Hizballah financed by Arab Gulf States

Sev­eral views, one ques­tion “What to do with the grow­ing Iran­ian influ­ence in the Mid­dle East”, this was the main issue  of  the last Friday’s dis­cus­sion in the Mid­dle East Insti­tute [rec­om­mended, you can down­load the whole speech].

Amer­i­can – Lebanese ori­gin pro­fes­sor Judith Harik, Pres­i­dent of Al-Matn Uni­ver­sity in Lebanon reveals very inter­est­ing, unknown points, that Hizbal­lah is sup­ported and financed by indi­vid­u­als from the Gulf Arab countries.

Iran­ian assis­tance is not a major con­cern since Hizbal­lah has sub­stan­tial inde­pen­dent sources of this type of sup­port from the Lebanese Shi­ite com­mu­nity and both Sunni and Shi­ite res­i­dents of the Gulf …this sup­port expanded con­sid­er­ably as results of Hizbal­lah per­for­mance against Israel in the sum­mer of 2006….about 57,000 participants….

The sec­ond inter­est­ing point is:

Syria would give-up its rela­tion­ship with Hizbal­lah and Iran, if it will be able to recover the Golan Heights.

The sec­ond point led us to the Jef­fery Feltman’s [Amer­i­can ambas­sador in Lebanon] inter­view today on Al Hayat, very inter­est­ing that more than two times the inter­viewer asked him: Who killed Har­riri?, the answer was very sur­pris­ing: I don’t know, which is totally dif­fer­ent than the usual American-politicians answer which is: Syria.

It shows that the attack­ing and chang­ing the regime in Syria is more an Israeli and some Arab coun­tries [Saudi Ara­bia] demand than an Amer­i­can goal.