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Hezbollah has captured two US and French spies in its operations in Aleppo, a prominent Lebanese media source revealed on Saturday, adding that Hezbollah military chief Mustafah Badreddin was killed in retaliation for the same event. “Hezbollah special forces took captive a senior field commander of the terrorists affiliated to Riyadh and two US and French intelligence officers working in the newly-founded joint operations room of Jeish al-Fatah in Aleppo in one of the regions controlled by al-Nusra Front in Aleppo,” Majeda al-Haj, a prominent Lebanese journalist, wrote on al-Sabat news website today. Al-Haj said that the joint operations room...

Top Hezbollah commander Mustafa Badreddine has been killed, the Lebanese group said on Friday, the biggest blow to the Iranian-backed organization since its military chief was killed in 2008. Badreddine, 55, was one of the highest ranking officials in the group, and assessed by the US government to be responsible for Hezbollah’s military operations in Syria, where it is fighting alongside the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. A Hezbollah statement did not say when, where or how he was killed, though it cited him saying he would return from Syria either victorious or as “a martyr”.

Hillary Clinton claimed surprising ignorance of a bill she should be intimately acquainted with as a former secretary of state and New York senator. ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos brought up the legislation introduced by Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, which would allow 9/11 victims to sue state sponsors of terror for the attack that took nearly 3,000 lives in 2001. "Your senior senator here in New York, Chuck Schumer has sponsored a bill backed by the 9/11 families that would give them the right to sue state sponsors of terror in federal court," he said Sunday on "This Week." "Now,...

U.S. President Barack Obama urged world leaders on Friday to do more to safeguard vulnerable nuclear facilities to prevent “madmen” from groups like Islamic State from getting their hands on an atomic weapon or a radioactive “dirty bomb.” Speaking at a nuclear security summit in Washington, Obama said the world faced a persistent and evolving threat of nuclear terrorism despite progress in reducing such risks. “We cannot be complacent,” he said. Obama said no group had succeeded in obtaining bomb materials but that al Qaeda had long sought them, and he cited actions by Islamic State militants behind recent attacks...

… In an interview with the Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen station Monday, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah says the group has a comprehensive list of targets in Israel that includes nuclear reactors and biological research centers it can hit. “There will be no ceiling, limits or red lines,” he said. “We can strike any target we want inside occupied Palestine.” …

A federal judge in New York ruled last week that the Iranian regime is liable for damages in the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001. The ruling by George Benjamin Daniels, Judge of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, ordered Iran to pay almost $11 billion in compensation to families of victims killed on 9/11 and to insurance companies who covered those suffering damages in the attack. The Iranian government failed to defend itself in the lawsuit, and the ruling is a default judgment. According to court documents publicized by Asharq al-Awsat, a London-based Arabic-language newspaper,...

The Arab League labelled Shia Muslim group Hezbollah a terrorist organisation on Friday, Egyptian state media said, as tensions rise between Sunni and Shia powers across the Middle East. Sectarian wars are raging in Syria, Yemen and Iraq, and the league has become a forum for the mostly Sunni Arab countries, led by Saudi Arabia, to air their grievances with Shia power Iran, the major backer of Hezbollah and other Shia groups in the region. “The Arab League foreign minister’s committee has decided on Friday to consider Hezbollah a terrorist organisation,” said a statement from the Arab League carried by...

For about three and half years, since the summer of 2012, Hezbollah has been actively involved in the Syrian civil war. From protecting its weapons caches on Syrian soil and guarding assets essential to the regime of President Bashar Assad, the Lebanese organization moved on to frontline positions. In many cases, it is Shi’ite fighters who led Assad’s attacks on rebel organizations, and paid a price accordingly. At the beginning of this year it was estimated in the Israel Defense Forces that at least 1,300 Hezbollah fighters had been killed in the war in Syria and about 5,000 wounded. At...

BEIRUT -- A Saudi-dominated political bloc on Wednesday formally designated Lebanon's Hezbollah militia a terrorist organization, a move that signals dangerously escalating tensions between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Gulf Cooperation Council's decision against the Iranian-allied group comes two weeks after Saudi Arabia canceled $4 billion aid package for strengthening Lebanese security services. Saudi Arabia and other GCC member states have advised their citizens to leave Lebanon. An announcement posted on the GCC website accused Hezbollah, a powerful Shiite Muslim movement, of unspecified hostile acts in the six states in the bloc: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,...

In a speech delivered on February 16, Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah threatened to attack the Haifa ammonia storage facility in the next war, causing destruction similar to that of a nuclear bomb. Nasrallah mentioned the so-called "Dahiya Doctrine," associated with Israeli Chief of General Staff Eizenkot. Nasrallah quoted an "Israeli expert," who said that such an attack would leave tens of thousands dead. "Several missiles launched from here together with the ammonia containers in Haifa," he said, “would lead to the same impact as a nuclear bomb." Nasrallah added that Hizbullah "does not want war," but must be ready for...

