Less than a month before a battle erupted in Beirut between Hezbollah and members of the ruling anti-Syrian coalition in May 2008, senior officials in the Lebanese government sent the U.S. embassy detailed intelligence that the militant group was operating an independent communications network across the country.
The uncovering of the network and the demand to shut it down were a central cause of the domestic rift in Lebanon.
A classified cable published by the online whistleblower WikiLeaks reveals that Minister of Telecommunications Marwan Hamadeh told U.S. diplomats that "Iran Telecom is taking over the country!"
The classified cable, sent by Charge d’Affaires Michele Sison in April 2008 from the embassy in Beirut to Washington, underscores the drama taking place in Lebanon over the course of those months and led to a "mini" civil war in Beirut.
The American diplomat wrote that Minister Hamadeh had asked to meet her urgently and disclosed to her a detailed survey of what he described as the complete fiber optic system that Hezbollah had established throughout Lebanon.
The previous evening, the Lebanese television station LBC had aired a program on Hezbollah's telecommunications network, but Hamada told Sison that its existence had already been widely known.
Hamadeh is a senior member of the anti-Syria and anti-Iran camp in Lebanon. In 2004, Hamadeh survived an assassination attempt when a bomb was rigged to his car.
In his conversation with the American diplomat, Hamadeh emphasized hat the government of Lebanon had decided to brief its allies – the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates – regarding the discovery of the Hezbollah network.
"The LBC story was not planted by the GOL, nor planned, but in Hamadeh’s opinion it was no bad thing to get the story out there," wrote Sison in the cable, adding that Hamadeh had told her French President Nicolas Sarkozy was "stunned" by the news.
The Lebanese telecommunications minister "cited the Iranian Fund for the Reconstruction of Lebanon as the source of the funding", wrote Sison, referring to the body that built roads and bridges in the south of the state following the Second Lebanon War. The fund has been accused in the past of "installing telecommunications lines in parallel with new roads", wrote Sison.
Hamadeh described the establishment of this communications lines as "a strategic victory for Iran, since it creates an important Iranian outpost in Lebanon, bypassing Syria," according to Sison's cable.
In Hamadeh's view, the move was evident of Hezbollah's attempt to establish itself as a "nation state" in Lebanon.
"Hezbollah now has an army and weapons; a television station; an education system; hospitals; social services; a financial system; and a telecommunications system," wrote Sison of Hamadeh's concerns.
The exposure of the telecommunication network shook senior officials in the anti-Hezbollah camp in Lebanon. Hamadeh told Sison that Sa'ad Hariri, then considered the future leader of the anti-Syria camp and now the prime minister, was particularly concerned. He sent a private plane from Saudi Arabia to get a copy of map detailing the fiber optic system and passed it on to the Saudi king and intelligence minister.
The cable discloses a feeling of weakness in the Lebanese government and reflects the difficulty that the anti-Syrian, anti-Iranian camp was having in contending with Hezbollah.
Hamadeh told Sison that Major General Ashraf Rifi, chief of the Lebanese security services, and Brigadier General Georges Khoury, a senior official in the Lebanese army, met with Wafiq Safa, the Hezbollah liaison to the Lebanese intelligence services, to discuss the matter.
During that meeting, Rifi and Khoury demanded that Hezbollah dismantle two parts of the network as a first step. Safa refused abd according to Sison's cable, said that the network was "part of Hezbollah’s ability to defend Lebanon, and that Hezbollah would regard any attack on the network as an act of aggression" equal to that of Israel.
Sison's cable expresses that Hamadeh wondered if the Lebanese government would have the “guts” to cut the lines itself, given that Hezbollah has threatened to "take action against the" government of Lebanon in the face of such aggression.
Sison wrote that did not expect the government of Lebanon to take action, adding that it could be seen as a call for help to outside allies to do the job.