In the Lebanese cesspool of corruption and mismanagement, the actual reason for the Beirut blast or the identity of men behind it may never be known
The Beirut blast earlier this week has triggered a second chain reaction of devastation, conspiracy theories and outpouring of Lebanese anger on streets. The spotlight is back on the most well-equipped and dangerously armed global terrorist organisation, the Hezbollah, and its connection to the assassination of the country's Sunni prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri by its four suspected members in 2005.
The apocalyptic mushroom cloud over Beirut on 4 August, which enveloped the Lebanese in fear and consternation, and killed more than 150 while injuring over 5,000, could push down the once-known "Paris of the Middle East" further into global isolation and earn more opprobrium, triggered by the Iran- and Syria-backed Shia terror group’s bloody past and its entrenchment in the corridors of power in Lebanon.
The Hezbollah and its allies — Amal Movement, Maronite Christian Marada, Druze Lebanese Democratic Party, Baath Party, Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party, Armenian Tashnag, Free Patriotic Movement (founded by current Maronite Christian President Michel Aoun) and a few independents — command 70 seats in the Parliament of Lebanon. With the selection of Hassan Diab as the Prime Minister of Lebanon, the guerilla group's grip over the government has become dangerously firm.
The Hariri mruder trial theory
The nuke-like explosion, whose impact was felt as far as Cyprus, occurred three days before a UN-backed tribunal was slated to deliver verdict on Hariri’s assassination that could have indicted the four Hezbollah members — Hussein Hassan Oneissi, Hassan Habib Merhi, Salim Jamil Ayyash and Assad Hassan Sabra. Following the devastating explosion, the verdict has been postponed to 18 August.
It is pretty illogical to expect the Hezbollah to give up its four members, who disappeared from public life years ago. The explosion could be connected to the verdict, which would have pressured the terror group to turn over the four members. When Hariri was killed, mass demonstration and sectarian strife engulfed Lebanon, which itself faced global pressure.
While the former prime minister son Saad Hariri was looking “forward to 7 August (the verdict day) being a day of truth and justice for Lebanon and a day of punishment for the criminals”, Hezbollah-backed Diab clearly stated that he wants no further turmoil and strive that could be triggered by such verdicts.
Though the possibility of an accident triggering the blast cannot be ruled out, it would be naïve to assume that 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored at Beirut Port would blow up like that just three days before the verdict. Hariri, who was backed by the West and Sunni Gulf Arab countries, was killed along with 21 others by a truck carrying 3,000 kilogrammes of explosives 2 kilometres away from the warehouse blast site.
Foreign hand in a 'Hezbollah managed' port?
The aftermath of Tuesday's blast has become murky with Aoun indicating a foreign hand in the bloody temblor. The Lebanese president said that investigators would probe “possibility of external interference through a rocket or bomb or other act” or whether it was caused due to negligence or accident.
Israel denied any involvement immediately after the blast, yet conspiracy theorists pointed out that Israel could have triggered the blast. Hezbollah had threatened to retaliate against the killing of its member Ali Kamel Mohsen in an Israeli airstrike near Damascus International Airport in the last week of July.
The explosionis no doubt an intricate and deadly concoction of conspiracy theories — even US President Donald Trump termed the blast as an "attack" — but one can also not point out the mismanagement of such a dangerous stockpile of a chemical used in terrorist strikes and the intention behind its storage at the port, which, like others, is controlled by the Hezbollah.
A Lebanese army helicopter flies over the scene where an explosion hit the seaport of Beirut, Lebanon. AP
Four years ago, Danny Danon, then-Israeli ambassador to the UN, had warned the UN Security Council (UNSC) that the Beirut Port is “now the Port of Hezbollah” with Iran supplying arms to the group by exploiting “civilian maritime channels (the port)".
According to The Jerusalem Post, Danon told the UNSC that Israel found that “Iran and the Quds Force (the secretive elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards) have begun to advance the exploitation of the civilian maritime channels, and specifically the Port of Beirut, by sending dual-use items into Lebanon to advance Hezbollah’s rocket and missile capabilities and conversion programme”.
The Hezbollah-Russia link
A sinister angle to the ‘Beirut’s apocalypse’ was the sudden diversion of the Moldovan-flagged ship, the MS Rhosus, which started from Georgia to deliver the ammonium nitrate to Mozambique-based explosives company Fábrica de Explosivos de Moçambique (FEM), to Beirut in 2013.
