Was Iran Planning Further Terrorist Attacks in Bulgaria?

Benjamin Weinthal reports in the Jerusalem Post that Iran agent monitoring Chabad arrested in Bulgaria:

Bulgarian police officers last summer arrested a Canadian citizen linked to the Iranian government who engaged in surveillance of the local Chabad center in the capital of Sofia, a well-placed and reliable local source told The Jerusalem Post last week, on condition of anonymity due to security reasons.

An Iranian-sponsored female agent in her 50s, holding a Canadian passport, traveled from Istanbul to Sofia several weeks after the bombing of the Israeli tour bus in the Black Sea resort town of Burgas in July 2012. She was arrested on her first day in Sofia after the Bulgarian police, on high alert, noticed she was monitoring the Chabad center.

Bulgaria has already found Hezbollah to be responsible for last years terrorist attack in its country -- and as a puppet of the Iranian regime, Hezbollah does nothing without the approval of Iran.

The question is what is so special about Bulgaria that would lead Iran to want to launch another terrorist attack against Israel inside the same country?

Maybe because Iran thinks its so easy:

Dr. Matthew Levitt, director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and a leading authority on Hezbollah’s global terror operations, told the Post that, “It would not surprise [us] if Iran or Hezbollah were found to be behind this plot [against the Chabad center] last year. Recall that five years earlier Western intelligence indicated that ‘Hezbollah chiefs and Iranian intelligence officials had put Bulgaria on a list of nations propitious for developing plots against Western targets.’ “Their first attempt at killing Israeli tourists failed when a suspicious package was noticed on a bus carrying Israeli tourists from Turkey to Bulgaria in January 2012. Six months later Hezbollah operatives struck again, this time with devastating success in Burgas.” [emphasis added]

In light of Iran's continued interest in carrying out terrorist attacks in Europe -- and using Hezbollah to carry out those attacks -- Europe in general, and France and Germany in particular, should take Hezbollah terrorist attacks more seriously and put them on the list of known terrorist groups as soon as possible.

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Technorati Tag: Israel and Iran and Bulgaria and Hezbollah.

Cyprus Terror Defendant Confesses To Hezbollah Links -- Now What?

February 20, 2013 Contact: TIP Press: press@theisraelproject.org Main Office Phone Number:  202-857-6644 Cyprus Terror Defendant Confesses To Hezbollah Links Photo: Leonid Mamchenkov / Wiki Commons Washington, Feb. 20 – A defendant on trial in Cyprus for plotting terror attacks against Israeli tourists has admitted to being a member of Hezbollah, a confession that promises to deepen pressure on the European Union to heed U.S. calls and formally designate the Iran-backed group a terrorist organization.

New Indications Hezbollah To Be Implicated In Bulgarian Terrorist Attack On Israelis

On Friday I posted about Mixed Signals on Bulgarian Terrorist Report, where Israeli TV reported about a secret visit by the Bulgarian Foreign Minister to share results of its investigation indicating Hezbollah was behind the terrorist attack last July -- while Bulgaria claimed the ministry was visiting to discuss the marking of the upcoming 70th anniversary since the rescuing of the Bulgarian Jews.

Now the Lebanese Daily Star is reporting Bulgaria has evidence linking Hezbollah to Burgas bombing:

Bulgaria has informed European officials of evidence implicating Hezbollah in last year’s attack on an Israeli bus at the Black Sea airport of Burga, Al-Hayat, quoting a source, reported Tuesday.

The paper, quoting what it described as a “European source,” reported that Bulgaria’s interior minister informed his European counterparts during a closed-door meeting last Thursday of evidence collected by authorities indicating Hezbollah’s involvement in the July 18 bomb attack.

Al-Hayat is reporting that a news conference will be held next week, where the Bulgarian minister will discuss the investigation. Ideally, that is when the results of the probe will be made official.

If the results point, as expected, to Hezbollah as being behind the terrorist attack, it would make it difficult for the EU to continue refusing to blacklist Hezbollah as a terrorist group after it had carried out such an attack on European soil.

As it is, the EU is expected to discuss blacklisting Hezbollah next month.

Approving such a move will be one more strike against the Iranian proxy -- and by extension, against Iran as well, especially as it is unlikely Hezbollah would make such a move without the backing and approval of Iran.

Combined with the expected fall of the Assad regime in Syria -- despite the efforts of both Iran and Hezbollah to help with the murderous crackdown -- the pariah status of Hezbollah would be a blow to Iran's attempt to extend its influence.

More will be known after next week's news conference.