Two wonks in the Christian Science Monitor argue that Iran’s involvement in the Lebanese crisis is overstated:
To suggest that Hizbullah kidnapped the Israeli soldiers on the orders of Tehran and Damascus is to grossly oversimplify a strong strategic relationship between Hizbullah, Syria, and Iran. While there is certainly a shared geopolitical framework among the three, operational decisions are typically made by Hizbullah. In fact, the group has become increasingly autonomous since its triumph in 2000, when it basically forced Israel to withdraw from Lebanon….
[The kidnapping] even surprised the Iranian leadership whose anti-Israel rhetoric often obscures a nuanced relationship with the group. Pragmatism, not ideology, has been the secret to Iranian success in Lebanon.
Cartoonist Bruce Beattie of the Daytona Beach News-Journal clearly disagrees:
UPDATE: The LA Times reports that Iran stepped up arms shipments to Hezbollah:
One Israeli intelligence official said there was new evidence that Iran had stepped up arms shipments through Camp Zabadani, a longtime base that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard maintains in Syria, near the Lebanese border….
During the last three days, Israel has detected the movement of several shipments of weapons and supplies from Iran to the Revolutionary Guard base as well as to nearby warehouses, where arms have been stockpiled in recent years, Israeli officials said.
