World View: Sunnis Retaliate Against Hezbollah in Beirut Lebanon

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Speech by Hezbollah’s Nasrallah brings rockets into Beirut Lebanon
• Russia may have canceled its S-300 missile sales to Syria
• Iran’s Supreme Leader grooms his son to take over

Speech by Hezbollah’s Nasrallah brings rockets into Beirut Lebanon

Sunni gunmen fire weapons in Tripoli in norther Lebanon on Sunday (Reuters)

Saturday’s bombastic speech byHezbollah’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah may have signaled a turningpoint in the Syrian war, possibly by triggering a sectarian spilloverof the Syrian war into Lebanon. For the first time, two rockets hitHezbollah strongholds in Lebanon’s capital Beirut on Sunday, woundingfour people. It’s believed that the rockets were fired by Sunnis whoare angered by Nasrallah’s promise to support Syria’s psychopathicpresident, Bashar al-Assad.

In Saturday’s speech, Nasrallah referred to the sectarian battlesthat have already been occurring in the city of Tripoli, innorthern Lebanon on the border with Syria. He said,

“This absurd battle must stop and those rooting forthe victory of the Syrian regime or the opposition’s rebels mustgo fight in Syria instead. Leave Tripoli neutral from Syria’sconflict.”

Unfortunately for Nasrallah, Sunday’s missile strikes into hisheartland in Beirut show that he’s not nearly in control of events ashe apparently believes that he is. He now has to decide whether toretaliate against Sunni fighters for the missile strikes in Beirut, orelse to portray weakness by ignoring them. The National (UAE) and AP

Russia may have canceled its S-300 missile sales to Syria

Russia has received a great deal of international criticism for itssupport with money and weapons for the regime of Syria’s psychopathicpresident Bashar al-Assad. A media report says that Russia and Israelhave made a “secret deal”:

• Russia will cancel its contract to sell advanced long-range S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Syria. Russia has said that the weapons are defensive only, and that the contract was made long ago.
• Israel will promise not to conduct any more air strikes on Syria. Previous Israeli air strikes had targeted weapons that were allegedly being shipped to Lebanon’s terror group Hezbollah.

One of the reasons given for reaching the agreement with Israel isIsrael’s Russian community:

“We are very much concerned about this; the largeRussian community in Israel is a major factor in our attitude toIsrael, and we will not let this happen.”

However, an Israeli official called the report a “fairy tale”:

“This story is detached from reality. Afairytale. There was no agreement or understanding achievedbetween [Russia’s] Putin and [Israel’s] Netanyahu. That’s anotherpiece of fantasizing.”

Russia has previously cancelled the shipment of high-altitude Mig-31Einterceptor jets to Syria and the supply of the Iskander-E tacticalballistic missiles. Russia Today andYNet

Iran’s Supreme Leader grooms his son to take over

As we reported several days ago (see “23-May-13 World View — Iran’s Supreme Leader tries to defeat the younger generation”), Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hasseen to it all that any “reformist” candidate for the June 14presidential election has been disqualified. It now turns out thatKhamenei is arranging for the victory of 68-year-old Gholam AliHaddad-Adel to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president. Haddad-Adelis an academic with little experience in governing, but his daughteris married to Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei. So unlikeAhmadinejad, Haddad-Adel can be counted on to be compliant to theSupreme Leader’s demands, and to keep the president’s seat warm forhis son to take over in 2017. Iran is in a generational Awakening era(like America in the 1960s and 1970s), and so we can expect theelection of the fossil Haddad-Adel to trigger even more studentprotests than Ahmadinejad did. Debka

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