2/27/2008

From Elie Hobeika To Imad F. Moughniah



Elie Hobeika: He who sows to the Spirit, will from the Spirit reap eternal life.
Our Lebanese heroes who gave their lives on the altars of the nation also taught us that he who has faith in the nation, in liberty, and in the rights of its citizens will defend them with absolute vigor and most honorable dedication, and will not fear any threats, threat of oppression, the loss of position or property, or the disappearance of "Thyself" in a Fiery Syrian/Israeli Car BOMB, with CIA's Blessing, aiding and abetting, since 1997, when he adamantly refused to play Ball again...
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February , 2008 -- Behind the media smoke screen in the Middle East.

Reality paints a much different picture of Middle East covert operations.



Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell tipped his hand just a bit when he recently opined that Syria may have been responsible for the February 12 car bombing in Damascus of Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyeh. McConnell, according to WMR's Middle East Intelligence sources, provided only a small part of the ntelligence cooperation that actually occurs in the Middle East between factions from the Syrians, Iranians, Israelis, and Americans.

It is becoming apparent that the head of Syrian military intelligence, Assef Shawqat, and a group of his operatives in Syria and Lebanon have been carrying out a number of car bombings, including that of Mughniyeh and Lebanese politicians, in order to provide "plausible deniability" and a firewall between Syria and the Israelis and Americans. This whole Covert effort started in earnest with the Assassination of Mr. Elie Hobeika, January 24th 2002. Mr. Hobeika was closest to this group, earlier in his career, hence it was decided to take him out of the picture first, because he adamantly refused offers to induce him to join this whole strategy anew, since the latter part of the 1990s, and because it is a given, for people "in the know", that had he been alive today, he would be able to decipher all these covert links with exact details, names, and more...! Significantly, Shawkat is the brother-in-law of Syrian President Bashar al Assad.

WMR's sources report that "a faction" within the Iranian military decided to help the Shawkat faction take out Mughniyeh in order to avoid an outbreak of war between Hezbollah and Israel in south Lebanon and a possible concurrent "shock and awe" US air strike on Iran. Hezbollah's operational command maintains close links with the Iranian embassies in Syria and Lebanon. In addition, Hezbollah's Special Security Apparatus is provided with weapons, military training, and money by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Al Qods force of the IRGC.

Shawkat has maintained close ties with the CIA, providing the agency with extraordinary rendition prisons and torture rooms for individuals grabbed by CIA operatives around the world, including Canadian citizen Maher Arar, a native of Syria. In September 2006, a Canadian Commission of Inquiry concluded that Arar, who was kidnapped while transiting JFK Airport in New York, was tortured by Syrian military intelligence. The report stated that Shawkat's service tortured Arar "while interrogating him during the period he was held incommunicado at the SMI’s [Syrian Military Intelligence's] Palestine Branch facility.”

After the car bomb hit on Mughniyah in Damascus, Shawkat's intelligence operatives ensured that the scene of the bombing was completely cleansed by
first light the next morning. The only signs that the bombing had occurred were some black marks on the street and some minor damage to adjacent walls.

What is lost on the Western media is that there are covert channels between Israeli, Syrian, and Iranian intelligence. The Secretary of the conservative
Islamic Coalition Society and close friend of Ayatollah Ali Khamanei is Habibollah Asgaroladi, a radical Muslim who rejected attempts by former President Mohammad Khatami to improve relations with the United States. Khatami's entreaties were also rejected by the neocons in the George W. Bush administration.

Asgaroladi is a member of the Expediency Council, an influential advisory group in the country chaired by former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
who was the main Iranian interlocutor between the Americans and Israelis in the Iran-contra scandal during the Reagan-Bush administration in the 1980s. More noteworthy is the fact that Asgaroladi, counted as one of Iran's richest men, converted to Islam from Judaism during the time of the Shah's reign.

According to WMR's Iranian sources, beyond his radical rhetoric, Asgaroladi serves as an important back channel to Israel, especially in matters of trade matters. Asgaroladi's position in Iran has been likened by WMR's Middle East sources to the large number of Turkish leaders whose families converted
from Judaism to Islam before and after the Turkish secular revolution of Kemal Ataturk. In fact, knowledgeable Turkish sources report that Ataturk,
himself, was one such convert. These Turkish leaders provide much of the support for close Turkish-Israeli relations, including military and intelligence links.

Our Middle East intelligence sources report that the Syrians, Israelis, and Iranians prefer that U.S. intelligence remain largely ignorant of "some covert" and "subtle links" between Israel, the minority Alawite Muslim regime in Damascus, and factions within the mullahs in Tehran. However, it is just possible, that ignorance by the United States... that could propel America into a disastrous military action in Iran.