the search for a US-Iranian accommodation throughout the Persian Gulf region an increasingly unavoidable geopolitical necessity.

The writer is director of the Asia programme at the Center for International Policy in Washington

Source: http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/19062007/399...lity-gulf.html

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Re: Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

Report: IAF preparing for Iran strike



The Israeli Air Force (IAF) has been training on long-range flights, including refueling in mid-flight, in preparation for potential strikes against Iranian nuclear targets. The training program has been taking place for some time but has only been released for publication Friday, the Ma'ariv daily reported. Intelligence assessments received by the defense establishment concur that once Iran passes the point of no return in its nuclear efforts, the entire Middle East will enter a frantic nuclear armament race. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are expected to take the lead should such a scenario become reality. At the end of 2007 the US and Israel are expected to hold a joint assessment to ascertain the influence of economic sanctions against Iran. A new package of upgraded sanctions prepared jointly by Israel and the US, includes exerting pressure on European governments to cancel US $22 billion in loan guarantees given annually to European companies trading with Iran. The new package also includes sanctions against banks working with Iran, non-renewal of oil infrastructure in Iran and a long series of economic actions that are meant to seriously hurt the Iranian economy. Following the end-of-year assessment, Washington will decide how to move forward in the struggle against Iran's nuclear race. Members of the international community - the US and Israel leading - are convinced that Iran's race to enrich uranium is aimed at producing nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic, on its side, insists it is looking for energy sources that would be an alternative to fossil fuels. Iran has so far remained defiant in face of the demands voiced by the international community that it make its nuclear program transparent to UN-mandated monitoring.

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Re: Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

Iran to Join Latin American Trade Deal



Iran plans to join a Latin American initiative designed to counter U.S.-led efforts for free trade in the region, the Web site of the Iranian president's office reported Sunday as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez visited the country. The report said Chavez welcomed Iran's observer membership in the Cuban-Venezuelan alternative to the Free Trade Area of the Americas. It did not specify exactly what observer membership would entail, but illustrated the growing relationship between Venezuela and Iran, whose leaders have strongly condemned U.S. policies.

"The pillars of world arrogance have been shaky. Victory will be realized by resistance and steadiness," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said while meeting with Chavez, according to the Web site. Chavez and Cuban President Fidel Castro, another U.S. enemy, signed the deal _ known by its Spanish acronym ALBA _ in 2005 to counter Washington's efforts to expand free trade with Latin American countries. It contains much leftist rhetoric and few specifics, but was followed by closer economic ties between the two leaders. Although the FTAA stalled in 2005, Washington since has signed nine free trade agreements with Latin American countries.

"Cooperation between independent countries such as Iran and Venezuela will have an effective role in defeating imperialism," the Web site quoted Chavez as saying. Ties between Iran and Venezuela have been growing stronger. Chavez has defended Iran's disputed nuclear program, dismissing U.S. concerns that Tehran is secretly trying to develop atomic weapons. "Political interests and close regional and international stances are among the important factors that help to continue this close cooperation," Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters Sunday during his weekly press conference. Chavez arrived in Iran on Saturday for a two-day visit, as part of a three-nation tour after stops in Russia and Belarus. His visit is the third to Iran in the past two years.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...070101004.html

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Iran, Venezuela form "axis of unity" against U.S.



The presidents of Iran and Venezuela launched construction of a joint petrochemical plant on Monday, strengthening an "axis of unity" between two oil-rich nations staunchly opposed to the United States. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who both often rail against Washington, also signed a series of other deals to expand economic cooperation, ranging from setting up a dairy factory in Venezuela to forming an oil company.

"The two countries will unite to defeat the imperialism of North America," a beaming Chavez told a news conference during an official visit to the Islamic Republic, which the United States has labeled part of an "axis of evil".

"When I come to Iran Washington gets upset," he said. The two presidents — whose countries are members of OPEC — earlier attended the ceremony to start building a methanol facility with an annual capacity of 1.65 million tons on the Islamic Republic's Gulf coast.

"Iran and Venezuela — the axis of unity," read one of many official posters at the site near the port town of Assalouyeh, showing the two leaders hugging each other and shaking hands. Ahmadinejad — who came to power two years ago pledging to revive the values of the 1979 Islamic revolution — hailed the event as a step towards boosting "brotherly" ties of the two "revolutionary" nations. Iran is embroiled in a worsening nuclear standoff with Western powers. Chavez, who last week pushed two U.S. oil giants out of his country as part of his self-styled socialist revolution, said: "This is the unity of the Persian Gulf and the Caribbean Sea."

