By: Reza Shafa
Ordinary Iranian citizens living under poverty line by the mullahs’ regime own estimates — more than 80 percent of the country’s population do not make enough to feed their families — often ask themselves what do our government has to do with Lebanon’s reconstruction when we have barely enough to get by. There is an old saying that charity begins at home. However, the roots of the problem are much deeper than it first appears. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is probably the only source that has the real answer to that question.
On Saturday, the official news agency IRNA quoted the project manager Hessam Khoshnevis for the Iranian Headquarters for the Reconstruction of Lebanon as saying, "Iran has completed some 400 projects all across the country since the end of the summer 2006 war with Israel.’Iran set a target to complete some 600 construction projects, including academic, religious and medical centers, bridges, rural infrastructure facilities, and power stations, 70 percent of which is already completed’."
He also referred to a ceremony held last week in which three newly built bridges were opened in Seksekieh, Babilieh and Khaziran Kabir in Lebanon. Hassan Hobollah, Hezbollah’s representative in the country’s parliament was also among the VIPs.
According to Khoshnevis, Iran has also taken upon itself the task to reconstruct 375 kilometers of damaged highways and roads, 199 kilometers of which have been completed.
"Iran was among the first countries that announced their readiness to contribute to the rebuilding of Lebanon following the destructive war," he noted.
"Some roads were minimally damaged during the war, but we decided to renovate them anew and there were other roads that were reconstructed by the Lebanese Public Works Ministry, but the reconstruction work was not satisfactory, and the Iranian engineers reconstructed them again," he said.
Khoshnevis said that the existence of infrastructure networks not relying on solid engineering studies was a major problem faced by the Iranian reconstruction team.
"We had to dig deeper subterranean water paths and to construct a new sewage system in some areas," he explained.
He added that the Iranian reconstruction team was taking advantage of Lebanese consultant engineers and Lebanon’s laboratory facilities in pursuing construction and reconstruction works.
The real story, according to the inside sources, is that right after the end of 33-day Lebanon war in the summer of 2006, a high ranking member of the mullahs’ Majlis (parliament) told his peers in a private meeting that it was the IRGC that supplied the war and decisions were made in Tehran about the fate of the conflict.
Not a single soul is against reconstruction of a war torn nation on Earth that is Lebanon in this case; however, the IRGC should not be allowed to play its dirty game over again with the lives of innocent Lebanese people.
It is an old dirty tactic used by the IRGC to take advantage of poor and needy to advance its ominous intentions. A rerun of the same scenario in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon played out by the IRGC to clinch its deadly claws on the throats of its victims. Iraq is a prime example of what the IRGC-Qods Force are capable of by supplying arms and trainings to their terrorist proxies and no doubt IRGC would not hesitate repeating it.
It is Part of the IRGC plan to justify its ongoing presence in the country which is a cover for its real intention to prepare the grounds for its terrorist meddling in the region.
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Reza Shafa is an expert on the Iranian regime’s intelligence networks, both in Iran and abroad. He has done extensive research on VAVAK (MOIS), IRGC’s Intelligence Office, and Quds Force among others. Currently he is a contributor to NCRI website.