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DEBKAfile Exclusive Report November 13, 2010, 12:24 PM (GMT+02:00)

Hashim Safi Al-Din: New Hizballah commander of Israeli frontline

Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah has quietly placed Hashim Safi Al-Din, his cousin and heir apparent, in command of southern Lebanon and its border with Israel, further upgrading Iran-backed preparations for an armed clash, debkafile‘s exclusive military sources report. This week, Safi Al-din was recalled from his post in Tehran as head of Hizballah’s Liaison Office and immediately assumed the reins from Sheikh Nabil Quouk, the 2006 War commander.

Our intelligence sources say this appointment is the most ominous sign to date of the seriousness Iran and Hizballah attach to their plans for an early war with Israel. Three further developments point in this direction:

1. Tehran, Damascus and Nasrallah are tensely watching the clock ticking for the UN Special Tribunal on Lebanon – STL to deliver indictments against top Hizballah officials before the end of this year or early January. Hizballah has threatened to block their extradition by seizing Lebanon’s government and strategic centers.

This action that could quickly ignite the inflammable Lebanese-Israeli border, an interconnection Hizballah’s leader eagerly embraced in his latest speech of Thursday, Nov. 11.
Shouting at the top of his voice, Nasrallah threatened to “chop off the hand that dared to accuse or detain members of the ‘Hizballah gendarmerie.'” He went on to yell: “We await the day the indictments will be released.” And in the same breath ranted, “We are ready for any Israeli war on Lebanon and will again be victorious, Inshallah. Whoever thinks that threatening us with another Israel war will scare us is mistaken. On the contrary, whoever speaks of another war is bearing good news not threatening us.”

2.  Tehran views the newly appointed South Lebanon commander, Hashim Safi Al-Din, is its most stalwart partisan in the Lebanese Shiite Hizballah leadership since Imad Moughnieh passed away two years ago in an exploding car in Damascus. Safi Al-Din is therefore trusted most of all Hizballah’s leaders to do as he is told by Iran in a direct confrontation with Israel.
Iran did not get this sort of obedience in the 2006 War: Nasrallah went his own way regardless of strategic and military instructions from Tehran. For instance, he ordered Israeli towns and villages blasted by his rockets at the rate of 500 a day whereas Iranian experts wanted the rocket fire concentrated on the Israeli troops driving into Lebanon. To appease his Iranian sponsors, Nasrallah then appointed Mughniyeh war commander in the middle of combat.
But Tehran is taking no chances of any more insubordination from its proxy. Nasrallah will be kept in line by Iran’s obedient loyalist in the key command position in South Lebanon and Iran will stay in control of a future confrontation with Israel from the word go.

3.  At the same time, the appointment of his cousin confirms Hassan Nasrallah as the Hizballah strongman capable of bringing to fruition the ambition Tehran and Damascus cherish of establishing their man in Beirut as boss of Lebanon.

Hashim Safi Al-Din also enjoys Nasrallah trust. They also look remarkably alike. debkafile revealed in an exclusive report in 2007 that Nasrallah was using his cousin as his look-alike to throw would-be assassins off the scent. Their resemblance was close enough even to fool fellow members of Hizballah.

With Safi Al-Din’s appointment to the South Lebanese command, Tehran has deployed a troika for running the next war with Israel on its behalf: Nasrallah, his cousin and their direct controller, Iran’s own Al Qods Brigades officer Gen. Hossein Mahadavi.

The RAF compared with the Israeli Air Force | The Jewish Chronicle.

In a surprising upheaval of the global military rankings, it has emerged that Israel is set to leave Britain for dust when it comes to air power.

Cuts proposed in the Ministry of Defence’s recent Strategic Defence and Security Review could mean that in five years, the RAF will be fielding roughly half the number of fighters of the Israeli Air Force.

The major difference in air force planning between the countries is a result of change in strategic thinking.

The SDSR is based on a shift in the vision of Britain’s armed forces from fighting against well-equipped Cold War adversaries to a future in which their main role will involve peace-keeping missions and more focused campaigns. There will be less need for squadrons of expensive, fighter-bombers carrying out air and ground-attack missions.

The IAF, on the other hand, is geared to fighting a number of campaigns at the same time based on worst-case scenarios. These include long-range missions against an enemy such as Iran while taking out hundreds of missile launchers in Lebanon and simultaneously suppling air-support to IDF ground forces in Lebanon and in Gaza.

The RAF currently fields a fast-jet force of around 300 aircraft comprised of Harrier jump-jets Tornados and the new Eurofighter Typhoon.

The main implication of the SDSR for the RAF is a major cut in the number of fighters, with the force of 74 Harriers to be withdrawn in the coming year and the Tornados to be gradually withdrawn over the next five years.

The IAF currently operates around 400 fighters; various models of the American F-15 and F-16 fighters. All the fighters include multiple Israeli-designed systems and avionics tailor-made to the IAF’s specifications and the older aircraft have been continuously upgraded.

Israel is also buying the F-35 with an initial order for the first squadron of 20 signed two months ago and the expected total order to be up to 70. While the overall number of fighters may be slightly smaller a decade from now, the IAF does not currently plan to change the number of fighter aircraft significantly.

Senior IDF officers have revealed that the army now has a “target bank” with thousands of Hizbollah launch sites, command posts and weapon dumps that would be attacked in stages in a future war. Similar lists of targets exist for the Gaza Strip and Syria which may also be involved in a future Middle East war alongside Iran and Lebanon.

While there have been grumblings among the higher echelons of the Ground Command and Navy regarding the preference of the air force in spending plans at the expense of more advanced armoured vehicles for ground forces and new ships, no major changes have yet been made in the allocation of the defence budget. A senior air force general said recently: “We have more than enough work for every one of our fighters and can see no justification in cutting their numbers.”

