Free Republic

Is Iran’s Lebanese client losing its grip? Last week Hezbollah buried one of its princes, Jihad Mughniyeh, the 22-year-old son of the late Imad Mughniyeh, a legendary Hezbollah commander implicated in such infamous operations as the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. The assassination of the elder Mughniyeh in Damascus in 2008, typically attributed to Israel, is regarded as one of the organization’s most traumatic blows. However, some in the Shiite community here say that Israel’s January 18 strike on a three-car convoy in the Golan Heights near the Syrian town of Quneitra—which killed the younger Mughniyeh...

This year marks not only the 50th anniversary of the shooting of John F. Kennedy but also the 45th anniversary of the shooting of Robert F. Kennedy, which occurred in June 1968. Was there a common source motivating the assassins of both Kennedys—that is, Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan? That renowned political philosopher Mick Jagger speculated on a source. “I shouted out ‘Who killed the Kennedys?’” asks the lyrics in the 1968 song by The Rolling Stones. “When, after all, it was you and me.” The song was titled, “Sympathy for the Devil.” It was, The Rolling Stones suggested,...

Israel's military says two of its soldiers were killed and another seven were wounded in a Hezbollah strike Wednesday on an army convoy near the Lebanese border. Israel's military responded to the anti-tank missile strike on the convoy with aerial and ground attacks on Hezbollah positions in Lebanon. Lebanese security officials told the Associated Press that Israel fired 25 shells across the border. The Israeli Defense Forces said that residents of the area had been ordered to remain in their homes. The Lebanese terror group Hezbollah earlier claimed responsibility for the attack and said it destroyed a number of Israeli...

A video uploaded to YouTube appears to show a large Hezbollah Brigades convoy transporting weapons, troops, and armored vehicles to the front to fight the Islamic State. Several American-made military vehicles, including an M1 Abrams tank, M113 armored personnel carriers, Humvees, and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAP), as well as Iranian-made Safir 4x4s and technicals (armed pickup trucks) are in the convoy. The Hezbollah Brigades is US-designated foreign terrorist organization that has been involved in killing American soldiers in Iraq. At one point in the video, a transport truck is shown carrying an M1 Abrams tank. The Hezbollah Brigades' flag...

JERUSALEM — Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven wounded in a missile attack Wednesday as they drove in a disputed zone along the Lebanese border, Israel said, in the most serious flare-up in the area in years. Hezbollah claimed responsibility. The attack raised the risk of a further escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group that is one of Israel’s most tenacious enemies. The two sides lobbed rockets and artillery at each other for hours afterward. Hezbollah, which had vowed to avenge a deadly Israeli strike on its fighters earlier this month, said in a statement that...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sent a warning to the government of Lebanon and to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from whose territories Wednesday's attack and Tuesday's rocket fire on the Golan Heights were launched. "The government of Lebanon and the Assad regime share responsibility for the consequences of attacks originating in their territory against the state of Israel," he said.

In the past several months, many of the Syrian rebel groups previously favored by the CIA have had their money and supplies cut off or substantially reduced, even as President Obama touted the strategic importance of American support for the rebels in his State of the Union address. The once-favored fighters are operating under a pall of confusion. In some cases, they were not even informed that money would stop flowing. In others, aid was reduced due to poor battlefield performance, compounding already miserable morale on the ground.

At least two rockets launched from Syria struck the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights on Tuesday and Israel responded with artillery fire, the Israeli military said. The fire comes after an airstrike last week in Syria attributed to Israel that killed six members of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and an Iranian general. Israel has braced for a response to that strike, beefing up its air defenses and increasing surveillance along its northern frontier. Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said the fire "appeared to be intentional." He declined to comment on whether the fire may have been connected to the...

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit says that the Israeli Air Force was striking multiple artillery positions belonging to the Syrian army, and that direct hits were identified. The air strikes came minutes after residents in the northern Golan Heights reported hearing air raid sirens around 12:30AM (Wednesday). No casualties or damages have been reported in Northern Israel. On Tuesday morning two rockets exploded in the northern Golan Heights.

An antitank missile has been fired at an IDF vehicle from the Har Dov area (Shebaa Farms) in a Hezbollah ambush Wednesday morning, and there are reportedly seven casualties, who are receiving treatment. A helicopter has been taking casualties to a hospital. The IDF is certain that none of its soldiers was abducted. Hezbollah has claimed responsibility for the attack, through journalist Rassan Ben Jiddo, who is close to the terrorist militia. ZAKA emergency services initially said that three people were hurt. The IDF spokesman said that an antitank missile was fired at an IDF vehicle that was moving along...

