Iranian Elections and Hezbollah

By Ghassan Karam

There were many who reported last year that the Iranian theocracy used Hezbollah and Hamas imports in order to rough up the demonstrators in Tehran.

One popular Tweet , at the time, had the following to say: “”Iran rumor about Hezbolah & Hamas helping Basij, until today I never believed it but I saw them today with my own eyes”. The same type of a rumour was also reported by the Jerusalem Post, The VOA and Der Speigel. I know that some of you are not ready to put much faith in these totally uncorroborated accounts and that is fair since one must not accept any grist from the rumour mill.

But when a respectable Iranian Professor at Indiana  University ; Jamsheed Chosky; says

“We are hearing reports from Iranians in Tehran, Shiraz and Esfahan that Arabic-speaking militias are arriving. The vast majority of Iranians cannot speak any Arabic. It’s very likely those Arab militia members are from Hezbollah and/or Hamas. Similar reports were consistently present during and right after the Islamic revolution of 1979, when Arab militants reinforced Iranian religious extremists after the revolution to ensure that no counter-revolts could occur.” Then the matter must be taken more seriously.

Yet that might not be enough for some skeptics until know. A new development  regarding this issue has come to our attention. This evidence is so damning that it comes as close to a smoking gun as it can possibly be. A Professor at the American University of Beirut claims that a high ranking Hezbollah official has informed him that these rumours are true and that Hezbollah did airlift its “goons” ( my adjective) to Tehran in order to discipline those that dared speak against corruption and dictatorship. I have decided that it will be appropriate in this case to duplicate the exact e mail from this University Professor with only one deletion:

>My Hizbullah contact is… He is Hizbullah’s…. I have known him for the past 12 years. … He says Hizbullah had airlifted to tehran 300 men ato

>help in clamping down at the protyesters in the aftermath of Iran’s

>presidential elections in June 2009. The Iranian riots police used an

>additional number of about 200 Hizbullah trainees at Lavizan training

>camp and Imam Ali garrison training grounds. Thjere are no Hizbullah

>men attached to Iranian security police at the time. Hizbullah men

>assisting Iranian police were mostly enlisted men with a few junior

>officers. Hizbullah men felt it was their duty to assist the Islamic

>Revolution and many others in Hizbullah would not have hesitated to go

>to Iran and lend their services to the regime. There is no doubt that

>Hizbullah would send men to Iran to perform security duties in the

>future should need arise.

>Best,…

>PS: Please do not use the name of my source since he gave me the

>information on the basis of confidentiality and anonymity. You can use

>my name as the source of the information.

The above item is a very serious matter that demands a clear response from Hezbollah and the Lebanese authorities who have Hezbollah as a partner in government. Hezbollah has always been a rogue group with its own militia and its refusal to abide by the law of the land or even the accepted political tradition of having the majority form a government. Well they have blackmailed themselves into a position where they are part of government and they always use their ill gotten veto power to have it both ways; be members of the cabinet when it suits them and oppose the state when it is to their advantage. They have created a hybrid government that is best described as a modern reincarnation of the Tower of Babel.

Hezbollah must come clean. They do not have the luxury to be an official part of the Lebanese cabinet and yet export their hooligans to different countries. Can you imagine the outcry if their counterparts in Lebanon had as much as dared voice support for say the demonstrators in say Kuwait or Tehran for that matter. It is true that “ Whenever there is smoke there is fire” but this does not mean that there is no need for a thorough investigation to ascertain the real source of the smoke.  Many different incidents pointing to an illegal Hezbollah role in the affairs of other countries  have taken place over the past few years to be easily dismissed. Hezbollah has not denied its primary allegiance to the Grand Ayatollah of Qom and many events point to the fact that Hezbollah will stop at nothing in order to promote the interests of Qom. A thorough investigation of the above allegations is called for since if proven true then it is time to admit that such behavior is to be expected only from an extension of the Basij, Lebanese interests be damned.

UPDATE : Hilal Khashan a Professor of Political Science at the American University of Beirut and a well respected thinker who is widely published Middle Eastern affairs is the author of the above email. Initially I thought that what is of interest was not the identity of the writer but the nature of the act that he is making allegations about but then I decided to make the name public since Professor Khashan does not object to that.