''There are some who spent $500 million in Lebanon to distort the image of Hezbollah*''

Hassan Nasrallah provided today substantial circumstantial evidence about a possible role for Israel in the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. The evidence is made of confessions by Israeli spies captured by Lebanese authorities, video footage sent by Israeli drones to Israeli operations centers, which Hezbollah intercepted, personal info gathered from Syrian authorities, and associations with other sources.

Nasrallah's argument is that if the Special UN Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) ignores this circumstantial evidence then its credibility can be put into question as a fundamentally biased and politicized tribunal.

Since the beginning, Nasrallah said (around when Israel was first defeated by Hezbollah and left Lebanon in 2000), Israel tried to isolate Hezbollah with:
1) A story they planted through their spies that Hezbollah was trying to assassinate Hariri (naming a spy who fled to Israel since);
2) The sudden withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon under accusations Syria was behind Hariri's assassination;
3) The 2006 war when Israel hoped that inflicting huge civilian casualties in a short time on Lebanon will turn the tide against popular support for Hezbollah;
4) And now the special tribunal who is apparently going to accuse members of Hezbollah for assassinating Hariri.

Israel has the motive to create civil unrest and strife in Lebanon and to distort the image of Hezbollah. Will the special tribunal, who conducted his work in a very unprofessional way and who never turned its attention to Israel's role in the Hariri assassination, investigate ?

Nasrallah's early take on the info that members of Hezbollah were going to be indicted by the STL for the assassination of Rafik Hariri.

UPDATE, August 10th:
Rami Khoury on Nasrallah and the doctrine of reasonable doubt.

Israeli newspapers and Hezbollah enemies need nothing less than complete irrefutable proof from Nasrallah's evidence but isn't the tribunal's job to examine circumstantial evidence and find the proof?


An interesting analysis by Elias Muhanna in Foreign Policy.

Related: Israeli spies in Lebanon...

Karam's arrest has come as a shock to Lebanon, already reeling from a number of high-profile detentions of military and telecom employees, and has raised debate over how deeply Israel has managed to infiltrate and compromise Lebanon's security.

Three employees at state-owned telecom firms have been charged with spying, prompting Hezbollah to suggest Israel could have used telecom agents to manipulate phone records to implicate the group in the 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri.

*So said Hassan Nasrallah today in presenting his evidence for Israel's role in the assassination of Rafik Hariri, as reported by Al-Manar. $500million is the estimated cost incurred for the tribunal until now.

More to come...