Saturday, July 15, 2006
Is Iran fighting a hot war in Lebanon?
Via Power Line, the Jerusalem Post is reporting that Iran is shooting at Israel without benefit of a mediating proxy:
An IDF investigation into the attack showed that Hizbullah had fired an Iranian-made missile at the vessel from the shores of Lebanon, said Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan.
A senior IDF intelligence official says that Iran has approximately 100 soldiers in Lebanon and that they helped Hizbullah hit an Israel Navy ship with an anti-ship missile.
It was first thought that an explosives-laden UAV caused the blast.
"We can confirm that it was hit by an Iranian-made missile launched by Hizbullah. We see this as very profound fingerprint of Iranian involvement in Hizbullah," Nehushtan said in an interview with The Associated Press.
If this claim is true, then Israel and Iran are at war. That is no small news. The Western media should be flooding the zone with this story.
As we have been arguing for a couple of days, Iran cannot let Israel destroy Hezbollah without being seen to rise to Hezbollah's defense. Otherwise, what proxy terrorist will be willing to run risks for Tehran again? The attack on the Israeli ship may be the first example of Iran "being seen." The question is, what does Israel do now? What will the world do if Israel captures some of those Iranian soldiers? Arguments about "proportionality" will seem awfully silly.
4 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Jul 15, 10:15:00 AM:
Woland blogs from Israel, he shares a very interesting view on this.
http://thewoland.blogspot.com/2006/07/better-than-any-conspiracy-theory.html
By , at
Sat Jul 15, 10:49:00 AM:
Anyone with any real knowledge about Iran and how they run things knows that their main "military" force is to use terrorist cells to do their bidding. This is how they hurt people, by staying in the shadows as the guiding hand.
Their men are in Iraq and they are in Afghanistan, I know because I killed one there.
By , at
Sat Jul 15, 11:52:00 AM:
Israel has a fight on its hands.
Hizbulla seems well prepared on the ground. In addition to its slick operation to kill and snatch IDF soldiers, the initial IDF armored foray to get the captives back apparently ran into a prepared mine field that destroyed an IDF tank and killed several more soldiers. The effort to retrieve them resulted in at least one more killed.
The ability to strike and put out of action one of Israel's largest and most modern warships by long range missile at night must be viewed with alarm by the high command (see Wretchard's analysis). Are MANPADS far behind?
This will not be a cakewalk. Hizbulla and Iran want this fight and Israel no longer has the option of going half-way. This will be a long and bloody affair and the endgame is unclear.
The determined words from the IDF brass and Bush's evident decision to let the sides have at it ("try and keep civilian casualties to a minimum if you can guys") and not even talk about a cease fire show that they know this.
b/t/w, the MSM is days behind. I noticed that I no longer even read any MSM analysis and just go right to the blogs. The bifurcation of the media into mainstream news gathering and open source comment is here.
By 
Purple Avenger, at
Sat Jul 15, 04:14:00 PM:
This will be a long and bloody affair and the endgame is unclear.
Depends on how Israel approaches it.
