You reading the tactical situation any different this afternoon or do you still think Israel is going in? I am beginning to wonder myself, but it would be unprecedented for Israel not to take further action given the fact the have invested so much into the mobilization and closing Hafia port and pretty much shutting down shop north of Hafia.
Mubarak: Egypt persuaded Israel against Beirut land attack
Egyptian leader also discloses Iranian offer to negotiate settlement with Hizbullah as part of Arab initiatives to resolve crisis, but Mubarak calls Tehran's bid 'a trap'
Associated Press
Egypt persuaded Israel against a planned land attack on the Lebanese capital of Beirut following Hizbullah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers earlier this week, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said Sunday. The Egyptian leader also disclosed an Iranian offer to negotiate a settlement with Hizbullah as part of Arab initiatives to resolve the crisis, but called Tehran's bid "a trap."
"Egypt was keen not to let the Israelis into Beirut," Mubarak told reporters Sunday after talks with the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheik Khalifa bin Zayid al-Nuhayyan. "If we hadn't stepped in, Beirut would have been destroyed," Mubarak said. Another Front?
Egyptian officials have been talking to the Israelis in a bid to find a diplomatic solution to the latest regional military confrontation, the Egyptian president said. "We are talking to them more than once a day," he said. "We told them that attacking civilians and civil infrastructure is wrong, because the Lebanese people are helpless."
Like regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia,Egypt has criticized Hizbullah for starting the latest Mideast crisis. Mubarak said he was also in contact with Syrian officials and that Tehran was interested in participating in Arab mediation efforts.
"They (the Iranians) want to attend the Arab foreign ministers meeting and form a joint committee that would have included Hizbullah and Hamas," he said. "Egypt realized that that was a trap."
Khamenei praises Hizbullah
Moderate Arab nations, such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and oil-rich countries in the Gulf have expressed fear that Iran is using its Lebanese Shiite allies to expand its regional influence. Meanwhile, Iran's top leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised Hizbullah Sunday and said it would not give up its weapons.
"Thanks to the power of Hizbullah, the Lebanese resistance has disturbed the dream of the Zionists," Khamenei said in a speech broadcast on state television. "The US President says Hizbullah must be disarmed. It's clear that (the US) and Zionists want this, but it won't happen," He said.
On Saturday, Israel said that 100 Iranian troops from the elite Revolutionary Guards were in Lebanon, and that they helped Hizbullah fire a sophisticated radar-guided missile at anIsraeli warship blockading the Lebanese coast late Friday. Israel said the rocket was made in China and upgraded in Iran, and was a radar-guided C-802 missile. Iran on Sunday denied the Israeli claims.
But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi warned Israel that expanding its bombing raids to neighboring Syria would bring the Jewish state "unimaginable damage."
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Friday that any Israeli attack against Syria would be viewed as an aggression on the entire Islamic world. On Sunday, Israel stepped up its airstrikes on Lebanon including targets in Beirut after Hizbullah rockets hit the northern city of Haifa and killed eight civilians.
A repost I put up on another site:
I don't want to leave this thread this way, because some unsettling possibilities have been raised, and those currently stand in limbo.
I don't want to retract or rebut anything that's been said so far. This is a serious situation, and I believe it could, in a worst case scenario, go nuclear inside a 12 to 24 hour period. That is a possibility we all have to accept.
However, I want to say that based on what I see lately, my gut tells me it will not go that far. When I talk about my gut telling me something it means that a large collection of tiny details adds together with a large collection of registered fact, information classified as to source and reliability, etc, and because so much of the gut analysis relies on small and numerous detail, it is hard to explain each and every supporting argument.
I can. however, point out some larger issues that make me believe we have a good chance of getting out of this reasonably intact.
1. Egypt says they talked Israel out of an invasion of Lebanon. Iran and Syria have not entered the conflict openly. With air strikes and rockets having been the established norm, there is no reason to think that either country will suddenly decide that what we've already seen, is unacceptable. If Iran and Syria stay out, well Hezbolla and Hamas do not have nuclear weapons, and of the two only Hezbollah seems to have the ability to reach Israel's nuclear facilities, a move which they have promised not to attempt.
2. Iran, regarding their nuclear program, has moved from "There's nothing to talk about, we will not suspend enrichment", to "Well, maybe we could discuss it, but we still aren't suspending enrichment", to "Hey, we're ready to talk, let's get this going." That's a good sign. I don't profess to understand the Iranian mindset, but I think that any person stable and rational enough to compete with others, long enough and well enough to rise to the top of the government pile, a process that usually takes decades, I think most such people, when confronted with the stark reality of seeing their home and country and all their people and all they have worked for for thousands of years vaporized, with irreversible finality, well, I don't think anyone is going to like what they see when they look over the edge into that abyss.
3. Israel hasn't invaded yet. They are losing millions, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars per day with the Port of Haifa shut down, and millions more every day that their military reserves, a large percentage of the workforce, doesn't go to work. Yet they haven't crossed the border. Maybe they looked into the abyss and didn't like what they saw, either.
4. Since this started getting ugly, there has been time for a....preventative military development, on the part of a powerful nation, to have taken place. It is now mathematically possible that an obstrution exists which can prevent this situation from going nuclear, and without that option on the table, the battle calculus changes by orders of magnitude. Because I do not know if this obstruction was implemented when it should have been, I will not discuss it in detail, it might not be ready yet, and were certain others aware that it was being implemented, they might feel pressure to rush into ill advised action.
I do not have access to classified information, this is something simple that anyone interested could figure out. I know that it is unlikely for military advisors to be reading this forum, that there is little chance that loose lips here could sink any ships, but with this much at stake, you just don't take chances.
There are a lot of other reasons to believe that this situation may have already peaked, but as I said earlier, they are too numerous and too small individually to make them worth mentioning.
I also do not want to paint a rosy picture either. It is entirely possible that Israel is still putting together a ground attack force, and that they will invade Lebanon tomorrow or Tuesday. In fact, I would expect this force to take a while to put together precisely because Israel cannot throw everything at Lebanon with the Syrian military staring across the Golan at them.
Even if Israel does not intend to invade, they will probably increase their forces on the border, as will Hezbollah, and with many people pointing guns at each other, accidents are possible. Many times, a force becomes engaged, and can only survive by moving forward, retreat guarantees extinction. I also cannot say that Hezbollah is deserving of being regarded as a monlithic entity. While it is possible for a soldier on either side to take matters into his hands, against orders, I trust the formal military organization of the IDF more than I trust a pick-up team like Hezbollah.
If Israel invades Lebanon, Syria and Iran will face hard choices, and right now, I don't think anyone can say which way they will go.
If Israel and Hezbollah continue to trade attacks without invading, eventually Hezbollah will find themselves losing to a vastly superior force. At that point, Iran and Syria could again face hard choices.
But in the face of all that, I have to say that all out war is not the only possible solution. In fact, I do not feel it is the most likely solution. It remains a possibility, something not to be ignored, but the more time that passes, the lower, in my opinion, the chances of that possibility are.
More as it becomes available or necessary...