The ship’s owner Russian business Igor Grechushkin, who stays in Cyprus and has already been questioned after the blast, had told its Russian and Ukrainian crew that he was bankrupt and asked them to load extra cargo to cover the travel costs, according to CNN. But the crew refused to load the extra cargo as it was too heavy, forcing the MV Rhosus to drop anchor for several days.
Ultimately, the ship was impounded at Beirut Port for failing to pay port fees, “gross violations in operating a vessel and complaints filed by the crew”, according to the Seafarers’ Union of Russia, the CNN reported.
Grechushkin abandoned the ship and its crew. The ship’s Captain Boris Prokoshev's several letters to Russian President Vladimir Putin asking for help went unanswered.
The MV Rhosus never reached Mozambique and the ammonium nitrate had been lying at the warehouse since 2014. According to The New York Times, the leaking ship finally sank at a short distance from the blast site in February 2018.
On the non-delivery of the chemical, a spokesperson of FEM told CNN that “it is not common”.
According to a CNN source, “It’s a dangerous material; it’s a very powerful oxidiser and is used for producing explosives. But it’s not like gunpowder that you just light a match and it will immediately go off like pyrotechnics.”
What makes the whole episode of a ship loaded with 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate and owned by a Russian businessman making a detour to Beirut and anchoring there suspicious is the proximity of Russia to Syria and the Hezbollah. Also, Russia never designated the Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation.
Lebanese army soldiers stand guard at the scene where an explosion hit on Tuesday the seaport of Beirut, Lebanon. AP
In 2015, Russian deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov categorically said that the country doesn’t consider Hezbollah — “a legitimate socio-political force elected by people to the Lebanese Parliament” — a terrorist organisation because it had never committed any acts of terrorism on Russian territory. Several countries, including the US, the UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the European Union and Israel have designated the group as a terrorist organisation.
It is unlikely that the chemical was stored without the knowledge of the Hezbollah, which has a vast intelligence network. Though Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah has vehemently rubbished claims that the terror group had stored missiles or bombs or ammonium nitrate at the warehouse, the guerrillas were busted in several countries — London, Berlin, Thailand, Cyprus and Bulgaria — for storing the deadly chemical and its top operatives were targeted by the Israeli Air Force for stashing Iranian long-range rockets and missiles in their homes.
Hezbollah known to store ammonium nitrate
Hezbollah, whose main goal is destruction of Israel, is notorious for storing ammonium nitrate in several countries to strike Israeli targets or kill Jews. In 2015, the London Metropolitan Police and the MI5 discovered three metric tonnes of the chemical kept in ice packs in a storehouse in London.
The Shia militia group also used the same technique to store the chemical in Germany between 2012 and 2016. With Mossad’s help, Germany discovered hundreds of kilogrammes of ammonium nitrate stored by Hezbollah early this year and finally designated it as a terrorist group.
According to the The Telegraph, the ammonium nitrate discovered in 2015 was to be used for “proper organised terrorism” and the MI5 arrested a man for allegedly planning terrorist attacks — though not in the UK.
In 2015, Hezbollah’s military wing member Hussein Bassam Abdallah was jailed for six years in Cyprus after pleading to terror charges and for storing 8.2 tonnes of ammonium nitrate for three years in his house.
Abdallah “played the role assigned to him within the broader design of things so that eventually Hezbollah would be able to harm through terrorist attacks, Israeli interests in Cyprus”, Judge Nicolaos Santis said.
In fact, in a speech broadcast by the Lebanese Naharnet news website in 2016, Nasrallah threatened to bomb the ammonia storage tanks in the northern Israeli port city of Haifa which would be “exactly as a nuclear bomb”.
“We can say that Lebanon today has a nuclear bomb. Any rocket that might hit these tanks is capable of creating a nuclear bomb effect,” he said, The Times of Israel reported. Subsequently, Israel removed the ammonia tanks from Haifa.
If the port explosion wasn’t an accident, the real culprits would never be apprehended considering the domination of the Hezbollah in the government and the way investigations crawl in Lebanon — a case in point is the Hariri assassination; it has been 15 years but the killers have not been nabbed.
Since the blasts rocked Beirut on Tuesday,more than 16 people have been arrested, including Lebanese customs department chief Badri Daher and his predecessor and Shafik Mehri and the port’s general manager Hassan Koraytem. However, in the Lebanese cesspool of corruption and mismanagement, the actual reason for the blast or the identity of men behind may never be known.