Iranian officials said a second methanol plant would be set up in Venezuela. Each would cost about $650 million to $700 million and take four years to complete. Methanol is an alcohol which can be used as a solvent or an element in fuel. The plants would help Iran access the Latin American market, while Venezuela would get closer to buyers in India and Pakistan. Chavez, who wants to forge an alliance of leftist states to counter U.S. policies, arrived in Tehran on Saturday after visiting Russia and Belarus. In comments certain to please his hosts, who have often called on the United States to leave Iraq, Chavez branded those invading Iran's neighbor as "barbarians", drawing parallels with the European colonization of Latin America centuries ago.

"Those who try to convince the world that in Iran there are a bunch of barbarians are barbarians themselves."

The hard-line Kayhan Daily, Iran's leading Persian newspaper, said the two countries were riding on a "global anti-imperialism wave." But both also face economic challenges. Iran sits atop the world's second-largest oil and gas reserves, but U.S.-led efforts to isolate it over its nuclear ambitions are hurting investment in the sector, analysts say. The Islamic state rejects accusations it is seeking to build atom bombs, saying it only aims to generate electricity. Chavez last week forced U.S. oil majors from Venezuela, seizing oilfields from ExxonMobil (XOM)and ConocoPhillips (COP). But economists caution his social spending, mainly paid for by state oil company PDVSA, could run into trouble as Venezuela battles to maintain oil output after the exit of the majors. The opposition complain his anti-Americanism scares off investors.

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/...la-unity_N.htm

Venezuela to sell gasoline to Iran

Venezuela has agreed to sell gasoline to Iran, the South American county‘s energy minister said in comments published Tuesday, a week after the Islamic country imposed a fuel rationing program that has sparked violence. During a visit to Iran this week, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called the two nations "strategic partners." Ramirez accompanied Chavez on the visit. The government says the fuel rationing will free up funding for development projects and make the country "invincible."

The rationing is part of a government attempt to reduce about $10 billion it spends each year to import fuel that is then sold to Iranian drivers at far less than its cost, to keep prices low. Iranians are accustomed to gasoline at rock bottom prices. After a 25 percent hike in prices was imposed May 21, gas sells at the equivalent of 38 cents a gallon.

Source: http://www.newsone.ca/westfallweekly...lnews&id=22987

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Iran, Hezbollah training Iraqi militants: US



The US military has accused Iranian special forces of using Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah militiamen for training Iraqi extremists and of planning an attack that killed five US soldiers this year. Brigadier General Kevin Bergner told reporters that US-led forces had captured a senior Hezbollah militant, Ali Musa Daqduq, who confessed to training Iraqi extremists in Iran to carry out attacks in Iraq. Daqduq, a Lebanese, was captured in Iraq's southern city of Basra on March 20, Brigadier General Bergner said, adding he "initially claimed to be deaf and mute".

"In 2005, he was directed by senior Lebanese Hezbollah leadership to go to Iran and work with the Quds Force to train Iraqi extremists," he said. He said the Quds Force, a unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and Hezbollah were jointly operating camps near Tehran in which they trained Iraqi fighters before sending them back to Iraq to wage attacks.

"He (Daqduq) was directed by the Iranian Quds Force to move Iraqis in and out of Iraq and report on the training and operations of Iraqi special groups."

Brigadier General Bergner said the Quds Force was involved in a brazen attack in the city of Kerbala in January when gunmen disguised as Americans made their way into a government compound and killed one US soldier and seized four others whom they later killed. He said the Quds Force's goal was to develop extremist groups into a network similar to Hezbollah, adding that the two were training between 20 and 60 Iraqis at a time. Iran has dismissed the US accusations as "ridiculous".

Meanwhile a car bomb has torn through a popular Baghdad market killing at least 11 people and wounding more than 33. The blast erupted at dusk in the al-Nidawi market in northeast Baghdad. The market is nestled in a densely inhabited mixed neighbourhood in an area roamed by Shiite militias. A US soldier was killed in Iraq on Monday and another five killed the day before in attacks across the country, the US military said.

Source: http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/...?section=world

More on Hizbollah:

A Disciplined Hezbollah Surprises Israel With Its Training, Tactics and Weapons

JERUSALEM, Aug. 6 — On Dec. 26, 2003, a powerful earthquake leveled most of Bam, in southeastern Iran, killing 35,000 people. Transport planes carrying aid poured in from everywhere, including Syria. According to Israeli military intelligence, the planes returned to Syria carrying sophisticated weapons, including long-range Zelzal missiles, which the Syrians passed on to Hezbollah, the Shiite militia group in southern Lebanon that Iran created and sponsors.

