Hezbollah Read online

  Working closely with Iranian intelligence agents and local operatives—some Islamist extremists, others criminals—the Hezbollah operatives had methodically planned a series of spectacular terrorist operations for spring 2008. The planned attacks reportedly included multiple and simultaneous car bombings around the Israeli and US embassies, kidnapping the Israeli ambassador, and blowing up a radar tower.2 None of this was to take place in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based, or in Israel, the primary target of Hezbollah’s ire, but some 900 miles away, in the remote capital of Azerbaijan, just north of Iran.

  Hezbollah operatives had been caught plotting in Azerbaijan before. In fall 2001 six suspects reportedly tied to Hezbollah were arrested near the Iranian border.3 Over the next few years Azerbaijani authorities exposed several cells tied to Iran that were said to be plotting attacks against Israeli or other Western targets there. In 2006 fifteen Azeris were accused of plotting attacks against Israeli and Western targets, reportedly after receiving training and direction from Iran. As a result of the increased surveillance tied to that case, police uncovered the 2008 plot when local militants were found to be in contact with Karaki, described as a “veteran of Hezbollah’s external operations unit,” and Aladine, a “lower ranking explosives expert.” Using Iranian passports and staying in luxury hotels, the two traveled among Azerbaijan, Iran, and Lebanon in early 2008. Together they recruited a network of local operatives, several of whom eluded arrest—along with some other Lebanese and Iranian suspects—by driving south across the border into Iran.4

  The investigation determined that the men received orders from Hezbollah’s international terrorist wing, alternatively known as the Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO) or the External Security Organization (ESO). Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) provided the explosives and other support, including facilitating the foreign cell members’ entry into Azerbaijan on Iranian passports.5

  In their plots focused on the Israeli and US embassies, the suspects intended to park as many as four cars filled with explosives near the sites and detonate them simultaneously. The location of the Israeli embassy in the Hyatt Tower, a complex that also housed the Thai and Japanese embassies, apparently did not dissuade the plotters from going forward. Once arrested, Karaki and Aladine were detained for more than a year before they were charged in June 2009 with treason, revealing secret information abroad, espionage, preparing acts of terrorism, drug trafficking, and arms smuggling.6

  During the trial Ali Karaki, identified as the cell leader, admitted that he had served as Hezbollah’s representative in Iran since 2003, earning $900 a month. In Iran, Karaki also worked with tour groups that gathered near Tehran’s al-Nabi mosque, where he was approached by someone from Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and ultimately put on its payroll as well. Among his responsibilities, Karaki admitted, were collecting information on the Jewish Cultural Center in Baku and investigating Iranians (presumably Iranian Jews) suspected of “help[ing] Israel.”7

  Karaki and Aladine were reportedly tasked with the operation by Hezbollah officials in Lebanon before traveling to Iran, where IRGC agents helped them cross the border into Azerbaijan in 2007. During their multiple visits to Baku in 2007 and early 2008, they first recruited local operatives and then conducted surveillance of potential targets. One such target was the Qabala radar station, which is leased by the Azeris to Russia and manned by Russian personnel—a seemingly odd target for Hezbollah or Iran.8

  But Hezbollah and Iran had a reason to keep their eye on the radar station. To begin with, it is likely that the original operational concept had been limited to surveillance alone, just in case either party ever needed to carry out a future attack. Also, Russia had offered to staff the radar station jointly with the United States in lieu of deploying the US missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Russia made the offer in June 2007, not long before the surveillance began.9 Hezbollah and Iran did decide to operationalize at least the part of the plot focused on the Israeli embassy and ambassador, however, in reaction to the February 2008 assassination in Damascus of Hezbollah’s chief of external operations, Imad Mughniyeh.

