Barry Rubin: Investigation Accuses Four Hizballah Officials of Killing Lebanon’s Leading Political Figure

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Investigation Accuses Four Hizballah Officials of Killing Lebanon’s Leading Political Figure

by Barry Rubin

Years of waiting–though leaks have been plentiful–have just about ended with the word from the international tribunal that four Hizballah officials, including the group’s deputy military commander Mustafa Badreddine were involved in killing Lebanon’s former prime minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005. Yet Hizballah is now the leading force in Lebanon’s government while its partner in the killing, the Syrian dictatorship, is Lebanon’s foreign patron.


The indictments are setting off a potential crisis in Lebanon. Hizballah wants outright condemnation of the tribunal; more sober pro-Syria figures want to ignore it. The democratic opposition–whose single most important leader is Said Harir, Rafiq’s son, want to cooperate with the tribunal. Nominally, the U.S. government wants Lebanon to work with the tribunal. But since the Obama Administration has done virtually nothing to prevent a Syrian-Iranian takeover and Hizballah as a key element in running the country, it is ill-placed to have any effect even if it wanted to do so.

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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, to be published by Yale University Press later this year. You can read more of Barry Rubin's posts at Rubin Reports, and now on his new blog, Rubin Reports, on Pajamas Media

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