The hand of Iran stretches West

Hezbollah has admitted that one of its men is part of a group arrested by Egypt suspected of planning an attack on that country. The BBC reports:

The leader of Lebanon’s Islamist Hezbollah movement has confirmed one of the group’s members is among 49 men accused of planning attacks in Egypt. The Hezbollah member, Sami Shihab, had been trying to get military equipment into Gaza, Hassan Nasrallah said. But he denied his organisation was seeking to destabilise Egypt and called the allegations “lies”.

Egypt claimed “Hezbollah had told the men to collect intelligence from villages along the Egypt-Gaza border, tourist sites and the Suez Canal, prosecutors said.” The implication is that the Hezbollah were scouting out targets. This underscores a problem that is inherent in terror groups the world over — from the IRA to the Abu Sayyaf to the Tigers — they have internal dynamics which must be met however many diplomatic and political concessions they receive. The only way for young men to rise in a terrorist organization whose older men have made their bones is to go bury some bodies of their own. Organizations whose core business are intimidation, torture, crime and selling their services to the highest bidder are not so easily mollified by engagement, some NGO-provided relief or a few handpumps on the village green. Therefore the tendency of terrorist organizations is to keep acting like terrorist organizations.

And besides, who knows what Nasrallah, Syria or Iran instructed the Hezbollah agents do do in Egypt? Were they acting on orders? Doubtless the Egyptians are finding out, in some facility that would make Guantanamo, not as it was, but as it was imagined by the newspapers to be, by comparison the Club Med of the middle sea.