Guest Analysis: Hizballah Targets U.S. Troops in Iraq

9/16/2008

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Guest columnist Olivier Guitta examines Hizballah's efforts to target U.S. troops in Iraq.

The Iranian-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hizballah has long been known for its war against Israel and deadly attacks against Jews in Argentina and elsewhere. Few are aware that Hizballah—which perpetrated the 1983 massacre of 241 Marines in Beirut—is also killing U.S. troops in Iraq.

Hizballah chief Hassan Nasrallah’s ties to Shia militant groups in Iraq go back decades. As a teenager, he studied at the Shia seminary in Najaf, Iraq. It was then that he met the men who would help shape his life: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (Iran’s future Supreme Leader) and Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr (the Iraqi Mahdi Army commander Moqtada al-Sadr’s father).

 The bond has lasted. In 1982, Khomeini’s agents established Hizballah. And in 2004, Moqtada al-Sadr said he was “the striking arm of Hizballah” in Iraq. During the 2006 war in Lebanon, he offered to send members of his militia to fight Israel.

Hizballah Has Planned Attacks in Iraq Since 2003

Hizballah has sought to turn Iraq into what Lebanon was in the 1980s—a chaotic country where foreign citizens are routinely kidnapped and suicide bombers terrorize the population. Nasrallah has explicitly called for such tactics to be used against U.S. troops.

“We tell them that they will not be met in this region with roses, flowers, rice and perfumes,” Nasrallah said in 2003, as American troops prepared to enter the country. “They will be met with rifles, blood, arms, martyrdom and martyrdom operations.”

For years, Nasrallah has been preoccupied with Iraq. His efforts to organize terrorist attacks there began in April 2003 when Hizballah opened offices in the cities of Basra and Safwan. Top Hizballah commander Imad Mughniyeh reportedly traveled to Iraq to help organize the insurgency at Nasrallah’s instructions. Most likely, Mughniyeh entered Iraq with the aid of Syria, trekking across its porous eastern border. 

As the war progressed, Nasrallah continued his calls for attacks against American targets. In a July 11, 2006, speech—just one day before Hizballah triggered the Lebanon war—Nasrallah called on Iraqis to step up their “resistance” against U.S. troops. All the while, Mughniyeh, Nasrallah’s military mastermind, was reportedly in and out of Iraq, supervising insurrection planning until his death in a February 2008 car bombing in Damascus.

Hizballah Trains Shia Terrorists

Hizballah’s ties to Iran have borne fruit for Tehran in its efforts to destabilize Baghdad. 

In May, U.S. officials announced that Hizballah elements were training Iraqi Shia fighters at camps near Tehran and in southern Iraq. The camps are under the supervision of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s elite Quds Force.

Three top Iraqi officials said last month that Hizballah was behind a slew of attacks against coalition forces in Iraq, including the January 2007 raid on a compound in Karbala that killed five Americans. One major piece of evidence of Hizballah’s close involvement in Iraq was the arrest by U.S. troops in March 2007 of one of its top commanders, Ali Mussa Daqduq, who was on his fourth trip to Iraq to assess Hizballah’s effectiveness. 

In the 1983 bombing in Beirut, Hizballah conducted the deadliest single-day attack on U.S. troops since Vietnam. Indeed, before the 9/11 attacks, Hizballah had killed more Americans than any other terror group. Today, Hizballah is once again killing American servicemen, while training Iraqis to do the same.  •NER•

Olivier Guitta, an Adjunct Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, is the founder of the newsletter The Croissant (www.thecroissant.com).

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