La vérité sortira-t’elle un jour du puits ?

This article appears in the February 25, 2005 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Lebanon’s Hariri Killed To Make a `Clean Break’

by Muriel Mirak-Weissbach

The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, in Beirut on Feb. 14, was a carefully planned and executed act, geared to trigger a chain reaction of events in the region, that would conform with the long-standing policy of the neo-conservative junta running Washington.

To understand the why of the assassination-although the material perpetrator, the who, remains unclear-one must look back at the 1996 policy paper prepared under the supervision of now-Vice President Dick Cheney, and his neo-con task force of Richard Perle, Doug Feith, David and Meyrav Wurmser, et al. Entitled “Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” this paper outlined a scenario whereby the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority would be torn to shreds, and, first Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Iran, would be targetted for military assault and political destabilization.

The document flatly stated that Israel should engage “Hisbollah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon, including by ... establishing the precedent that Syrian territory is not immune to attacks emanating from Lebanon by Israeli proxy forces [and] striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper.” Furthermore, it said, Israel should divert “Syria’s attention by using Lebanese opposition elements to destabilize Syrian control of Lebanon.” The paper also called for focussing on “removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq....”

The outcome of the regional convulsions provoked by the “Clean Break” doctrine, was to be a new Middle East, with Israel hegemonic in the region, presiding over a series of newly balkanized states, run by puppet regimes. The Bush Administration has recently restated its intention to pick off these governments, dubbed “outposts of tyranny,” one by one. The order in which they were to be hit was assumed to start with Iran. Instead, Syria was moved into first place.

The reason for this, one regional expert told EIR, is that if Iran were attacked militarily by the United States or Israel, the Islamic Republic would respond asymmetrically, unleashing allied and sympathetic Shi’ite forces in the Persian Gulf and in Lebanon: Hezbollah’s capabilities to target Israel could be effectively deployed. Thus, the source said, the need to eliminate the Lebanese-based Shi’ite Hezbollah as a factor, and at the same time neutralize Syria, before moving against Tehran.

The stage for the immediate destabilization was set diplomatically by UN Resolution 1559, presented by the U.S. and France together, and at the forefront of recent discussions between Secretary of State Condolezza Rice and French President Jacques Chirac. UN Resolution 1559, adopted last September, demands the termination of the Syrian presence in Lebanon (estimated to be 15,000 troops) and the disarming of the Hezbollah. Instead of mounting an Israeli assault directly on Syria-which would have provoked an international outcry-a flanking operation was launched, with a terrorist act that would trigger mass forces on the ground to move against the Syrian presence.