As the Israeli Army struggles for a fourth week to defeat Hezbollah before a cease-fire, the shipments are just one indication of how — with the help of its main sponsors, Iran and Syria — the militia has sharply improved its arsenal and strategies in the six years since Israel abruptly ended its occupation of southern Lebanon. Hezbollah is a militia trained like an army and equipped like a state, and its fighters “are nothing like Hamas or the Palestinians,” said a soldier who just returned from Lebanon. “They are trained and highly qualified,” he said, equipped with flak jackets, night-vision goggles, good communications and sometimes Israeli uniforms and ammunition. “All of us were kind of surprised.”

Much attention has been focused on Hezbollah’s astonishing stockpile of Syrian- and Iranian-made missiles, some 3,000 of which have already fallen on Israel. More than 48 Israelis have been killed in the attacks — including 12 reservist soldiers killed Sunday, who were gathered at a kibbutz at Kfar Giladi, in northern Israel, when rockets packed with antipersonnel ball bearings exploded among them, and 3 killed Sunday evening in another rocket barrage on Haifa. But Iran and Syria also used those six years to provide satellite communications and some of the world’s best infantry weapons, including modern, Russian-made antitank weapons and Semtex plastic explosives, as well as the training required to use them effectively against Israeli armor.

It is Hezbollah’s skillful use of those weapons — in particular, wire-guided and laser-guided antitank missiles, with double, phased explosive warheads and a range of about two miles — that has caused most of the casualties to Israeli forces. Hezbollah’s Russian-made antitank missiles, designed to penetrate armor, have damaged or destroyed Israeli vehicles, including its most modern tank, the Merkava, on about 20 percent of their hits, Israeli tank commanders at the front said. Hezbollah has also used antitank missiles, including the less modern Sagger, to fire from a distance into houses in which Israeli troops are sheltered, with a first explosion cracking the typical concrete block wall and the second going off inside.

“They use them like artillery to hit houses,” said Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, until recently the Israeli Army’s director of intelligence analysis. “They can use them accurately up to even three kilometers, and they go through a wall like through the armor of a tank.” Hezbollah fighters use tunnels to quickly emerge from the ground, fire a shoulder-held antitank missile, and then disappear again, much the way Chechen rebels used the sewer system of Grozny to attack Russian armored columns. “We know what they have and how they work,” General Kuperwasser said. “But we don’t know where all the tunnels are. So they can achieve tactical surprise.”

The antitank missiles are the “main fear” for Israeli troops, said David Ben-Nun, 24, an enlisted man in the Nahal brigade who just returned from a week in Lebanon. The troops do not linger long in any house because of hidden missile crews. “You can’t even see them,” he said. With modern communications and a network of tunnels, storage rooms, barracks and booby traps laid under the hilly landscape, Hezbollah’s training, tactics and modern weaponry explain, the Israelis say, why they are moving with caution. The Israelis say Hezbollah’s fighters number from 2,000 to 4,000, a small army that is aided by a larger circle of part-timers who provide logistics and storage of weapons in houses and civilian buildings.

Hezbollah operates like a revolutionary force within a civilian sea, making it hard to fight without occupying or bombing civilian areas. On orders, some fighters emerge to retrieve launchers, fire missiles and then melt away. Still, the numbers are small compared with the Israeli Army and are roughly the size of one Syrian division. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards have helped teach Hezbollah how to organize itself like an army, with special units for intelligence, antitank warfare, explosives, engineering, communications and rocket launching. They have also taught Hezbollah how to aim rockets, make shaped “improvised explosive devices” — used to such devastating results against American armor in Iraq — and, the Israelis say, even how to fire the C-802, a ground-to-ship missile that Israel never knew Hezbollah possessed.

Iranian Air Force officers have made repeated trips to Lebanon to train Hezbollah to aim and fire Iranian medium-range missiles, like the Fajr-3 and Fajr-5, according to intelligence officials in Washington. The Americans say they believe that a small number of Iranian operatives remain in Beirut, but say there is no evidence that they are directing Hezbollah’s attacks. But Iran, so far, has not allowed Hezbollah to fire one of the Zelzal missiles, the Israelis say. The former Syrian president, Hafez al-Assad, was careful to restrict supplies to Hezbollah, but his son, Bashar, who took over in 2000 — the year Israel pulled out of Lebanon — has opened its warehouses.

Syria has given Hezbollah 220-millimeter and 302-millimeter missiles, both equipped with large, anti-personnel warheads. Syria has also given Hezbollah its most sophisticated antitank weapons, sold to the Syrian Army by Russia. Those, General Kuperwasser said, include the Russian Metis and RPG-29. The RPG-29 has both an antitank round to better penetrate armor and an anti-personnel round. The Metis is more modern yet, wire-guided with a longer range and a higher speed, and can fire up to four rounds a minute. Some Israelis say they believe that Syria has provided Hezbollah with the Russian-made Kornet, laser-guided, with a range of about three miles, which Hezbollah may be holding back, waiting for Israel to move farther into southern Lebanon and extend its supply lines.

