Bulgaria’s announcement today that
investigators suspect Hezbollah in last summer’s terrorist bombing against
Israeli tourists on the Bulgarian coast ratchets up a conflict between the West
and Iran that is being waged in political, military and covert arenas.

Half a year after the bombing killed six
people and wounded 30, the results of the investigation suggest the attack was the
Lebanese militant group’s first terror strike on European soil since the 1990s.

As ProPublica
reported last summer Iran and Hezbollah have waged a covert global struggle with Israel and the United States for the past several years as a result of conflict over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Israel and the United States reacted to Tuesday’s
news from Bulgaria by repeating calls for the European Union to designate
Hezbollah as a terrorist group — a move that most EU nations have
resisted.

The
investigation into the July 18 attack in Burgas, a
popular coastal destination for Israelis, has been slow and difficult despite
the support of Israeli, U.S. and European counterterror agencies, according to
officials familiar with the case.

Bulgarian
interior minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov
made a public statement Tuesday revealing that, while some questions have been
answered, others persist.

Investigators have determined that the bomber, who died in the attack,
and two accomplices traveled from Lebanon via other European countries to
Bulgaria carrying fraudulent Michigan driver’s licenses fabricated in Lebanon,
according to Tsvetanov.

Two of the suspects traveled via Germany and Belgium, according to a U.S. counterterror official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the case. Bulgarian investigators retraced movements of the trio from June 28, when
they entered the country and used the fake licenses at hotels and to rent cars,
until July 18, when a backpack carried by a lanky, long-haired youth in casual
attire blew up the bus carrying Israeli tourists at the Burgas
airport, according to Tsvetanov.

Investigators have identified the
bomber’s accomplices, whose licenses bore the aliases Ralph William Rico and
Brain Jameson, as holders of Australian and Canadian passports. The two, now
fugitives, have lived and worked in Lebanon since 2006 and 2010 and are
believed to be Hezbollah operatives, the interior minister said.

“We traced their
overall activity in Australia and Canada,” Tsvetanov said. “We have data on
financial links and involvement in Hezbollah. What can be made as a reasonable
assumption — I repeat, a reasonable assumption — is that the two
persons whose real identity was established belonged to the military formation
of Hezbollah.”

The Australian is a man of
Lebanese descent whom Western law enforcement has been hunting in recent weeks,
according to a European counterterror official familiar with the investigation. The Bulgarian interior minister said his country will request help from Lebanon, Australia, Canada and other countries as the investigation continues.

The profile of the suspects
fits a pattern of Hezbollah using operatives with Western passports, counterterror
officials say. Cypriot authorities are prosecuting a Swede of Lebanese descent
for conducting reconnaissance on Israeli tourists last year. In 2009, Turkish
police arrested a suspected Canadian Hezbollah operative in a failed car bombing
against an Israeli diplomatic target.

Although the Bulgarian
interior minister said investigators had recovered DNA traces of all three
suspects, it was not clear whether the bomber, whose alias was Philip Martin,
has been identified.

Tsvetanov also did not
address the mystery of whether the attack was a suicide bombing. The explosive
device carried a mechanism enabling it to be detonated from afar, according to
the European counterterror official. Some Western investigators believe the
bomber did not intend to die, but rather that an accomplice set off the bomb
prematurely, in response to unforeseen circumstances or because the bomber was
a dupe.

“The discovery of his
license makes it more likely that he was not a suicide bomber,” the European
counterterror official said. “If it had all been planned to happen exactly as
it did with his knowledge, I think they would have taken the license away to
make it harder to trace him. We think it is an attacker who died rather than a
voluntary kamikaze.”

Although Hezbollah has
conducted suicide car bombings against hard targets, it generally does not
carry out lone-bomber suicide attacks on foot, said Magnus Ranstorp, a foremost
Hezbollah expert at the Swedish National Defense College.

Hezbollah has used unwitting
bombers before, he said, adding that there are “odd things” about the attack
that have yet to be explained, such as the clumsily forged licenses.

But he and other experts
said the timing, target and profile of the suspects suggests the attack was
part of an escalating offensive by Iranian spies and Hezbollah militants that
has resulted in attacks and plots from Africa to India to Thailand.

The shadow war has
intensified because of Israeli assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and
of Imad Mughniyeh, a Hezbollah warlord with close ties to the Iranian security
forces, in 2008. The Burgas attack happened on the 18th anniversary of a
massive car-bomb in Argentina carried out by Iranian and Hezbollah operatives
in 1994.

Although Europe supports
U.S. and Israeli efforts to thwart Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, the European
Union’s policy toward Hezbollah diverges considerably. Most European nations
resist pressure to designate Hezbollah, even its military wing, as a terrorist
organization. In a clear sign of that reluctance, EU foreign minister Catherine
Ashton issued a response to the Bulgarian announcement Tuesday that did not use
the word Hezbollah.

Even European Union nations
that view Hezbollah as a threat worry that designation could spur retaliation
and destabilize Lebanon, where the militant group wields considerable power in
government and on the street, Ranstorp said. European leaders also worry about
the complex conflict with Iran involving Syria’s civil war and the Iranian
nuclear program.

“It’s not a stand-alone
issue,” he said. “It’s wrapped up in what’s happening with Syria, Israel and
above all, Iran.”