  Three months later Karaki and Aladine were caught red-handed with explosives and weapons at the ready. In October 2009 the six defendants, including Karaki and Aladine, were convicted of preparing attacks targeting the Israeli and American embassies, as well as the radar station. The two Hezbollah operatives were sentenced to fifteen years in prison.10 A few months later their families complained that they neither received Hezbollah stipends nor saw any effort to secure Karaki and Aladine’s release. “Had Imad Mughniyeh been alive,” some grumbled, “he would not have treated the families in this indecent way.”11 Less than a year after their convictions, they were both released to Iran and repatriated home to Lebanon in a prisoner trade that secured the freedom of an Azeri scholar jailed in Iran.12

  Avenging the Death of Hajj Radwan

  Exiting a meeting with Syrian intelligence on the evening of February 12, 2008, Imad Mughniyeh—also known as Hajj Radwan—climbed into his Mitsubishi Pajero and was killed instantly when an explosive device, reportedly inserted into the driver’s seat headrest, went off, causing a massive explosion.13 For years Mughniyeh had successfully evaded capture by international intelligence agencies (he reportedly altered his appearance with plastic surgery), so the assassination shocked Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria alike, leading officials from Syria’s various intelligence agencies to blame one another for the intelligence failure. Meanwhile both Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence lacked faith in a unilateral Syrian investigation and pressed to have their own officers included in the investigation.14

  According to media accounts, US diplomatic cables reported that the Saudi ambassador to Lebanon told US diplomats that Hezbollah suspected that Syria was behind the assassination. By this account the Iranian foreign minister, who personally attended Mughniyeh’s funeral, made the trip “to calm down Hezbollah and keep it from taking action against Syria.”15 In time Iran and Hezbollah concluded that Israeli intelligence had carried out the attack, based on information gathered by Palestinian and Syrian recruits.16 Hezbollah engaged in a counterintelligence investigation of its own, leading the group to terminate activities it feared may have been compromised and led to Mughniyeh’s identification (see chapter 11).

  Hezbollah denied Mughniyeh’s existence altogether while he lived but openly embraced him in death.17 A major street in Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs was renamed Imad Mughniyeh Avenue, complete with a memorial to the Hezbollah commander in the median.18 Hezbollah posted a glowing memorial to Mughniyeh on its website, noting that the group’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, had posthumously awarded him the “exceptional title” Leader of the Two Victories, referring to Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000 and Hezbollah’s July 2006 war against Israel.19 His tomb became a shrine, part of Hezbollah’s string of militant-themed tourist sites.20

  From the outset there was little question that Hezbollah would seek to avenge Mughniyeh’s death. In a fiery eulogy delivered by video link from a secure location, Nasrallah spoke to the crowds gathered for the commander’s funeral. “Zionists,” he threatened, “if you want this sort of open war, then let the whole world hear, so be it!” In a pledge to his followers, Nasrallah promised, “The blood of Imad Mughniyeh will make them [Israel] withdraw from existence.”21 Since its self-described “divine victory” against Israel in July 2006, Hezbollah had already begun to engage in what the National Counterterrorism Center would later describe as “an increasingly aggressive terrorist campaign”—likely a reference to both the group’s militant actions at home targeting fellow Lebanese and its support to other militants abroad, especially in Iraq but also in Somalia (see chapters 9 and 10).22 Within weeks Hezbollah attempted the first of several plots—the foiled plot in Baku—intended to make good on Nasrallah’s threat.

  More plots followed, the first of which was exposed
by the September 2008 arrest of key members of a Hezbollah network in Egypt that was funneling weapons to Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza and reportedly was planning a string of attacks in Egypt. Another was foiled in January 2009, this time in an unnamed European country.23 In September–October 2009 Turkish authorities disrupted a plot in which Hezbollah and Iranian agents posing as tourists intended to attack Israeli, American, and possibly local Jewish targets. By one account a cell led by Abbas Hossein Zakr was looking to strike Israeli tourists, Israeli ships or airplanes, or synagogues in Turkey.24 Turkish police arrested Hezbollah operatives traveling on Kuwaiti and Canadian passports who reportedly smuggled a car bomb into the country from Syria.25 The thwarted plot, combined with an assessment that Hezbollah sought to kill an Israeli diplomat to avenge Mughniyeh’s death, led Israeli officials to heighten security for Israeli officials traveling overseas.26