On a recent TV show, Lebanese politician Vera Yammine said that the Holocaust was "shrouded in unclarity," and that the Jews "always fear exposure about the Holocaust, and are always eager to use it as a pretext." Yammine, a member of the political bureau of the Marada Movement, said: "Zionism has taken hold of the West and is taking hold of the East, and especially of the Arab world." She further said: "There is no such thing as ISIS or the Al-Nusra Front. All these terms have emerged from a single womb, the womb of Zionism. The show aired on...

Four and a half years ago, I reported that Hezbullah had set up operations in Cuba. Hezbullah, which already has operations in Paraguay, Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico (the article doesn't say Mexico, but I've reported that in the past) is setting up operations in Cuba to serve as a base for an attack on Israeli interests in Latin America to avenge the death of master terrorist Imad Mughniyah. The report in YNet is based upon an article in Italy's Corriere della Sera. According to the report, three Hezbollah members have already arrived in Cuba with the purpose of establishing...

As its relationships with the United States, Europe and Turkey have deteriorated since its interventions in Ukraine and Syria, one country Moscow remained on good terms with is Israel. This reflects the increasingly friendly Russian-Israeli relationship since Pres. Vladimir Putin first burst on the scene. Putin visited Israel twice — in 2005 and 2012 — making him the first Russian leader to ever travel to the Jewish state. While there, he went to the Western Wall — Judaism’s holiest site — as well as Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, where Putin observed a moment of silence.

Jerusalem Jerusalem - Talk to Israelis about the United States these days and you will provoke a physical reaction. Barack Obama is an eye roll. John Kerry is a grimace. The administration's conduct of regional policy is a slow, sad shake of the head. The current state of the presidential race makes for a full-blown shudder. The Israeli rundown of the candidates goes roughly as follows: "Hillary - she doesn't like us." "Cruz - I don't like him" "Rubio - is he done for?" "Sanders - oy vey." "Trump - omigod." As for Israel's own troubles - a continuing...

A private intelligence report from Hillary Clinton's confidant, Sid Blumenthal, claimed that Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist organization, had set up shop in Cuba, according to an email released by the State Department over the weekend. The group was actively "casing" facilities related to U.S. interests, the intelligence report also says. The dispatch read: During the week of September 5, 2011 extremely sensitive sources reported in confidence that the Israeli Intelligence and Security Service (Mossad) has informed the leadership of the Israeli Government that Hezbollah is establishing an operational base in Cuba, designed to support terrorist attacks throughout Latin America.The confidential...

A few years before the Obama administration removed Cuba from the U.S. list of nations that sponsor terrorism Hezbollah established an operational base on the communist island, according to intelligence received by Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State. The information comes straight from electronic mail released by the State Department over the weekend as part of ongoing litigation from several groups, including Judicial Watch, and media outlets surrounding Clinton's use of a private server to send and receive classified information as Secretary of State. This alarming information has been ignored by the mainstream media, which served as the...

“The next war in the North will have to be against Lebanon because Hezbollah is a part of the Lebanese system,” Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland told Walla News on Wednesday. Eiland, former head of the IDF Planning Directorate and National Security Council, was responding to IDF assessments earlier this week which said that although the chances for armed conflict with Hezbollah at the moment are very low, if a confrontation were to occur, ...

As those who follow Syria's seemingly intractable civil war are no doubt aware, Washington is a big part of why the conflict is now going into its sixth year. What began as a plan to destabilize the Alawite government by "playing on Sunni fears of Iranian influence" (to quote a leaked diplomatic cable from then-Deputy Chief of Mission in Syria William Roebuck) gradually metamorphosed into a overt and at times absurd effort to arm and train a series of rebel groups in an attempt to bring about regime change in Damascus. Those efforts have thus far failed, in part because...

Did Mohamad al-Halabi visit his terrorist nephew in Damascus? Florida Hezbollah Imam Travels to Syria and Back Did Mohamad al-Halabi visit his terrorist nephew in Damascus? January 14, 2016 Joe Kaufman    Mohamad al-Halabi, a.k.a. Mohamad al-Fouani, the imam of the American Islamic Center of Florida, may operate out of Pompano Beach, Florida, however a good part of his life still resides in the Middle East, including his associations with the terrorist organization Hezbollah. In November, al-Halabi left the shores of the United States to travel to his native home of Syria. While there, he visited family, but were they...

One of the men given the death penalty was an Iranian convicted in absentia, and the other was a Kuwaiti who was in court. Other suspects were given sentences ranging from five to 25 years, and three were found innocent. Tensions between Shi'ite-ruled Iran and Sunni-ruled Gulf countries have escalated since a diplomatic dispute between Tehran and Riyadh erupted after Riyadh's execution of a prominent Shi'ite cleric this month.