Above the Fray: Syria’s dilemma.

Photo by: AP  

By ALON BEN-MEIR
11/12/2010 12:22

Assad is being forced to choose: Does he want his country to be an ally of Iran and Hizbullah or a leader in the Arab world?

When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited southern Lebanon to great fanfare last month, he did more than irk Israel and the West, which seek to diminish Iranian influence in the Levant. The visit served to underscore the increasing polarization in the broader region, placing the divergent views of Iran and the Arab states in stark contrast, with Syria in the middle. As a result, Syria is under newfound pressure.

Can Syria afford to maneuver as an ally of Iran and its proxies and risk its central role in the Arab world? Or is it willing and/or able to change course and join the Arab world in blunting the expanding growth of Persian influence? Syria’s answers to these questions could shape the development of events in the near future, especially between Israel and Lebanon.

Prior to Ahmadinejad’s visit, numerous developments indicated that Syria was on the rise, reasserting itself as a central player in the Arab- Israeli conflict. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, to the surprise of many, absolved Syria from any wrongdoing in the assassination of his father, former prime minister Rafik Hariri. Syria and Saudi Arabia engaged in a rapprochement, with a highly publicized joint visit to Beirut, symbolizing a new-found partnership and tacit recognition of Syria’s renewed power in the Levant.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has been seeking to improve US-Syria ties and to jump-start Syria-Israel peace talks. President Barack Obama nominated a US ambassador to return to Damascus earlier in the year, and numerous envoys and elected officials have traveled to Damascus for high-level talks with President Bashar Assad and his associates. Furthermore, Syria has expanded its economic ties with numerous nations, most notably France and Turkey, and has taken significant measures to liberalize its economy in an effort to invite foreign investment and prepare the economic infrastructure conducive to long-term growth.

All the while, however, it has continued to work with Iran to provide Hizbullah with logistical and political support and advanced missile systems. Hizbullah is reportedly now in possession of more than 40,000 rockets and missiles.

AFTER A year of progress, Ahmadinejad’s visit may be a game-changing chapter for Syria. It has intensified Arab-Persian and Sunni-Shi’ite tension – already high after the UN tribunal on the assassination of Rafik Hariri, which implicates Hizbullah operatives and is likely to point the finger at Damascus for plotting it – sparking fears of renewed sectarian violence. To the Arab world, already vexed that the most influential states in their region – Israel, Iran and Turkey – are non-Arab, Ahmadinejad’s trip provoked concerns that Syria’s influence in Lebanon is being surpassed by Iran and Hizbullah. That neither Syria nor Saudi Arabia could have stopped the visit signifies how powerful and decisive Hizbullah has become.

The renewed rift places Syria in a bind. As long as a pressured atmosphere remains – and the findings of the tribunal will strengthen, not dissipate this pressure – Syria will inevitably lose much of its maneuverability. It cannot continue its balancing act whereby it strengthens ties to the West and the Arab world, while simultaneously supplying Hizbullah and strengthening Iranian influence in Lebanon. Syria’s dilemma will become considerably more acute should there be a new round of violence between Israel and Hizbullah.

Warning signs suggest that it may be a matter of when, not if, a new war breaks out along the Lebanon-Israel border. In a recent farewell meeting with the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, outgoing Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin stated explicitly his concern that the next war could be much longer and could lead to a wider conflagration, including Syria. It is likely that in any conflict with Hizbullah, Israel would seek to do no less than to wipe out its arsenal of weapons and its infrastructure.

Facing the possibility of such a bloody conflict, Syria has to make a choice: Will it enter such a conflict to aid Hizbullah and open itself up to a direct military confrontation with Israel in which it will suffer a devastating blow? Or, will it turn its back on Hizbullah and Iran? Syria will have to choose sooner rather than later between Hizbullah and its larger interest in all of Lebanon. It could be forced to make this choice should an incident occur similar to the cross-border attack by Hizbullah that sparked the war in the summer of 2006. With Hizbullah significantly strengthened, whether Damascus could keep such an incident from occurring is doubtful.

Even more troubling is how Iran might come to the aid of its proxies, Hamas and Hizbullah, in the event of renewed violence, and how it would pressure Syria to do so as well. Meanwhile, just as Saudi Arabia was tacitly supportive of Israel’s effort to wipe out Hizbullah in the Second Lebanon War, it would likely seek to use its improved ties with Syria to press it to remain on the sidelines of a new conflict.

Moreover, Syria’s continued aid to Hizbullah could lead to an Israeli strike on Syrian targets utilized in the weapons supply line, dragging Syria into a violent conflict. Faced with such a scenario, Syria’s balancing act will no longer be possible. If it does not find a solution to this dilemma before a new round of conflict begins, Damascus’s newfound influence and ties in the region will be undermined severely.

Critics argue that Syria is not facing such a dilemma. It has and will continue to play both sides of the coin in the Arab-Persian and Sunni- Shi’ite battle for influence in the region. Some may argue that just as Syria stayed out of the Second Lebanon War, it would likely refrain from entering the conflict. But such arguments underestimate the state of the Iranian-Arab divide and Syria’s increasingly dangerous balancing act.

With Arab states eager to regain power in the region, which has been ceded to non-Arab actors, and with regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt expected to undergo leadership transitions in a few years, the Arab world is especially reticent about the expansion of the Iranian proxy state in the Levant created by Hizbullah. But Syria’s continued aid to Hizbullah is enabling exactly that.

Syria can no longer sit on the fence. If Damascus does not take critical corrective measures now, it could face a precipitous fall and bring the prospects for peace and stability in the region down along with it. This is exactly what Iran would like to see happen, which by no means would serve Syria’s mid- or long-term strategic interests.