  Sources close to Hezbollah, embarrassed by its failure to retaliate for Mughniyeh’s assassination, as Nasrallah had promised two years earlier, couched the group’s failed attacks in terms of divine will. “The divine factor is necessary in all actions,” they explained, adding that “the attempts … were unsuccessful because the time had not yet come for an opportunity reflecting the divine wish.”27 Hezbollah also posted a poem on its website implying that while no attacks had succeeded, part of the group’s revenge was keeping the threat of an impending attack hanging over Israel’s head. Titled “Mughniyeh Haunts ‘Israel,’ Every Day, Every Year,” the poem reads, in part,

  With every rising sun he asks revenge / With every passing month he asks revenge / And with every passing year, they ask themselves when, where, and how they will taste his revenge / This year, like last year, like the year before, his killers warn their supporters: Beware Mughniyeh! / Wherever you are, beware Mughniyeh.28

  The absence of an attack, then, was not a sign of failure but part of a master plan. Later that year Hezbollah produced a hit list of prominent Israeli officials it held responsible for Mughniyeh’s death. Mimicking the US military’s deck of cards featuring wanted Iraqi insurgents, Hezbollah’s own deck featured the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff, the prime minister, and others.29

  Meanwhile, despite its operational failures abroad, Hezbollah had much to celebrate at home in Lebanon. In July 2008 Hezbollah secured a blocking third in the new Lebanese cabinet as part of the Doha (Qatar) agreement reached by opposing Lebanese factions that May to end the country’s protracted political crisis. The one-third-plus-one representation of Hezbollah and its allies within the thirty-member cabinet effectively undercut any legislative means to disarm the group’s military wing as required under UN Security Council Resolution 1701.30 At the time, then–UN secretary-general Kofi Annan stated, “Dismantling Hezbollah is not the direct mandate of the UN.” Commenting on the continued flow of weapons from Iran to Hezbollah through Syria, Annan made it clear that the UN force would not stop the transactions. “The understanding,” he added, “was that it would be the Lebanese who would disarm [Hezbollah].”31

  Israeli intelligence officials reported that Hezbollah had tripled its supply of rockets since the summer 2006 war. More disturbing, the quality of the rockets had improved along with the higher numbers. Hezbollah now had “serious weapons,” a French diplomat reported, “not just Katyushas.”32 According to an Israeli security official, Hezbollah could now fire rockets on Tel Aviv from north of Lebanon’s Litani River and hit as far south as Dimona from southern Lebanon.33

  Hezbollah also appeared to have overcome the political setbacks incurred by the massive damage caused to Lebanon’s infrastructure in the July 2006 war. Despite underwriting the reconstruction of homes and more in southern Lebanon with financing provided by Iran, Hezbollah suffered significant domestic criticism for igniting the war by kidnapping Israeli soldiers and firing thousands of missiles into northern Israel. Local criticism arose again in May 2008, after Hezbollah militants briefly seized control of part of West Beirut, turning onto fellow Lebanese citizens the weapons the party claimed were maintained strictly to resist Israel. The fighting broke out after the Lebanese government announced intentions to curb Hezbollah’s intelligence activities at Beirut International Airport and shut down its private “military telecommunications network.”34

  But by July 2008 Hezbollah had every reason to expect that its reconstruction support and military successes would translate into political gain. In particular Hezbollah negotiated a prisoner exchange that secured the release of five Lebanese militants held in Israeli jails as well as the remains of several other Hezbollah and Palestinian fighters. This, the party felt confident, would catapult the group and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, back into the limelight as the spearhead of resistance against Israel. Among the slogans plastered along coastal roads from the Israeli border to Sidon was Nasrallah’s refrain: “Thanks to the weapons of the resistance, we will free our prisoners.”35 Hezbollah posters referred to the exchange as the “Radwan Operation”—framing the prisoner release itself as part of the group’s revenge for Mughniyeh’s assassination.36 The Israel-Lebanon frontier, however, remained eerily quiet. Even when Israeli forces fought a pitched battle with Hamas in Gaza over three weeks in 2008–9, not a single Hezbollah rocket or fighter brought the fight to Israel’s northern border. While Hezbollah declared victory in the July 2006 war, the devastating Israeli military response appears to have deterred Hezbollah from entering the fray two years later.

