Hizbullah & Tehran Concerns.

Apart from the worries of Assad's regime, Hizbullah and Tehran are concerned that a UNSC-backed tribunal could eventually open the case of Shi'ite suicide bombings and kidnappings which in 1983-85 killed many US military forces and civilians, as well as the taking of American hostages in Lebanon, in which both Hizbullah and Iran's theocracy have been implicated. Lebanon's other Shi'ite group, Amal led by Speaker Berri, has also been implicated in some of those events, with the Assad regime having been behind the moves against US, French and other multinational forces in Lebanon at the time. Like the US, an APS source says, "France has never forgotten its victims in Lebanon".

There is also the October 2006 charge by Argentinean prosecutors against Hizbullah and Iran in the July 18, 1994, bombing in Buenos Aires of the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association which killed 85 people and wounded 300. Those implicated in this case are Imad Mughniyeh, identified as head of Hizbullah's "Foreign Security Service"; Mohsen Reza'i, commander of Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in 1981-97 and now a member of the powerful Expediency Council; Ahmad Vahidi, commander of IRGC's Quds Forces in 1989-98; Ali Fallahian, minister of information (intelligence) and security in 1989-97; Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran's president in 1989-97; Ali Akbar Velayati, foreign minister in 1981-97; and two members of the Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1994 (see the background in news15-ArabSecurityQuartet-Hariri-Apr9-07).

At the time, particularly in the early 1980s, the Assad regime was depending heavily on support from the Soviet Union which was then engaged in a cold war with the West including the US. But Bashar al-Assad has since mid-2000 acted as if the Soviet Union never collapsed.