Iran Hangs in Suspense as War Offers New Strength, and Sudden Weakness
*************************AN EXCERPT *******************************
TEHRAN, July 29 — These should be heady days for Iran’s leaders. Hezbollah, widely regarded as its proxy force in Lebanon, continues to rain down rockets on Israel despite 17 days of punishing airstrikes. Hezbollah’s leader is a hero of the Arab world, and Iran is basking in the reflected glory.
Yet this capital is unusually tense. Officials, former officials and analysts say that it is too dangerous even to discuss the crisis. In newspapers, the slightest questioning of support for Hezbollah has been attacked as unpatriotic, pro-Zionist and anti-Islamic.
As the war in Lebanon grinds on, Iranian officials cannot seem to decide whether Iran will emerge stronger — or unexpectedly weakened.
They are increasingly confident of an ideological triumph. But they also believe the war itself has already harmed Hezbollah’s strength as a military deterrent for Iran on the Israeli border.
And foreign policy experts and former government officials said that Iran had come to view Israel’s attack on Lebanon as a proxy offensive. They now view the war as the new front line in the decades-old conflict with Washington.
“They are worried that what’s happened in Lebanon to Hezbollah is the United States’ revenge against Iran,” said Hamidreza Jalaipour, a sociologist and former government official. “The way they are attacking them and fighting against them is like waging a war against Iran.”
“The way they are attacking them and fighting against them is like waging a war against Iran.”
Perhaps because THEY ARE??
Note to Islamonazi Iranians:
You see how easily those 50+ planes fly through the sky's, annihilating everything they see??
Now imagine 1,000 of them, and that's what you elected Nutjob is trying to bring upon you....
Dozens of others said to be trapped in the rubble
By Ze'ev Schiff and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents, and Agencies
Some 35 Lebanese civilians were killed, 21 of them children, in an Israel Air Force strike on a building in the south Lebanon village of Qana on Sunday morning. Dozens of others were reportedly trapped in the rubble.
Some 40 targets were hit in IAF strikes overnight across Lebanon. Among the targets were buildings used by Hezbollah, rocket launchers and bridges.
Several houses collapsed and a three-story building where about 100 civilians were sheltering was destroyed, witnesses and rescue workers said.
The IDF said it had warned residents of Qana to leave and said Hezbollah bore responsibility for using it to fire rockets at Israel.
In April 1996, Israeli shelling of a base of United Nations peacekeepers in Qana killed more than 100 civilians sheltering there during Operation Grapes of Wrath. The international outcry over the Qana village shelling effectively ended the operation