  Campaigning at Home, Exposed Abroad

  As the Hezbollah-led March 8 coalition campaigned ahead of Lebanon’s June 2009 elections, the group was forced to contend with the unexpected exposure of its covert terrorist activities within Lebanon and internationally. At home, Hezbollah stood accused by a UN tribunal of playing a role in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri. Abroad, a series of law enforcement actions targeted Hezbollah support networks operating across the globe. Together these activities posed what Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah described as “the largest and most important and serious challenge” facing the party.37

  Mughniyeh’s funeral—where Nasrallah threatened open war—occurred on the third anniversary of Hariri’s assassination. These two events became even more intimately intertwined several months later, in May 2009, when the German weekly Der Spiegel revealed that the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) investigating Hariri’s assassination had implicated Hezbollah operatives in the murder. Citing Lebanese security sources, the report referred to cell phones linked to the plot and found that “all of the numbers involved apparently belonged to the ‘operational arm’ of Hezbollah.” The report described a principal suspect, Abdulmajid Ghamlush, as “a Hezbollah member who had completed a training course in Iran.” The investigation of Ghamlush, who reportedly purchased the mobile phones, led officials to Hajj Salim, the alleged mastermind of the assassination plot and commander of a special operational unit reporting directly to Nasrallah.38

  It would be another two years before the STL issued formal indictments to Lebanon’s state prosecutor calling for the arrest of four Hezbollah members. While two of the suspects—Hasan Aneisi and Asad Sabra—appear to have been low-level musclemen, the others—Salim Ayyash and Mustapha Badreddine—were senior members of the IJO, Hezbollah’s famed terrorist wing, with international connections. Ayyash was described as a US passport holder who headed the cell that carried out the assassination. Meanwhile, Badreddine, Mughniyeh’s brother-in-law, was a longtime partner in Mughniyeh’s terrorist plots dating back to the Beirut bombings in the early 1980s and succeeded Mughniyeh as head of Hezbollah’s external operations.39

  Nasrallah took to the airwaves condemning the tribunal as an American project based on fabricated communications data from Israeli spies embedded in Lebanon’s telecommunications industry. Israel was behind the assassination, he claimed, as he exhorted the Lebanese people not to cooperate with its investigators.40 But even before the fo
rmal indictments were issued, Hezbollah reportedly conducted quiet surveillance of the tribunal’s headquarters in The Hague. The Netherlands considers Hezbollah a terrorist group, and Dutch intelligence was already conducting bimonthly assessments of potential threats to the tribunal. While they found no plots in the works, they did note periodic surveillance of tribunal headquarters. In particular before the tribunal occupied its newly refurbished building, a Lebanese camera crew was caught taking suspicious pictures and video of the unfinished facility.41

  Back in Lebanon Hezbollah followed tribunal investigators on the ground and intimidated them overtly. The group reportedly collected information on tribunal officials entering and leaving the country through airport surveillance, creating an environment in which investigators did not feel safe.42 The January 25, 2008, assassination of Lebanese Internal Security Forces captain Wissam Eid, who was detailed to the Hariri investigation, underscored those fears. According to a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation report, the investigation of Eid’s murder—which also fell under the tribunal’s jurisdiction—implicated two additional Hezbollah officials, Hussein Khalil and Wafiq Safa.43

  Meanwhile, in April 2009 Egyptian authorities announced the November 2008 arrest of a cell of Hezbollah operatives and several dozen local recruits accused of funneling arms to Hamas and targeting Israeli tourists and shipping through the Suez Canal. As long as the arms smuggling network only ran weapons into Gaza, Cairo looked the other way. But local authorities took offense when Hezbollah leaders tasked its Egypt cell with also collecting intelligence for a possible attack on Israeli interests on Egyptian soil. According to Egyptian prosecutors the operatives were instructed to collect intelligence from villages along the Egypt-Gaza border, at tourist sites, and at the Suez Canal. Nasrallah himself confirmed that one of the men arrested was Sami Shihab, a Hezbollah member who was on “a logistical job to help Palestinians get [military] equipment.”44