Lebanon: Hariri verdict, a Russian-owned ship and Hezbollah-Israel animosity: Conspiracy theories abound over Beirut blast
Free on #Kindle 5 days #TheMasadaFaktor is Fiction based on Naomi's real-life adventures in Israel
Begins at midnight July 19, 2020 Pacific Daylight Time
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Bye Bye Biden
When journalism was legit......pic.twitter.com/SteF2HKCNK— Red Viper 2.0 2020 (@redwins3_first) July 3, 2020
Israel to force Iran out of Syria; Hamas threatens ‘war over annexation’
via TV7 Israel News 26.06.20 The latest news from the Holy Land
From Israel's Perspective: A Proxy War in Libya
In the next few weeks you will see visits from Greece and Cypress
to Israel, recently delayed because of Corona Virus. How does that link Libya to Israel? In the posted video, from Israel's perspective, the proxy war is explained. That Libya is peripheral to the middle eastern core and despite Israel's seemingly ignoring much of the current events in Libya, the united view of the situation is eloquently stated.
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| Naomi Litvin |
Libya is much more important to us than most Israelis realize... because it is now the linchpin of the fight between Egypt and Turkey.
Did Israel neglect Libya to some extent because of limited resources? The failure of Israel to discern the prior situation of Libya's nuclear energy aspirations in the 1990's is also discussed.
A big take away from the conversation is the Turkey/Egypt quotient between Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan with his grandiose Islamic agenda and Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi who has been supporting opposition terrorist Haftar in taking over Libya. Now, with Haftar's impending doom, Sisi is spinning that support into a cease fire and peace plan.
Also, Russia's interference illustrates that President Vladimir Putin as well as Turkey's Erdogan know how to exploit Libya with the import of weapons into Libya; and involve Europe with the export of immigrants through Libya into EU, Italy and other countries. All this mayhem was made easier since the West abandoned Libya after the fall of despotic Muammar al-Gaddafi, former prime minister of Libya.
Libya’s conflict and strategic significance – Jerusalem Studio 522 •
Also, Russia's interference illustrates that President Vladimir Putin as well as Turkey's Erdogan know how to exploit Libya with the import of weapons into Libya; and involve Europe with the export of immigrants through Libya into EU, Italy and other countries. All this mayhem was made easier since the West abandoned Libya after the fall of despotic Muammar al-Gaddafi, former prime minister of Libya.
#IsraelNews #tv7israelnews #newsupdates
Libya’s conflict and strategic significance – Jerusalem Studio 522 •Jun 12, 2020
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| Gadaffi Killed October 20, 2011 |
Can King Abdullah stop Israel's annexation of Jordan Valley and potential Palestinian takeover of Jordan?
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King Abdullah can huff and puff but can he blow down the house of Israel when Israel annexes East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria? I don't think so. Besides putting the United States of America in an uncomfortable position, King Abdullah is currently a bad actor, being an illegal arms dealer to the rebel faction in Libya, General Haftar. The United Nations and USA support the Libya Government of National Accord (GNA) currently in a full blown war with Haftar.
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| King Abdullah with General Haftar |
Regarding Israel, Abdullah has worried since Donald Trump became President of the United States, as Barack Obama was more simpatico with his view of Israel and the Palestinians. And current Secretary Pompeo has been adament on his continued support of Israel. No treaty exists between the USA and Jordan, yet Jordan receives tremendous aid from us. For a country with no natural resources, Jordan depends on charity and arms sales to other terrorists in his region for its sustenance.
"The United States is Jordan’s single largest provider of bilateral assistance, providing over $1.7 billion in 2017, including $1.3 billion in bilateral foreign assistance and over $200 million in Department of Defense (DoD) support. In addition to bilateral foreign assistance, the United States has provided nearly $1.1 billion in humanitarian assistance to support Syrian refugees in Jordan."
Amihai is a young man from Haifa, Israeli and a friend on Twitter who will soon enter the Israeli Defense Forces. He states the widely held Israeli opionion.
#Jordan's king is afraid that such situation can cause another #Palestinian revolt against the Hashemite kingdom, similar to the Black September events in 1970, which will put Abdullah's regime in high risk.