SHEAR YASHUV, Israel (AP) — A missile fired by the Lebanese Hezbollah group struck an Israeli military convoy on Wednesday, an apparent retaliation for a deadly airstrike attributed to Israel that killed six Hezbollah fighters in Syria earlier this month.

In the wake of this weekend's Israeli strike in the Golan Heights, which killed Hezbollah operatives and an Iranian general, Sunday's comments by Syria's information minister are particularly illuminating. Omran Zoubi said the "cost of maintaining regional security is much lower than that of a huge deterioration that develops in a negative way," which can be read as an appeal for the Israelis to avoid taking things further. In contrast, officials from Hezbollah and have spoken openly about retaliation, something that used to threaten after Israeli strikes in the past. This demonstrates that the Syrian regime exists on paper, but...

Obama: Is he irrelevant, or an advocate for Iran-backed terror? Even as President Obama gave his State of the Union address to the joint chambers of Congress Tuesday night, another domino was falling in Iran’s line-up of nation-state influence. Yemen’s leadership was on the brink of capitulation just as Obama was gloating over a failed foreign policy as being effective. Others have already pointed out how facts of Yemen and Somalia’s chaos contradict the president’s previous glorying in those states as testaments of his policy’s success. His idea as to what qualifies as success appear to deviate from that of...

Tony Badran, Now Lebanon January 23, 2015 Israel dealt Iran a painful blow on Sunday when it struck a convoy of senior Iranian and Hezbollah commanders in Quneitra in the Golan Heights. Some Israeli former security officials have explained the strike as preemptive action against an imminent attack on northern Israel. They pointed to an interview by Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah three days before, in which he talked about his fighters making incursions into the Galilee in the next war with Israel. Another anonymous Israeli official claimed that the presence of a high-ranking Iranian general in the convoy was a...

An Iranian general killed in an Israeli air strike in Syria was not its intended target and Israel believed it was attacking only low-ranking guerrillas, a senior Israeli security source told Reuters on Tuesday. The source declined to be identified because Israel will not confirm or deny whether it carried out the strike. Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Mohammed Allahdadi was killed along with a Hezbollah commander and the son of the group's late military leader, Imad Muughniyeh, in Sunday's attack on a Hezbollah convoy near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Iran on Monday promised that Hezbollah would deliver “crushing response” to the Israeli attack over the weekend, which killed six Iranian agents, including a top-level commander, and five Hezbollah members. “The experience of the past shows that the resistance current will give a crushing response to the Zionist regime’s terrorist moves with revolutionary determination and in due time and place,” Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), was quoted as saying. The Israeli strike came just days after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared that the terror group was preparing for a war in Israel’s northern Galilee...

Western intelligence sources say son of late Hezbollah leader Mughniyeh was planning attacks on Israel, received direct Iranian sponsorship. Following reports of an IAF helicopter strike on Sunday that targeted a convoy of Hezbollah operatives and killed 10, Hezbollah-run television in Lebanon indicated the incident could prompt a "costly" surge in tensions in the region. On Sunday evening, the al-Manar news channel said the attack suggested that "the enemy has gone crazy because of Hezbollah's growing capabilities and it could lead to a costly adventure that will put the Middle East at stake." Western intelligence sources reported Sunday that Jihad...

Hezbollah supporters turned out in force on Monday to bury the son of the group's late commander, one of six fighters who died in an Israeli air strike in neighboring Syria that also killed an Iranian general. The killings raised the possibility of a retaliatory attack, with a senior Iranian official suggesting that Israel would be hit at "the right time and right place". An Israeli defense official said escalation was possible. Jihad Mughniyeh was buried in Beirut alongside his father Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated in Damascus in 2008. Though it was unclear what role Mughniyeh, who was in...

Israelis live under the constant threat of terrorist attacks. Just overnight, Israel rolled up a six-member cell linked to the Islamic State with the alleged orders to execute strikes against Israeli targets inside the Jewish stateÂ’s territory. On IsraelÂ’s borders, Hamas to the south and Hezbollah to the north represent a constant terrorist threat. IsraelÂ’s ability to defend its borders by executing strikes on terrorist targets is further complicated by the fact that any one of those strikes could ignite an international incident by accidently killing a high-ranking military officer from one of those terror groupsÂ’ state sponsors. That...

Iran's revolutionary guards' corps (IRGC) has confirmed that one of its senior commanders, general Mohammad Ali Allahdadi (or Dadi), has been killed by an Israeli strike on the Syrian sector of the Golan Heights. The air raid, which also killed six members of Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah group, occurred near Syria's Quneitra border crossing with Israel. "Following the Zionist aggressions against the resistance in Syria, General Mohammad Allahdadi, a former commander of the Sarollah Brigade of the Revolutionary Guard, was martyred along with Jihad Moughniyah and three others in the same car," the Dana news website said. The senior commander was...