Israel launches major military drill in north as Nasrallah tirade further enflames tensions

Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah accused Israel of plotting to murder all of Lebanon's political and military leaders in a hysterical speech delivered Monday night, Aug. 9, vastly exceeding expectations that he would try to pin the 2005 Hariri murder on the Jewish state. Despite producing no evidence for his claims, his Iranian patrons stood at his side. And rocket fuel was thus poured on the already tense Israel-Lebanese, Israel-Syrian borders. Israel announced a large-scale military exercise to start the following morning, Tuesday, Aug. 10, and warned citizens to prepare for heavy tank traffic and the possibility of border areas being closed, Debkafile reported.

Meanwhile, Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki is enroute to Damascus to hold Bashar Assad back from his promise to Saudi King Abdullah to break away from Hizbollah. The Iranian ambassador called on the Lebanese chief of staff Gen. Jean Qahwaji Monday, strongly advising him to invoke the new Iranian-Lebanese military accord for replacing the US with Iran as the Lebanese army's main arms supplier. This as the US congress passed a bill freezing American military aid to the tune of $100 million due to the growing Hizbollah presence in the force, and the latest unprovoked border attack, reported using US weaponry.

Attempting to hold the line in Beirut, Washington dispatched its top Syrian-Lebanese expert Fredric Hof to Beirut to warn Qahwaji against falling for the Iranian line or again embarking on cross-border aggression against Israel.

Nasrallah started out with an account of schemes he claimed Israeli agents had hatched against Lebanon in the 1990s and moved on to accusing Israel of plotting to murder Lebanese president Michel Suleiman, Chief of staff Gen. Jen Qahwaji, leader of the Shite Amal movement Nabih Berri, who is Speaker of Parliament, Prime Minister Saad Hariri, and leader of the Christian Phalange movement, Samir Geagea.

What motivates Israel to make a clean sweep of all Lebanon's pro-Western as well as pro-Iranian leaders? Nasrallah asked rhetorically. To which he answered: "To implicate Syria and Hizballah in the crimes, exactly as in the case of the Hariri murder" - which he claimed was committed by Israeli intelligence.