This article tells the story of many stories, starting with Eurodif -European Gaseous Diffusion Uranium Enrichment Consortium- founded in 1973 by French industrialist Georges Besse and ending with the 1983 Kuwait bombings.
Since the 1980s, Hezbollah has served as the long arm of Iran’s security services. It began with the infamous episode of the hostage-taking crisis where nearly a hundred Westerners were grabbed off the streets of Beirut and held hostage for several years. Many of the foreigners kidnapped in Lebanon were nationals of the United States and France, countries denounced by Iran as enemies of the Islamic Revolution. Undeniably, Iran benefited from using the hostages to exert pressure on the United States and France and force them to alter their policies towards the Islamic Republic. However, despite the fact that the individuals identified by Western intelligence as being behind the hostage-taking were part of the Hezbollah infrastructure, the party has always refused to talk about the hostage crisis while denying any responsibility. The real issue of the conflict was not revealed to the public at that time; nobody was told that hostages could be traded for American arms and frozen Iranian assets.
In fact, back in 1974, the Shah Reza Pahlavi, Iran’s ruler, lent $1 billion to the French Atomic Energy Commission to build the Eurodif plant on the Tricastin site. After Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979, France no longer felt inclined to honor the contract. Due to lack of funds, Ayatollah Khomeini cancelled the Shah’s nuclear power program, but reiterated his country’s claim to 10% of Eurodif’s enriched uranium output. In 1981, when François Mitterrand came to power, he continued to ignore Iran’s claim. This is when the Ayatollah regime decided to use coercion. For ten years, France was targeted by Iranian-backed organizations both on her soil through a series of bomb attacks in Paris (FNAC, Hôtel de Ville, Pub Renault, Georges Bess assassination) and abroad through the hostage-taking carried out by Hezbollah in Beirut. It was enough to convince the French to honor the Eurodif contract. On December 29, 1991, François Mitterrand terminated this secret war by signing an agreement which reestablished Iran’s rights to her 10% of weapons-grade uranium and the French government refunded Iran over 1.6 billion dollars. This is how the French hostages issue was settled. Due to Hezbollah’s role in the hostage-taking crisis, it became popular in Western public opinion to think that terrorism is linked to all Lebanese nationals; that extremism and related violence are natural Lebanese traits. Hezbollah could not care less about Lebanon’s interests since its mission was aligned with Iranian interests.
As for the American hostages’ crisis, it was connected to both the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) and the UN decision that was long sought by Tehran, in which Iraq had to be recognized as the aggressor. Regarding the first point, it was no secret that while Iran was desperately running out of military supplies, the U.S. shared intelligence with Saddam Hussein’s regime and supplied the Iraqi army with weapons and military equipment. The arms-for-hostages policy made it possible for the Iranians to compel the US to covertly sell them arms -since the Congress had banned the sale of American arms to countries like Iran that sponsored terrorism- in the hope of securing the release of hostages held in Lebanon. In August 1985, the first consignment of arms to Iran was sent -anti-tank missiles provided by Israel-. The Irangate was one of the most intrigue-filled scandals in U.S. history. As a result of the deal, three American hostages were released from captivity. Yet, not all the hostages were freed. One issue was still pending though: the UN decision mentioned earlier. In December 1991, Perez de Cuellar the U.N. secretary-general blamed Iraq for starting the 1980-88 war with Iran and underlined the ”illegal use of force and the disregard for the territorial integrity of a U.N. member state” as the cause of the conflict. The decision represented another step in Iran’s rehabilitation in the world. Consequently, most of the Western hostages in Lebanon were released. Was that just another mere coincidence?
The story continues with the 1983 Kuwait bombings. In December 12, 1983, Hezbollah operatives and members of the Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite group Da’wa carried out a series of coordinated bombings in Kuwait. The targets included the American and French embassies and the Kuwait airport. Hezbollah operatives acted in the explicit service of Iran’s national interest as the motivation of the bombings is believed to have been a punishment against Kuwait, America and France for their military support to Iraq in its war against Iran. The seventeen perpetrators were convicted and jailed in Kuwait. One of those convicted and sentenced to death in March 1984 was Mustapha Badreddine, Imad Mughniyeh’s brother-in-law and cousin. Accordingly, Hezbollah which was seeking the release of the Kuwait 17- as they came to be called- carried out in the second half of 1984 many attacks in Lebanon and abroad, along with several kidnappings. Furthermore, it threatened to kill some of the hostages if the sentence were executed. In that regard, a CIA memo noted that “Mughniyeh has always linked the fate of his American hostages to the release of the Kuwait 17.”
All of this, reasonably, begs the question: Where Hezbollah’s allegiance stands in the shadow war between Iran and the West over Iran’s nuclear program?
One could answer that since its inception Hezbollah has been acting in the explicit service of Iran, stripping the legitimate premise that constituted the reason behind its existence: resistance against Israel. As a pan-Shi’a organization Hezbollah is focused on strategic objectives that are far broader than its declared ones and determined to do things that may be in direct opposition to Lebanon’s immediate interests. Its involvement in the war in Syria is a case in point where its declared identity is naturally entwined with a second one: its special relationship with Iran. But this reply addresses symptoms and does not tackle the real root cause of the problem.
Years ago, in an interview with the Monday MorningMagazine (14 January 1985) Mahmud Nurani, Iran’s chargé d’affaires in Beirut, summed up the situation well when he said: “There are two parties, Hezbollah or God’s party, and the Devil’s party.”
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