Coordinated suicide bombings on the Iranian embassy in Beirut yesterday poured fuel on concerns that the Islamic republic and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah were dragging Lebanon into the two-and-a-half-year Syrian conflict. Tehran sought to both blame Israel and threaten retaliation for the attack beyond Lebanon’s borders, but their case – per a late Tuesday write-up by AFP – was strained at best:

Twin bombings against Iran’s embassy in Hezbollah’s Beirut stronghold point to a confrontation between Tehran and Al-Qaeda in Lebanon, which is paying a heavy price for the Syrian war, analysts said. “It is a direct confrontation between Al-Qaeda on one side, and all those who back the Syrian regime and Iran on the other,” said Hilal al-Khashan, a political science professor at the American University of Beirut. “The two blasts are a direct message to Iran that says: ‘You are the origin of the problem in Syria, we will face you directly, not by proxy.'”

The bombings came just a day after a top Lebanese political figure warned that [French] Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian military’s systematic march toward the city of Aleppo risked “catastrophic catastrophic repercussions in Lebanon.”

There had been several previous incidents of blowback from the terror group’s involvement in Syria, and the Al Qaeda-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades quite quickly claimed responsibility for the most recent bombing. CNN to tersely note in its headline that the “blasts [were] linked to Syrian civil war.”

[Photo: ITN / YouTube]