Nasrallah Slams U.S. Embassy as 'Den of Spies': 2 Hizbullah Members Confessed to Spying for CIA
Hizbullah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday announced that members of his party had confessed to being CIA agents and accused arch-foe Israel of turning to the U.S. spy agency when it failed to infiltrate his Iran-backed group.
In the first such acknowledgment of infiltration since the group's founding in the 1980's, Nasrallah refused to disclose the identities of the two party members but said a third case was under investigation, slamming the U.S. embassy in Lebanon as a "den of spies."
"When the Israeli enemy failed to infiltrate Hizbullah, it turned to the most powerful intelligence agency," Nasrallah said in a closed-circuit television speech broadcast in Lebanon, referring to the Central Intelligence Agency.
"Our investigation has found that ... intelligence officers (in the CIA) have recruited two of our members separately, whom we shall not name out of respect for the privacy of their families," he added.
"The first confessed he was recruited five months ago ... while the second confessed he had been recruited even before that," he said, adding that the recruiters were CIA agents posing as diplomats at the U.S. embassy in Awkar, east of Beirut.
“The U.S. embassy in Awkar is a center for spying and recruiting Israeli agents,” he charged.
Nasrallah also said the group was investigating whether the third member of the party had been recruited by the CIA, Israel's Mossad or the intelligence service of a European country.
The Shiite leader, whose party is blacklisted as a “terrorist” group by the United States, insisted however that the alleged agents had not been involved in the 2008 assassination of top Hizbullah operative Imad Mughnieh in Damascus.
Hizbullah has openly accused Israel of the bombing that killed Mughnieh and vowed to avenge his death. The Jewish state has denied responsibility.
Nasrallah also denied that the discovered agents had “anything to do with the military front or the rocket systems.”
“None of them had sensitive information that might have harmed the Resistance’s military and security structures and its ability to confront any future war,” he added.
“Contrary to rumors, the discovered spies are not religious scholars and do not occupy leadership positions. None of them is close to the secretary-general,” Nasrallah went on to say.
He also stressed that “none of them has anything to do with the issue of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon,” noting that the names of the alleged agents “were not mentioned by any of the media leaks on the STL.”
“The number of spies is three, and if it was higher we would have also announced it, because we have the courage and the jihadist and Islamic principles to say the truth, even if it was bitter,” Hizbullah number one said, dismissing some media reports which “spoke of 100 cases.”
He described the discovery as “a real security accomplishment for the Resistance.”
Turning to the domestic Lebanese issues, Nasrallah stressed that Premier Najib Miqati’s government was “purely made in Lebanon and foreign pressures were hindering its formation.”
“Those criticizing the formation of the cabinet are acting spitefully, given that the brothers in Syria had an interest in forming a new cabinet since the very beginning and they were not behind any delay or obstruction, and the same can be said about the brothers in Iran,” Nasrallah said, dismissing accusations against the new government.
“Among the wrong bets made by the March 14 camp is the belief that the new majority was incapable of forming a cabinet and that PM Miqati would apologize,” Hizbullah chief noted.
He said that “insistence” on labeling the new cabinet as “Hizbullah’s government” was aimed at “inciting domestic and sectarian tensions.”
Addressing the rival March 14 camp, Nasrallah said: “You are harming Lebanon and its people when you incite the international community and stir political tensions. Inciting the world against Lebanon harms the country and its people, not Hizbullah, because we don’t have any companies abroad, and even in Lebanon we don’t have any investments in any projects and we don’t have any bank accounts.”
He stressed that “the ministerial Policy Statement will be finalized, the cabinet will gain the parliament’s confidence and there won’t be any problems.”
Commenting on the developments in the region, Nasrallah described the Syrian regime as “the only regime of resistance and defiance in the region.”
“Since the very beginning until now the alliances of this regime and its strategy, which harmonizes with the aspirations of people in this (Arab) nation, enabled it of defeating all the anti-Resistance schemes,” Nasrallah said.
“President (Bashar) Assad decreed two general amnesties and launched reforms despite the armed rebellion and still they (the West) were not satisfied. Look at Bahrain, the opposition leaders there received jail terms despite the fact that they were not even carrying a single knife.”
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