Word: hizballah
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...intends to write about the Middle East. Glass was driving with a friend, Ali Osseiran, 40, the son of Lebanon's Defense Minister, when the pair suddenly found themselves sandwiched between two cars filled with armed men. The kidnapers were presumed to be members of the radical, pro-Iranian Hizballah (Party of God), the organization linked to a series of spectacular terrorist acts. They released Osseiran and his bodyguard-driver a week later, but kept Glass captive. Significantly, Glass's abduction was the first since Syrian troops had arrived in February in an attempt to restore order. The kidnaping...
...Hizballah's exploits are not confined to kidnaping. With the probable aid of 2,000 Revolutionary Guards stationed in the Bekaa Valley and 400 in southern Lebanon, the Islamic Jihad has claimed responsibility for six suicide attacks between 1982 and 1984 that took more than 500 lives and helped drive American, French and Israeli troops out of Lebanon. The campaign included the 1983 truck bombing that killed 241 U.S. servicemen billeted in Beirut...
...Hizballah's ties to Tehran are abundantly clear. Leaders visit the Iranian capital regularly and reportedly get instructions from Iranian embassies in Damascus and Beirut. Khomeini is said to spend anywhere from $15 million to $50 million a year to finance Hizballah activities. Many Lebanese villages have so embraced Khomeini's way that their mosques and squares are adorned with pictures of the Ayatullah and even Iranian flags. Tehran reciprocates by putting pictures of Lebanese Shi'ite "martyrs" on Iranian postage stamps. Says Hussein Musawi, leader of the Hizballah-allied Islamic Amal: "We do not believe in the presence...
Other countries have reason to fear that Hizballah will carry out terrorist acts on behalf of Iran. Last month a suspected member of Hizballah commandeered an Air Afrique jet, singled out a French passenger and shot him dead. Though the hijacking was staged ostensibly to force West Germany to release two jailed Hizballah operatives, the killing of the Frenchman suggested another motive: to pressure Paris to end the continuing diplomatic standoff between France and Iran. Washington last week quietly warned government installations at home and abroad to be alert to the Iranian threat. In West Berlin, the Allied Command ordered...
Tehran's ties with Hizballah have put it into conflict with its friends as well. Though Syria depends on Iran for much of its oil, relations between the two countries have deteriorated recently over events in Lebanon. Hizballah fought Syria's forces after Syrian President Hafez Assad sent troops into Beirut last February to restore law-and-order. Now Hizballah-set bombs explode almost nightly near Syrian military posts in the Lebanese capital. Hizballah's most serious provocation came in June, when the group kidnaped U.S. Journalist Charles Glass near a Syrian checkpoint that was supposedly guarding the area...