Made In Iran

Made In Iran


By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, January 08, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Mideast: Rockets launched from Lebanon once again strike northern Israel. It may be a warning. It may be an isolated incident. But one thing is certain: The target is Israel, but the launch point is Tehran.

The three Katyushas that struck northern Israel on Thursday, one going through the roof of a nursing home, do not a second front make. Suspicions are that the attack was from a Hamas auxiliary using outdated rockets, hoping to provoke a response from an angry Israel.

The attack, reminiscent of Hezbollah's massive barrage in 2006 using state-of-the-art missiles, still raises the question of where are the U.N. peacekeepers, and if this was the act of a few loose cannons, how could anyone transport rockets into Lebanon and fire them without Hezbollah's knowledge and permission?

It could be that this pinprick was intended to tell Israel it had better watch its backside before it goes too far in Gaza. It also may have been a reminder that while Hezbollah is busy consolidating its power in Lebanon, it's still there armed beyond pre-war levels, ready to strike on orders from Tehran.

The mullahs are in fact waist deep in the big muddle that is Gaza. Iran has provided Hamas with training and weapons for the current conflict with Israel. The rockets Hamas has fired thus far include more than homemade Qasams. Some have reached targets more than two dozen miles inside Israel, destroying buildings in the southern Israeli towns of Ashdod and Beersheba.

According to the Israeli security agency, the Shia Bet, the rockets that struck Beersheba were transported from Sudan, through the Sinai, and then smuggled into Gaza through tunnels under Egypt's border. The Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Center reports Hamas smuggled at least 80 tons of explosives, including an unknown number of rockets, into Gaza since June 2007.

This is nothing new. In 2002, Israel seized a Palestinian-captained ship bound for Gaza carrying 50 tons of Iranian missiles, mortars, rifles and ammo. In 2006, Ahmed Aboul, Egypt's foreign minister, accused Iran of being behind Hamas' violent takeover of Gaza. Hamas may have been isolated from the world, but Iran announced $50 million in support in 2006. By mid-2007, known Iranian support had reached $120 million, with pledges of $250 million more, not including Iranian-supplied weapons and training.

Last March, the London Sunday Times published an interview with a top Hamas commander of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas that Iran is turning into a disciplined army like Hezbollah. "We have sent seven 'courses' of our fighters to Iran," he said. "During each course, the group receives training that will increase our capacity to fight."

At that point, some 150 members of the Qassam Brigades had passed through training in Tehran, where they studied anywhere from 45 days to six months at a closed military base run by the Quds (Jerusalem) force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

The most promising members of each group stay longer for advanced training and return as trainers themselves. According to the Hamas commander, another 650 had at the time been trained in camps in Syria under instructors who learned their stuff in Iran.

Says terrorism expert Walid Phares: "The Gaza fight is about Iran's confrontation with Israel, and perhaps with the U.S. globally. A global strategic reading leads us to conclude that — just as we saw in Lebanon in 2006 — Tehran is pulling the strings, and very smartly."

Attempts to arrange the usual paper-thin cease-fires and kick the can down the road to peace are attempts to treat the symptoms and not the disease. Hamas and Hezbollah are stalking horses for Iran. Until Iran is dealt with, there will be no peace for either Israel or the United States.



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