Thursday, February 24, 2005
Who killed Rafik Hariri?
The Iranians, conceivably, could have done this to put the west’s attention and heat on Syria. But my guy is skeptical of this kind of bank-shot skullduggery. The risk doesn’t seem to be worth the reward.
This, I think, misapprehends Iran's possible motives. As I wrote here, even though Hariri's death now appears to work against Syria's interests, the Lebanese intifada would not have been obvious in advance. Iran might have directed the killing as a sign of good faith to Syria, which it has been wooing into a Damascus-Tehran axis. The Iranians would not have been trying to redirect western "heat" toward Syria, but they might have been trying to do Syria a favor and demonstrate their capacity to manipulate Hezbollah, all in one fell swoop.
2 Comments:
By 
Cardinalpark, at
Thu Feb 24, 02:51:00 PM:
People work too hard to figure out sometimes that which is obvious. Tyrants do not brook dissent and certainly don't understand or predict it. If they decide somebody or something is a threat, they kill it. Nobody around them would ever question the judgement because that's fairly self destructive act. Neither the Syrians or Iranians would predict an uprising at the death of Hariri, a troublemaker they despise.
All of the speculation and conspiracy nonsense is about whether it is possible to blame America and Israel. Now there's a brilliant idea. Let's kill our guy so common people blame it on our adversary and then they lead a revolt.
That is a so unbelievably stupid it could only have come from Kos.
By 
, at
Fri Feb 25, 12:16:00 AM:
This is the usual case with big-boy blogs like TKS: one post on a subject that lower-decks blogs have been hammering for a week, and suddenly The Gospel Has Been Revealed. Geraghty has some good insight here (as does apparently his 'smart' friend), but the post contains very little new information, a week into the story cycle. It's certainly no "whodunnit."
