Free Republic

For the second time in less than a month, senior Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard officers have been killed in a suspected Israeli airstrike in Damascus, Syria. Iran's unofficial Mehr news agency said, "The Revolutionary Guards' Syria intel chief, his deputy, and two other Guards members were martyred in the attack on Syria by Israel." Updated reports say that five IRGC officers, plus some of their Syrian counterparts, were killed in the attack. The icons are already circulating. The intelligence chief, Sadegh Omidzadeh, was a close associate of Brigadier General Sayyed Reza Mousavi, the IRGC commander in Syria, who, along with...

JERUSALEM -- For Israel, the U.N. cease-fire deal is far from perfect. A U.N. force deploying in south Lebanon as part of the truce will have trouble keeping Hezbollah at bay for long or prevent the Iranian-supplied guerrillas from rearming, critics said, pointing to past failures of international peacekeepers. The U.N. terms will buy temporary calm, but make the next war between Israel and Tehran's proxy army inevitable, former Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and some military analysts warned. "It begs the question, `What was it all for?'" Shalom said, reflecting a growing chorus of criticism. Israel had little choice...