Europe, potential target for Hezbollah terror attacks
By Olivier Guitta
Two European countries are especially worried about the potential implications of the Hezbollah-Syria-Iran vs Israel war. They are Germany and France.
First, German security services are on the lookout for a potential Hezbollah terror campaign because of the heavy precense of Hezbollah cells and Syrian secret service within Germany. The fact that Europe is viewed by Iran as endorsing the Israeli counterattack, might push the mullahs to order their proxies to hit European cities.
Regarding France, even though President Chirac has been quick to criticize Israel's response, he has nonetheless been forceful in calling for disarming Hezbollah. For more on that please view my Brookings paper on France and Hezbollah: The end of the affair. Keep in mind that Hezbollah has already a history of attacking Paris: in 1986 a terror campaign ordered by Iran and using Hezbollah operatives killed 13 and injured hundreds. French security services are worried of a possible redux: in fact Hezbollah operatives had flown in from Lebanon, used homegrown cells for logistics and flew back after the bombings. As much as France is very well informed on Sunni terrorism (mostly Algerian), they are almost flying blind on Shia terrorism.
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