Syria; where Hezbollah is drowning

Syria; where Hezbollah is drowning
Lebanese Shia Hezbollah announced the killing of Mustafa Badreddine  on May 14 in Syria. The killed senior Hezbollah leader occupied many prominent positions in the party’s high advisory council besides being the party’s leader of operations outside Lebanon.

Badreddine alongside many other members in Hezbollah are also on the wanted list by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon which is carrying out the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the 14 February 2005 assassination of Lebanese ex-Prime Minister Rafic al-Hariri. 

Hezbollah has refused before to hand Badreddine in and has long accused the tribunal of being politicized and siding with Israeli and American agendas.

In the party’s first statement following the killing of Badreddine Hezbollah accused Israel then in a second statement said that the killing which took place near Damascus was due to a missile or an airstrike. The party added in its statement that it would launch an investigation into the accident. 

Regardless of the different stories told about the reasons behind Badreddine killing and its whereabouts, the man responsible for many top confidential files was finally killed in Syria.

However, looking deeper into the details would make the accident look more complicated. If Badreddine was killed in an Israeli airstrike this would raise questions about the range and size of the security coordination between Israeli warplanes flying in the Syrian airspace and the Russian radars which are monitoring every single movement in this space. This would lead consequently to raise more questions about the Iranian- Hezbollah relations and coordination on one hand and the Iranian-Russian coordination on the other. 

Considering the other stories about Badreddine’s killing would make the accident look more suspicious. In case Badreddine was killed at the hands of the Syrian opposition in Aleppo countryside which seems more likely to be the true story, this would put Hezbollah before a new challenge presented by its populous incubator which has become more disturbed about the increasing numbers of causalities among Hezbollah’s fighters and leaders. The party would need to answer back for this killing while it couldn’t do that at the moment.

The third possibility about the killing of Badreddine says that he was killed in an explosion near Damascus Airport. This possibility means that perpetrators were able to infiltrate Badreddine’s closed security circle which knows too many details about the Syrian situation. This would make Hezbollah realize that its senior leaders have become exposed and easily targeted in Syria. They are no longer safe there and it would make the party examine its presence in Syria more carefully. 

The last scenario about Badreddine killing is his relations with al-Hariri’s assassination. Some observers say that the man was liquidated because those who were involved in the assassination have become a burden for their leaders and it has become high time to silence them forever. 

To sum up, Syria has become a quagmire in which all those who were involved in killing the Syrian and Lebanese people get drown. Hezbollah thus, would not get out of this quagmire with any significant power if not completely ended as a local and regional power.         

Wael Najm in Al-Araby Al-Jadeed 

Translated by Orient Net English 

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