Despite Israeli complaints to Moscow, “Russia just decided to close its eyes,” a senior Israeli official said. In its early years, Hezbollah specialized in suicide bombings and kidnappings. The United States blames it for the suicide attacks on the American Embassy in Beirut and a Marine barracks in 1983. The group became popular in the Shiite south and set up its mini-state there, as well as reserving to itself a section of southern Beirut, known as Security Square. Until 2003, Timur Goksel was the senior political adviser to Unifil, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, which monitors the border. He says he knows Hezbollah well and speaks with admiration of its commitment and organization.

After fighting the Israelis for 18 years, “they’re not afraid of the Israeli Army anymore,” he said in a telephone interview from Beirut. Hezbollah’s ability to harass the Israelis and study their flaws, like a tendency for regular patrols and for troop convoys on the eve of the Sabbath, gave Hezbollah confidence that the Israeli Army “is a normal human army, with normal vulnerabilities and follies,” he added. Now, however, “Hezbollah has much better weapons than before,” he said. Mr. Goksel describes Hezbollah much as the Israelis do: careful, patient, attuned to gathering intelligence, scholars of guerrilla warfare from the American Revolution to Mao and the Vietcong, and respectful of Israeli firepower and mobility.

“Hezbollah has studied asymmetrical warfare, and they have the advantage of fighting in their own landscape, among their people, where they’ve prepared for just what the Israelis are doing — entering behind armor on the ground,” Mr. Goksel said. “They have staff work and they do long-term planning, something the Palestinians never do,” he said. “They watch for two months to note every detail of their enemy. They review their operations — what they did wrong, how the enemy responded. And they have flexible tactics, without a large hierarchical command structure.”

That makes them very different from the Soviet-trained Arab armies the Israelis defeated in 1967 and 1973, which had a command structure that was too regimented. In 1992, when Sheik Hassan Nasrallah took over, he organized Hezbollah into three regional commands with military autonomy. Beirut and the Hezbollah council made policy, but did not try to run the war. Sheik Nasrallah — said to have been advised by the secretive Imad Mugniyeh, a trained engineer wanted by the United States on terrorism charges — thereby improved Hezbollah’s security and limited its communications. It set up separate and largely autonomous units that live among civilians, with local reserve forces to provide support, supplies and logistics. Hezbollah commanders travel in old cars without bodyguards or escorts and wear no visible insignia, Mr. Goksel said, to keep their identities hidden.

Hezbollah began by setting up roadside bombs detonated by cables, which the Israelis learned to defeat with wire-cutting attachments to their vehicles. Then Hezbollah used radio detonators, which the Israelis also defeated, and then cellphone detonators, and then a double system of cellphones, and then a photocell detonator — like the beam that opens an automatic door. Now, Mr. Goksel said, Hezbollah is working with pressure detonators dug into the roads, even as the Israelis weld metal plates to the bottom of their tanks.

Hezbollah, Mr. Goksel says, has clear tactics, trying to draw Israeli ground troops farther into Lebanon. “They can’t take the Israelis in open battle,” he said, “so they want to draw them in to well-prepared battlefields,” like Aita al Shaab, where there has been fierce fighting. He added: “They know the Israelis depend too much on armor, which is a prime target for them. And they want Israeli supply lines to lengthen, so they’re easier to hit.”

Israeli tanks have been struck by huge roadside bombs planted in expectation that Israeli armor would roll across the border, said one tank lieutenant, who in keeping with military policy would only give his first name, Ohad. At least two soldiers from his unit have been wounded by snipers who are accurate at 600 yards. The Hezbollah fighters “are not just farmers who have been given weapons to fire,” he said. “They are persistent and well trained.”

Another tank company commander, a captain who gave his name as Edan, said that about 20 percent of the missiles that have hit Israeli tanks penetrated the Merkava armor or otherwise caused causalities. Col. Mordechai Kahane, the commander of the Golani brigade’s Egoz unit, first set up to fight Hezbollah, told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot of one of the worst early days, when his unit went into Marun al Ras in daylight, and lost a senior officer and a number of men.

“Hezbollah put us to sleep” building up its fortifications, he said. “There’s no certainty that we knew that we were going to encounter what it is that we ultimately encountered. We said, ‘There is going to be a bunker here, a cave there,’ but the thoroughness surprised us all. A Hezbollah weapons storeroom is not just a natural cave. It’s a pit with concrete, ladders, emergency openings, escape routes. We didn’t know it was that well organized.”

General Kuperwasser, too, respects Hezbollah’s ability “to well prepare the battlefield,” but says, “We’re making progress and killing a lot of them, and more of them are giving up in battle now and becoming prisoners, which is a very important sign.”

Source: http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/08/0...gewanted=print