Iran and Syria - A War Council for a `Hot Summer'

Iran's Ahmadinejad and Syria's Assad had lots to talk about during their recent meeting in Damascus, which also included Hezbollah's Sheik Nasrallah, Hamas boss Khalid Meshaal and representatives of Fatah al Islam, the PFLP and other Palestinian factions. It was a fairly obvious war council and strategy session. Along for the party were 20 high ranking Iranian military figures, including defense minister Mustafa Najar, who met directly with Syrian defense minister General Hassan Turkmani and his chief of staff General Ali Habib.

The big question at hand , of course, is what to do about Lebanon and what they can do to get rid of Siniora government in Beirut. Time is short - the international tribunal is about to be installed to start hearing the Hariri assassination case and that has to be stopped before Assad and his aides ( including a number of family members) are prosecuted.

An overt invasion by Syria is likely out of the question. Syria and Iran have to decide whether to focus on knocking off the Siniora government using terrorism and subversion via Hezbollah and other pro-Syrian factions inside Lebanon, or to try what they did last summer...heating up the situation with Israel on the borders in Gaza, the Golan and Lebanon as a diversionary tactic.

Or both, for that matter.

One of the bits of news that came out of the war council is that Iran has offered to fund, to the tune of $1 billion, new Syrian fighter jets, tanks and anti-ship missiles, and to aid Syria's nuclear and chemical weapons research programs.

After the war council with Assad, Ahmadinejad and the Iranians flew back to Tehran, but reportedly with some additional passengers - Sheik Nasrallah, Islamic Jihad's Abdallah Ramadan Shalah and operations chief Zaid Nahle, and Hezbollah chiefs Imad Mugniyeh and his chief of staff Ibrahim Aqil.

Mugniyeh and Aqil are especially important. Aside from being the military chief of Hezbollah, Mugniyeh is the long time liaison between Iran, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and the Palestinians.

A Lebanese Shiite, Mugniyeh started out as a top lieutenant to Arafat as part of Force 17 when the PLO was in Lebanon, and later joined Hezbollah, where he organized the April 18, 1983, bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that killed 63 people and the truck-bomb attacks in Beirut that took the lives of 242 U.S. Marines and 58 French troops. He's also suspected of torturing to death CIA agent William Buckley, and is on the FBI's most wanted list for murdering Navy diver Robert Stethem during the June 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847.

A few years later, he joined al Qaeda as one of Osama bin-Laden's chiefs of operations. He was also the moving force behind the Karina-A arms ship that the Israelis hijacked, which involved Iranian arms sent to Arafat via Hezbollah with a Palestinian crew.

Mugniyeh is unique in that he is trusted by all the major players as a liaison and go-between.His participation in this planning session shows exactly how serious Iran, Hezbollah and Syria are at this stage of things, and how far along things are.

In this context, Ahmadinejad's remark promising a `hot summer' in the Middle East takes on an obvious meaning.