Abdullah is also afraid from what is known in #Israel as the "alternative homeland" solution, where #Jordan, with 70% of its population being #Palestinian, will be seen as the Palestinian country.
If such solution gains any Int' support, that may be the end of Abdullah's regime.
Below I have posted the names of the towns, cities, and communities to be annexed by Israel in East Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria
One reason I like being on twitter: I can be my true self. All the negative voices from my past don't exist. Here, I am the Captain of my soul. #Invictus Read by Captain Lexxa of Star Trek: Renegades https://t.co/obgxIXFIzP via @YouTube— 🇮🇱 Naomi Litvin 🇺🇸 #MAGA (@realNaomiLitvin) May 11, 2020
Bullies control the planet while the traditional peacekeepers stay away: #Libya
Admittedly, it is overwhelming to
decide what to blog about as bullies control the planet while the traditional
peacekeepers stay away. Just announced
today, Russia’s
Putin and Turkey’s Erdogan have reached a cease fire agreement in their proxy
war in Syria. The
human crisis of death and displaced populations, spilling into worldwide
proportion, seemingly controlled by two big world bullies, appears to be their
own private chess game.
I want to blog about Libya as the world is befuddled with the contagion
of the corona
virus, hot spots of terrorism such as the Fulani's against Christians in Nigeria and 21st century proxywarfare proliferating that threaten the entire planet. Concurrently, natural
disasters such as tornadoes in Nashville,
Tennessee, volcanoes and floods, are not predictable like civil war but demand attention as they should.
Why is Libya my burning issue today? Perhaps because I consider the Libya National Army to be butchers of human flesh (the LNA is run by General Khalifa Haftar and his four sons who are United States citizens) and I believe in
friends in Misrata that are with the U.N. recognized Government of National Accord
(GNA is the interim government formed under a political agreement on December
15, 2015.) I am compelled to bring some facts to the attention of readers
as it is beginning to mirror Syria: more genocide and refugees.
It’s difficult for fact finding in
media reports, since the proxy players on the side of the genocidal LNA in
Libya include not only important allies of the United States of America but
also own many of the international news sites. When reading my links to this story, please use your judgement as to the veracity of the reports. I have tried my best here but am open to corrections.
Recently I was troubled by Turkey’s
Erdogan jumping in to help the GNA in Libya. I tried to warn my friends that
Erdogan cannot be trusted but desperation calls for strange bedfellows. I agreed to tone down my disdain for Erdrogan as a cutthroat Islamist pirate, as
you can see by his manipulation
of the Syrian refugee population but I can no longer keep quiet about Turkey's unworthiness to participate in Libya and their motives.
In
violation of international arms embargo laws are United Arab Emirates, Saudi
Arabia, France, Egypt, Sudan, Chad, Turkey, (before they switched allegiance to
GNA), Jordan, Russia and others. For
example, France supports the LNA and has sold weapons to them that were
purchased from USA, in violation of international arms embargo laws on Libya.
U.S. missiles, sold to France, found in rebel #Haftar hands in Libya https://t.co/lOSj4xrWGo via @upi >> @SecPompeo @realDonaldTrump What is the meaning of this?? You know that >Selling weapons to rebels in Libya would violate the U.S.-France agreement and a U.N. arms embargo.— 🇮🇱 Naomi Litvin 🇺🇸 #Cult45 (@realNaomiLitvin) March 4, 2020
More complications ensue in Libya as
Russia
is playing both sides of the game. At first
glance I thought Russia was on the side of GNA. But I see Russian backers of
Haftar’s are involved as Putin seeks leverage over Europe using his involvement in Libya. Russian military advisers, supplies and
equipment, and hundreds of mercenaries from a private company called “Wagner”
are fighting on Haftar’s side.
In December of 2019 Qatar stated
that they support GNA. They have never supplied arms to either side and are
trying to push a political solution, according to my source within GNA.
In January 2020 Berlin hosted a summit about “What to do about Libya?” but no agreement was reached. The outside proxy players agreed on nothing.
*Videos sourced from a Chinese funded company
*Please
note that Mustafa Fetouri (in the video) is against a U.S. army base in Libya,
which was called on by Bashaqha, the Interior Minister who is backed by United
States.
How
do we make sense of this chaos? Despite the apocalyptic visions
of these world bullies we simply must continue, with prayers and hope.
Follow
me on twitter at @realNaomiLitvin where everyone weighs in with their opinions.
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