The Washington Post - 30.08.2019

A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, AUGUST 30 , 2019

BY JAMES MCAULEY,

LIZ SLY

AND KAREN DEYOUNG

jerusalem — Israel sought
Thursday to justify a recent wave
of strikes on Iranian-linked tar-
gets in three countries by point-
ing to an accelerated Iranian

effort to supply Hezbollah in

Lebanon with the tools neces-

sary to acquire precision-guided

missiles.

In a briefing to reporters in

Jerusalem, Israeli spokesman Lt.

Col. Jonathan Conricus stopped

short o f admitting that Israel had

carried out the strikes in Leba-

non and Iraq, although it had

previously acknowledged bomb-

ing a target in Syria over the

weekend, a base that Israel said

was preparing a drone attack on

Israel.

The accusation against Iran

came amid signs that Israel has

expanded to Iraq and Lebanon a

long-running campaign of air-

strikes in Syria aimed at prevent-

ing weapons deliveries to Hez-

bollah.

Hezbollah has warned that it

will retaliate for the strike last

weekend on a target in Beirut’s

southern suburbs, prompting

fears in L ebanon that any further

military activity could quickly

spiral into a new war that might

also draw in the United States.

U. S. officials on T hursday indi-

cated that they had not discour-

aged Israel from expanding the

scope of its military activity,

although they did not say they

had encouraged it.

“It is our position that Israel is

only acting because of Iran’s

actions,” said a senior adminis-

tration official. “If Iran was not

pouring heavy weapons and

fighters into Israel’s neighbors

with the express purpose of

threatening Israel, I don’t think

Israel would be needing to take

these actions.”

The official spoke on the con-

dition of anonymity, as imposed

by the Trump administration,

during a briefing on new U.S.

sanctions against Hezbollah and

Hamas.

“I’ll leave it for the Israelis to

comment on what they did or

didn’t do,” a second senior offi-

cial said, speaking on the same

condition. “The United States

believes that the government of

Israel has a right to defend itself

from threatening activities

throughout the region.”

Secretary of State Mike

Pompeo, speaking to U.S. radio

interviewer Hugh Hewitt, sug-

gested that the United States

stands ready to offer full support

to Israel in the event of a war

with Iran. He said he had “every

confidence this president who

moved our embassy and who

made clear Israel’s rights in the

Golan Heights will do all that is

necessary to ensure that our

great partner in Israel will be

protected.”

“Each time Israel has been

forced to take actions to defend

itself, the United States has made

it very clear that that country has

not only the right but the duty to

protect its own people,” Pompeo

said. “A nd we are always sup-

portive of their efforts to do

that.”

Israel has carried out hun-

dreds of airstrikes in Syria over

the past seven years that mostly

targeted either weapons-storage

sites or transportation routes

used by Iran to ferry weaponry

and equipment to Hezbollah.

Israel’s biggest concern, Israeli

officials say, is a program, ac-

knowledged b y Hezbollah, aimed

at developing the capacity to

produce missiles capable of hit-

ting Israel with pinpoint accura-

cy.

Israel recently has noted an

attempt by Iran to “enhance the

pace” of its effort, Conricus said.

He added that the program is

accelerating “faster in terms

of buildings, facilities, locations,

conversion-and-manufacturing

facilities — and it means more

people, operatives, involved in

doing so.”

Conricus said that Hezbollah

“does not yet have an industrial

capacity” to manufacture the

missiles in question on a mass

scale. It does, however, possess a

small number of such missiles,

he said, affirming a statement by

Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasral-

lah this year that Israel’s at-

tempts to prevent Hezbollah

from acquiring them have failed.

The attempt to acquire more

is “endangering Lebanese civil-

ians,” Conricus added, an appar-

ent warning that civilians could

be caught up in any further

Israeli strikes.

Prime Minister Benjamin Ne-

tanyahu, who faces a second

round of contentious elections in

mid-September, said in a news

conference that Thursday’s rev-

elations should “make clear that

we will not stand idly by and let

our enemies arm themselves

with deadly weapons. Already

this week, I told our enemies:

Watch your actions. And today

we say to them: ‘Dir balak — pay

attention.’ ”

As the regional tensions soar,

Lebanon is bracing for Hezbol-

lah’s threatened retaliation. A

report in the Times of London

that Israeli officials have not

rebutted said the strike carried

out by two small drones targeted

a piece of machinery that could

have been used to make preci-

sion missiles.

Nasrallah vowed Sunday to

retaliate for the drone attack in

Beirut and the killing of two

Hezbollah members in a sepa-

rate airstrike i n Syria a few hours

earlier. He hinted that the re-

sponse could come soon.

“I tell the Israeli army on the

border, be prepared and wait for

us,” he said. “One day, two days,

three days, four — wait for us.”

