Syria Attempting to Assassinate More Lebanese Officials

This morning comes word that Syria had intended to assassinate 36 Lebanese officials.

The Lebanese security forces exposed a network which planned to assassinate 36 senior anti-Syrian Lebanese officials, the Lebanese newspaper al-Mustaqbal reported Wednesday morning ...

According to the report, the investigation revealed that the network trained in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and planned to execute a plot initiated by the Syrian government to assassinate 36 senior Lebanese officials. According to the newspaper, the Syrian intelligence appointed a group belonging to the Fatah-Intifada organization to implement the plan.

According to the report, about four days ago two detainees admitted to having been sent from Damascus to the al-Badawi and El-Bureij refugee camps in order to coordinate the activity with the Fatah-Intifada movement. The detainees, a Syrian and a Saudi, noted that they were part of a 200-member network which planned to execute the plan. The two were arrested by Lebanese security forces after they were suspected of a criminally-motivated murder at the al-Badawi refugee camp.

Anyone with a functioning neuron think that the US still has to talk with Syria and/or Iran to rectify the situation in either Iraq or Lebanon unless by talk you mean taking a cluebat to the regimes in both Syria and Iran with extreme prejudice? Syria is behind much of the chaos in Lebanon and its support of Hizbullah is real and tangible. The same goes for Iran, which is trying to strangle Iraq before it has a chance to get on its feet.

Syria and Iran are not partners in peace; they're partners in terror and spreading violence throughout the region to enhance their own power. For Syria, it is an attempt to relive the old days when Lebanon was nothing more than a vassal state of Hafez Assad. Baby Assad lost Lebanon and you can be sure that there are many in his inner circle who weren't happy about that - or the way that it happened. So, he's apparently pulling out all the stops.

Iran, for its part, wants to spread its version of radical Islam and Hizbullah is the point of the spear. The 34 day Hizbullah war with Israel was just the latest in violence spurred by Tehran, which has also been supplying the jihadis and insurgents in Iraq, and is trying to stoke a major conflict in the region.