Will Hezbollah, Iran avenge the killing of Kuntar?
The killing of veteran terrorist Samir Kuntar, adopted by Hezbollah, is perceived as a blow to Iran, which supported and nurtured Kuntar over the past year.
Officially, Israel hasn't assumed responsibility for the killing of Lebanese Druze terrorist Samir Kuntar during the night of Dec. 19-20. Kuntar was sheltering with a group of terrorists, including Farhan al-Sha’alan, in a home in the town of Jaramana, south of Damascus, when guided air-to-ground missiles fired from distant warplanes slammed into the building, causing it to collapse on everyone inside. Hezbollah is blaming Israel for the attack, but so far, Israel has not responded officially.
The general assumption among the international community is that the Israeli air force conducted the operation, after receiving precise intelligence in real time. This allowed it to settle the score with one of the most detested terrorists in Israel’s history. Three rockets were fired from Lebanese territory into Israel on the afternoon of Dec. 20, but there were no casualties or damage. These rockets were fired by Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front General Command. Still, based on the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) assessment, the real response to Kuntar’s assassination is yet to come. The rockets on Dec. 20 were little more than a three-gun salute in honor of Kuntar.
The most interesting questions are: How will Hezbollah respond? How will Iran respond? What exactly is happening on that sensitive front, where the Israeli air force meets the Russian air force, in the sensitive Golan Heights border triangle between Israel, Lebanon and Syria, but also in the skies over Damascus? This operation in which Kuntar was killed is the latest in several other aerial attacks attributed to Israel, which have occurred in the Damascus sector and other regions of Syria.
The most intriguing issue now as far as security and military international forces are concerned — Americans, Europeans and Iranians — is whether the sophisticated Russian radar systems recently installed in the region “locked” on the warplanes, which fired the missiles that killed Kuntar. Were the pilots, apparently Israeli, targeted while they were bringing up the house in which Kuntar was hiding on their own target screens? Was there any communication between those pilots and those who identified them on the radar? Assuming that the pilots were Israeli, was there any prior coordination between Israel and Russia before the attack? With Kuntar serving as its operative for the past few months, how will Iran respond? How will Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah respond? The night of Dec. 21, Nasrallah, in a speech in Beirut, threatened retaliation against Israel over the assassination of his “beloved son,” Kuntar.