After such a specific commit-

ment, it is certain that Hezbollah

will carry out some form of

retaliatory strike on Israel, said

Mohammed Obeid, a political

analyst who has close ties with

Hezbollah.

“Nobody could convince Hez-

bollah not to respond, ever,” he

said. “There are efforts to con-

vince it, but this is not going to

happen. T hat they will respond is

not in question.”

But there are also indications

that any response may not be

imminent. Officials in the Leba-

nese government, in which Hez-

bollah has ministers, have called

for restraint. A report in Leba-

non’s Al-Akhbar newspaper,

which is known to be close to

Hezbollah, quoted Nasrallah as

telling his a ides t hat Hezbollah is

“not in a hurry” to retaliate.

“A d elay in the response is o nly

a tactic, and a delay of one or

more days will not make it less

severe,” the newspaper further

quoted Hezbollah insiders as

saying.

If Hezbollah d oes r etaliate, the

response will probably be care-

fully calibrated to ensure that it

will not justify a further Israeli

escalation toward a full-scale

war that could jeopardize its

support, said Sami Nader of the

Levant Institute for Strategic Af-

fairs. At a time when Lebanon’s

economy is unraveling, “ the Leb-

anese don’t want any war,” he

said. “This is why I am not sure

Hezbollah will retaliate anytime

soon, because the reward is very

low and the risk is very high.”

Some security analysts in Isra-

el voiced skepticism about

the value of air and drone strikes

as a long-term way of fending off

Iran’s shadow influence in the

region.

“Tactically, there have been

successes, but in a broader stra-

tegic sense, definitely not,” said

Jonathan Spyer, a fellow at the

Jerusalem Institute for Strategy

and Security.

“Iranian projects in Syria and

Lebanon and Iraq are broad and

deep. I t’s about entering the state

institutions of those countries

and creating proxy political and

military factors,” he said. “None

of that i s close to b eing destroyed

by airstrikes. That’s a large ques-

tion mark remaining over Israeli

strikes.”

Conricus, the army spokes-

man, said that the number of

accurate missiles Hezbollah has

now is not substantial.

The strike outside Beirut last

weekend, for which Israel has

not officially taken responsibili-

ty, meant that Israel was making

a preventive effort “without

shedding any blood,” s aid Yoram

Schweitzer, a former senior mili-

tary intelligence officer. “A l-

though,” he added, “Israel knew

that it would be perceived by

Hezbollah the way it has.”

“It’s part of an overall strategy

that looks at Hezbollah’s opera-

tions, and it reached a certain

stage when Israel decided to

send a yellow card to Hezbollah

— without shedding any blood,”

he said.

Israel named three members

of the Iranian Revolutionary

Guard Corps and one Hezbollah

operative as the masterminds of

the operation.

The Iranian officials were

identified as Muhammad Hus-

sein-Zada Hejazi, commander of

the Lebanon corps in Iran’s Quds

Force; Majid Nuab, the techno-

logical manger of the missile

project; and Ali A srar Nuruzi, t he

operations’ chief logistics officer.

The Hezbollah operative was

identified as Fuad Shukr, a senior

operative wanted by the U.S.

State Department for planning

and carrying out a 1983 attack o n

U. S. Marines in Beirut that killed

241 service personnel.

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

Sly reported from Beirut and

DeYoung from Washington. Ruth

Eglash in Jerusalem contributed to

this report.

Israel accuses Iran of trying to supply Hezbollah with precision missiles

BY DYLAN BADDOUR

AND ANTHONY FAIOLA

bogota, colombia — Former
senior leaders of Colombia’s larg-
est guerrilla group announced a
break with the 2016 peace accord
that ended Latin America’s lon-
gest war, appearing in green fa-
tigues, toting rifles and declaring
a “new chapter” in the armed
struggle against a government
they said had betrayed the deal.
In a video posted online early
Thursday, the former lead negoti-
ator for the FARC — the leftist
guerrilla group that became a
political party in the aftermath of
the deal — denounced the failure
of the government, led by con-
servative President Iván Duque,
to live up to the promises of the
accord.
Luciano Marín — known by the
nom de guerre Iván Márquez —
stood among a group of 20 heavily
armed FARC members, including
other prominent leaders, and
condemned the killing in the past
two years of more than 500 left-
wing community leaders and
150 former fighters.
“The state has not fulfilled its
most important obligations,
which is to guarantee the life of its
citizens and especially avoid as-
sassinations for political r easons,”
Marín said. He said his group
would fight for a government that
upholds the peace process.
Duque announced a reward of
$100,000 for tips leading to the
capture of the people in the video.
He said the Colombian army was
well equipped to find them.
“Colombia doesn’t accept
threats from anyone, much less
from drug traffickers,” he said in a
televised address from the presi-
dential palace. “This group of
delinquents means to mock the
Colombian people, and we won’t

permit it.”

