[BBC News ] Hugh Sykes - "Hizbullah was set up, established, trained, armed, financed...wholly by Iran," said Paul Salem at the Carnegie Endowment think tank in Beirut. He says Hizbullah has 50,000 salaried employees and "a large modern army" - most of whom are paid with money from Tehran. "For Iran it's like an aircraft carrier. The U.S. parks aircraft carriers in the Gulf next to Iran; Iran parks its own aircraft carrier in Lebanon - Hizbullah - which can wreak great destruction on Israel at a moment's notice." "The Iranian drive to gain more influence in Lebanon is to give them a direct influence without having to go through Syria," said Oussama Safa, director of the Lebanon Center for Policy Studies. "That's possibly in preparation for an eventual peace deal between Syria and Israel."
2008-06-06 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive