BEIRUT  — The CIA recently tipped off Hizbullah about a bomb plot, even though the two have been engaged in a feud, going back 23 years, Lebanese officials said.

On March 8, 1985, at the height of Lebanon’s civil war, a team of Lebanese hard cases, hired by the CIA, killed 80 people in a car bombing in the Hizbullah-controlled south Beirut district of Bir el-Abed.

The bomb was intended to assassinate Sayed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, then considered Hizbullah’s “spiritual guide.” The much-revered cleric survived.  He was saved from walking into the blast by a girl who delayed him as he left his mosque.

But the attack triggered a blood-feud between the Iranian-backed movement and the Americans that’s still running.

Even so, Lebanese officials say the CIA, possibly seeking to avert a religious war that could tear Lebanon apart, tipped off its Shia adversaries last week about a bomb plot in Bir el-Abed, this time supposedly by Sunni extremists linked to al-Qaida, who have become Hizbullah’s mortal enemy.

Supporters of Lebanon’s Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah carry his pictures and shout slogans near the site of an explosion in Beirut’s southern suburbs, July 9, 2013. A car bomb exploded on Tuesday in a Beirut stronghold district of the Lebanese Hizbullah militant group that has been fighting in Syria’s civil war, wounding at least 50 people, a hospital official told Reuters. REUTERS/Khalil Hassan

An estimated 75 pounds of high-grade explosive in a Renault Rapide van was detonated July 9 in a parking lot at mid-morning, possibly by a timer, but maybe by remote control. More than 50 people were wounded.

It’s not at all clear why the CIA would alert Hizbullah to a planned attack deep inside one of its most secure areas, in a district where many of the group’s senior officials live and work in heavily guarded buildings that have long been targets for Israeli intelligence.

The bombing appears to be related to the bloody civil war in neighboring Syria, where Hizbullah’s fighters are backing the regime of President Bashar Assad against largely Sunni rebels. Hizbullah veterans have played a high-profile role in defending a widely reviled regime and Sunni zealots have vowed revenge.

A group, calling itself the 313 Brigade, supposedly linked to al-Qaida, which is fighting on the rebel side, claimed responsibility and vowed further attacks on Hizbullah’s Lebanese strongholds.

Given the murderous nature of the long war of the shadows, between the CIA and Hizbullah, in which several U.S. agents have been killed, one can rule out the possibility that the CIA was concerned about civilians, undoubtedly Hizbullah supporters, being killed in the bombing.

But in the byzantine demimonde of global terrorism, it is possible that the CIA was warning Hizbullah, because it wants something in return, possibly against a common enemy — like al-Qaida.

What that may be, is anybody’s guess. But so much blood has been spilled in this particular conflict —think 241 Americans killed in the October 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks outside Beirut airport — between U.S. intelligence and an organization that, until Osama bin Laden happened along, was considered the world’s most savage and effective terrorist organization, that it must be of considerable importance to the Americans, if these reports are to be believed.

There is a school of thought in Beirut that the CIA, by alerting Hizbullah to the bombing and the possibility of other plots, wanted the Shia organization to know the bombings were not the work of the CIA, so that Americans would not be targeted in retaliation.

Others believe that the Americans were trying to prevent a sectarian bloodbath between Lebanon’s Shias and Sunnis, a spillover from the Syrian conflict.

The breathtaking suggestion of the CIA communicating, however obliquely, with some of its most dedicated enemies raises intriguing possibilities.

Lebanese sources say that the CIA’s warning came from the agency’s station chief in Beirut, who alerted Lebanese security chiefs, who passed the word to Hizbullah in its south Beirut stronghold known as the Dahiyeh.

The sources say that the warning contained highly detailed intelligence that the agency had apparently obtained through electronic intercepts and agents on the ground, who would appear to have extraordinary access to jihadist operations.

The Al Akhbar daily, a Hizbullah mouthpiece, reported that the CIA passed on such details as the names of the plot’s masterminds and that a staggering 16 tons of explosives were smuggled into Lebanon for other attacks by at least three cells.

These would be aimed at Hizbullah bastions, as well as the Lebanese army, considered by many to be in Hizbullah’s pocket, and the Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti ambassadors in Beirut.

Sixteen tons suggests a lot of big bombs intended to kill hundreds of people. But if these reports are correct, it’s not clear why only 75 pounds were used in the Dahiyeh bombing, rather than a much more destructive truck-sized charge.  

– TAAN, UPI