Colombia wasn’t confronting a

new insurgency, Duque said, just

a “band of criminals.” He accused

Venezuelan President Nicolás

Maduro of giving them refuge in

Venezuela.

Rodrigo Londoño, the former

supreme leader of FARC who now

heads its political party, rejected

the move by his former ally. He

said more than 90 percent of

ex-guerillas remain committed to

the peace process.

“Our commitment today more

than ever, as a majority, a s a party,

as a country, i s peace, defense and

compliance with the agreement,”

Londoño tweeted. “Those who

move away from peace are mis-

taken.”

U.S. officials were monitoring

developments.

“Our concern is partly Colom-

bian national security, and it’s

partly that those guerrilla groups

are deeply involved in drug traf-

ficking that affects the United

States directly,” Elliott Abrams,

the U.S. envoy for Venezuela, told

reporters in Washington.

Marín’s announcement poses

the most significant threat yet to a

peace process that has been grad-

ually unraveling. Other former

FARC members, frustrated by a

lack of promised training and

re-insertion programs, have al-

ready returned to the jungle. But

Marín’s move is the most signifi-

cant break with the accord.

Analysts warned that it could

unite the two dozen small groups

of dissident fighters who have

continued the armed con-

flict. Marín said he would seek to

coordinate with the ELN, the

armed group that became Colom-

bia’s largest guerrilla group after

FARC members laid down their

arms.

Naryi Vargas, a researcher with

the Bogota-based Peace and Rec-

onciliation Foundation, suggest-

ed that Marín and other leaders in

the video could bring together at

least 1,500 fighters. The FARC had

more than 13,000 members,

about half of them armed combat-

ants, before the peace accord.

The Marín faction has “the ca-

pacity to regroup the close to

24 d issident groups that are in the

country, they have the capacity to

give them energy, a solid organi-

zational structure, to give them a

long-term plan,” Vargas said.

For more than half a century,

the FARC — the Spanish acronym

for the Revolutionary Armed

Forces of Colombia — waged a

leftist struggle in which more

than 220,000 Colombians were

killed and 7 million displaced.

The conflict ended with the

historic 2016 deal, but some fight-

ers continued the struggle.

Marín disappeared from public

view a year ago. Duque said Marín

had fled to Venezuela, where Ma-

duro’s government has been ac-

cused of aiding Colombian rebels.

Marín appeared in the video

with other senior FARC officials

in what appeared to be a jungle

clearing. At his side was Seuxis

Pausias Hernández, known more

widely as Jesús Santrich. Hernán-

dez was detained in a U.S. Drug

Enforcement Administration

raid in 2018, threatened with ex-

tradition, jailed, released, jailed

again, then escaped.

Also present was Hernán Darío

Velásquez, known as El Paisa,

who once commanded an elite

guerrilla unit of the FARC and

was later part of the negotiating

team that struck the accord in

Havana. And Walter Mendoza, a

former commander of the FARC

forces in Cauca, a Pacific depart-

ment of Colombia that has been a

center of FARC dissent.

In the years since the accord

was signed, FARC officials and

observers have criticized the Co-

lombian government for not mak-

ing good on ambitious promises

of rural reform and economic

development.

The government had pledged

to build roads and schools in

isolated communities, extend

credit and land titles to small

farmers, send personnel to help

families that relied on the coca

crop develop alternative agricul-

tural projects to get by in a new,

peaceful Colombia. But efforts to

translate those pledges into reali-

ty never really got off the ground.

Miguel Ceballos, Duque’s high

commissioner on the peace deal,

defended the government against

charges it has not moved fast

enough to enact its pledges.

“You have to remember that

the peace process was meant to be

implemented over 12 years, and

we have been in office for just one

year,” he told The Washington

Post.

Analysts said the faction cob-

bled together by Marín and others

remained in the minority.

“I don’t think they have a real

chance to tilt the balance of pow-

er,” said Sergio Guzmán, founder

of the consultant firm Colombia

Risk Analysis. “They don’t have

the manpower. They don’t have

the weaponry.”

Key to maintaining a sem-

blance of peace, he said, is how

the government responds.

“I think cooler heads from the

United Nations and the interna-

tional community — which hold

the peace agreement very dearly,

and believe that this is basically

the country’s most important ac-

complishment in the last 50 years

— are going to try to hold the

government back from acting

harshly,” Guzmán said.

[email protected]

Faiola reported from Miami. Carol

Morello in Washington contributed to

this report.

As Colombia’s peace accord unravels, ex-FARC leaders issue a call to arms

JOAQUIN SARMIENTO/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Patrons at a bakery in Medellin, Colombia, watch a broadcast Thursday announcing the dissolution of

the peace accord between the Colombian government and the country’s leftist FARC guerrilla group.

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