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Hezbollah said to have helped Assad officials flee to Lebanon, sparking furor in Beirut.
Newspaper opposed to terror group bemoans cost to Lebanon, risk of Israeli strikes; analyst says Israel apparently refrained from shooting down 4,000 evacuating Iranian troops.
An anti-Hezbollah Lebanese newspaper reported that the terror group helped hundreds of Syrian intelligence officers flee to Lebanon in the days before forces opposed to Syria’s strongman Bashar al-Assad captured Damascus on Sunday.
The Nidaa al-Watan newspaper this week seethed at the price Lebanon was paying to keep some of the top officials safe, and expressed fears that the presence of Assad’s allies in Lebanon could draw Israeli strikes.
Some Lebanese leaders also expressed concern over the report, which followed the discovery of a large secret tunnel in Syria’s Qalamoun Mountains, a Hezbollah stronghold near Damascus and the border with Lebanon, apparently used to store and transfer arms. However, the officers who escaped to Lebanon were said to travel via overland border crossings.
Citing two security officials — whose nationality was unclear — Nidaa al-Watan on Monday reported that Hezbollah had given Lebanese license plates to Assad officials who entered Lebanon via the Masnaa border crossing. The newspaper also said that thousands of Syrian security officials were estimated to have crossed into Lebanon illegally via the Hermel crossing, farther north.
ِAccording to the officials cited in the report, the smuggling of Syrian officers was facilitated by bribes to members of Lebanon’s General Security Directorate. Among the latter, the newspaper singled out Hezbollah ally Ahmed Nakad, a senior Directorate border patrol officer said to have close ties with Ali Mamlouk, head of the National Security Bureau of Assad’s Ba’ath party.
Nidaa al-Watan said Mamlouk, whom Lebanon has accused of carrying out “terrorist acts” against two mosques in the country, was in hiding in Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern Dahiyeh suburb. Video circulating on social media, which could not be independently verified, purported to show Mamlouk fleeing Syria on a rubber boat.
Also said to be in Beirut — reportedly at the five-star Phonecia Hotel — was Ghada Adib Mhanna, Assad’s aunt by marriage and mother of his close ally, telecom magnate Rami Makhlouf; and — in the Movenpick, another luxury hotel — Firas Issa Shaleesh, nephew of Dhu al-Himma Shalish, Assad’s late cousin and presidential security chief who had been implicated in massacres carried out under Assad’s father and predecessor, Hafez.
Khaled Qaddour, a Syrian businessman under US sanctions for his ties to Maher al-Assad, the dictator’s brother, was also reportedly staying at the Movenpick Hotel.
According to Nidaa al-Watan, both luxury hotels were being patrolled by Lebanese state security.
The newspaper editorialized that Lebanon, which Hafez and Basher al-Assad’s forces occupied for some three decades until 2005, would end up “bearing the cost of facilitating the hiding of those wanted by the Lebanese state.”
“Also, the presence of Assad’s lackeys in the suburbs and Beirut exposes the capital to the risk of Israeli strikes,” the newspaper said.
A similar warning was voiced by Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist Party, which is led by the Jumblatt family, a prominent Druze clan that is generally aligned with Hezbollah. Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said Tuesday that he was working with the judiciary and the General Security Directorate to address the issue in a manner that would “serve Lebanon’s interests and maintain relations with the Syrian people.”
Israel and Hezbollah had concluded a ceasefire deal in late November after a two-month, intense Israeli bombing campaign against the terror group. The campaign came after a year of the Iran-backed terror group’s persistent rocket fire, which had prevented some 60,000 residents of the north from returning home.
Fearing a Hezbollah onslaught in the north, Israel evacuated the residents shortly after Hamas attacked the south on October 7, 2023, when thousands of terrorists invaded to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
Soon after the ceasefire came into effect, Syrian rebels launched an offensive in northern Syria, upending the 13-year stalemate in the country’s civil war, and ultimately toppling the decades-long Assad regime, which was propped up by Iran and its proxies.
Iran said this week that it had evacuated some 4,000 of its own troops from Syria following Assad’s ouster.
Channel 12 Arab affairs analyst Ehud Yaari, who on Thursday cited the Assad officials’ reported escape to Lebanon, noted that Israel had apparently refrained from shooting down the Iranian air convoy.