The involvement of Iranian military advisers and intelligence agents in Lebanon is likely but hard to prove.

In the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Dahye, pictures of Iran’s late revolutionary religious leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini, are covered with dust and debris. After nearly five weeks of ceaseless shelling of the Shia-dominated quarters of the Lebanese capital, few of Khomenei’s portraits are left.

General-Secretary Hassan Nasrallah’s Hezbollah (the “Party of God”) had its headquarters in Dahye’s best-known quarter, Haret Hreik, before attacks by Israeli warplanes destroyed it in the middle of July.

Rumors, difficult to verify due to Hezbollah’s strict media policy and the diplomatic sensitivity of the issue, have it that the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) also maintained offices in the area.

Walid Jumblat, head of Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), said at the beginning of August: “Iran is bringing in sophisticated weaponry,” further blaming Tehran for “actually experimenting with different kinds of missiles in Lebanon by shooting them at the Israelis.”

Iran is accused of supplying Hezbollah with thousands of rockets over the past few years, more than 3,000 of which have hit northern Israeli population centers, including Haifa, the country’s third largest city, in the past 30 days or so. Hezbollah is, apparently, also in possession of Iranian Zelzal missiles, with a range of about 125 miles, making Tel Aviv vulnerable.

On the evening of July 14, the third day of the new Lebanon War, an Iranian Silkworm C-802 radar-guided anti-ship cruise missile struck an Israeli naval vessel, killing four soldiers. It was the first time the missile had been introduced into the battle with Israel.

However, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), which have held Tehran responsible for staging a “proxy war” against the Jewish state from Lebanese territory, have little evidence that actually proves a deeper involvement of Iranian agents and military advisers on the ground.

“The fingerprints of Iran and her military appear in every village, position and post of the Hezbollah terror organization, which is financially and strategically supported by Iran,” the IDF website claims rather vaguely. And it was only shortly after the fighting began that Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, head of the IDF’s Intelligence Branch, was shown an RPG missile with a symbol indicating it was of Iranian manufacture.

But actual proofs of the personal involvement of Iranian agents or advisers on the ground are very weak.

In July, Hezbollah member Hassin Ali Saliman was presented to the media after his capture by the IDF, apparently confessing to having been trained in Iran, which in itself is no news as the close ties between Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Party of God are well documented.

In 1982, IRGC members helped found Hezbollah in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Since then the organization has received a considerable amount of financial and ideological support from its Shia allies in Iran. Figures range between $100 million and $200 million annually.

On July 21, the U.S. think tank Stratfor published a study entitled “Hezbollah and Iran: Security Risks Beyond the Middle East.” Apart from acknowledging that “without the assistance of third parties — such as state sponsor Iran … Hezbollah’s chances for survival in Lebanon would appear slim,” it highlights an often neglected aspect of the Party of God’s rise to power: “Despite its historical roots and deep relationship with Iran, Hezbollah is not solely an ideological tool to be wielded by Tehran.”

Western diplomats interviewed by The Media Line in the months before the conflict also pointed to rising conflicts among Nasrallah, his deputy Sheikh Nassem Qassem and the leadership in Tehran. Whereas Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad wants to exploit the armed wing of the party as a proxy force in its repeatedly stated aim to “wipe Israel of the map,” Nasrallah apparently wants to have a freer hand in establishing his party as a primarily national Lebanese organization. According to news reports, even Hezbollah’s Damascus- or Tehran-based military chief, Imad Mughniyah, does not support the more national line of thought promoted by Nasrallah.

So the search for Iran’s presence on the ground since the new Lebanon War started on July 12 remains like a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces: An IDF reserve officer who returned from the north spoke about hearing fluent Persian on Hezbollah’s two-way radios; Ynet’s chief news editor, Guy Benyovits, in an opinion piece published Aug. 13, refrained from enlightening his readers with harder proof of what indeed would have been a news scoop.

The same is true for the Haaretz website, which on Aug. 13 cited unnamed IDF sources who supposedly uncovered the bodies of a number of fighters “who appear to belong to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard… No identifying documents were discovered on the bodies but tattoos suggest they belong to the Iranian force.”

The IDF’s claim that “Iran sent several dozen Revolutionary Guard fighters to bolster the ranks of Hezbollah,” remains to be proven.

Israeli journalists are having a hard time finding out more about Iranian involvement, due in part to the poor human intelligence Israeli agents have been able to obtain in the years since the retreat of its occupation forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000.

Satellite photos have turned out to be largely ineffective in penetrating the Iranian-Lebanese-Shia alliance. Also, in Lebanon, Hezbollah is vigorously obstructing journalists from investigating the strength and deployment of its forces, denying any access to its uniformed personnel.

Even the usually well-informed analysts of Stratfor cannot help out. Asked by The Media Line about its knowledge of Iranian agents and military advisers involved in Lebanon, a Stratfor analyst could only come up with what he called an “educated guess” about the Iranian presence: “In the South, they are probably helping the Hezbollah fighters by advising them… In Beirut, the MOIS agents would probably be there to keep Tehran informed about political developments, relations between Hezbollah and the other Lebanese factions.”