Israel & Lebanon war-ish

[Colin]

This is it. This is the big Mideast war that has been on the verge of starting since the 80's. This isn't war-ish this is a war.

[Colin]

Hopefully Hezbollah will finally reap what it has sown. And this is also exposing that the Lebanese government has been too afraid to face down Hezbollah...and now is paying a price for that. I think the Israelis have finally had it with the duplicity of some of their neighbors...

The trouble is that Hezbollah are extremely popular with the Lebanese people, so no government has had the guts to do anything about them, lest they risk getting obliterated at the ballot box.

On this note, Shimon Peres has made it very clear that this campaign is against Hezbollah (the group) and not Lebanon per se. Clearly, this is just rhetoric, but it's welcome rhetoric.

Anyway, I personally doubt this will escalate into an all-out war, as some people here are suggesting. But that's just a gut feeling I have.

Hezbollah isn't popular with the Lebanese. It's popular with pro-Syrian Shia. It's as equally hated by the Maronites, Orthodox, and Druze which it fought against during the Civil War. Their pro-Syrian ideological slant also makes them enemies of those who supported the so-called "Cedar Revolution" last year.

Unlike most Arab countries you cannot make broad statements like "the Lebanese people support Hezbollah" since the country is so divided and so diverse that it is hard to gauge the support for various groups. Though I can gaurentee you that the Maronites and Druze, especially the Druze who Hezbollah have considered not Muslim, heretical, and lower human beings, to not be that supportive of Hezbollah's actions or the group itself.

[Colin]

I have a feeling that Syria may be drawn into this sooner or later.

Enter Iran. Iran's President might follow up on his threat and launch missiles (which may or may not be nuclear) at Israel and perhaps Iraq, and invade Iraq intending to 'liberate it' from 'Zionist oppressors'. Boom. Big war, possibly World War Three.

Problem is Iran currently doesn't have any missiles that are known to have the capability of reaching Israel. Secondly it is a known fact that Iran doesn't have any sort of nuclear weapon especially one small enough to place onto a missile of any type (this is one thing people always assume that anytime you create a nuclear warhead it automatically goes into a ballistic missile which just isn't true). Third the Iranians, if they want this to be anything, they want it to be a diversion away from the constant focus upon their weapons programs. They want to make sure that at the G8 summit that is coming up the leaders talk about this new crisis and not what to do with Iran in order to buy more time from the international community.

[Colin]

Worst case scenario for this probably goes like this:

Syria becomes involved either via an outbreak of conflict in the Golan Heights or through Hezbollah. It then moves troops both into Lebanon and South against the Golan Heights and Israel. It will probably claim to be protecting Lebanese sovereignty from the evil Zionists or something akin to that.

Iran, because it has a mutual defence pact with Syria, send troops, weaponry etc. into Lebanon through Hezbollah and directly to the Syrian armed forces.

Whether the rest of the Arab world gets involved is another story entirely. However unlike prior Arab-Israeli conflicts the Israelis do not have to worry about attacks from Egypt or from Jordan, since I doubt that pro-western moderate King Abdullah would support attacking Israel.