Barry Rubin has some fun critiquing credulous reporting on the upcoming Lebanes elections.
More seriously, Amir Taheri considers the possibility of a Hezbollah victory:
If Lebanon comes under Iranian control it could become one arm of a pincer — the other being Hamas-controlled Gaza — designed to subject Israel to low-intensity warfare that would, in time, sap its will to resist. With the completion of the Israeli security fence along the West Bank within the next few months, suicide attacks would become increasingly difficult to organize. The fight, therefore, would shift to the skies with “an endless storm of rockets and missiles raining on Israel from Lebanon and Gaza,” as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in an election campaign message last month.
With its clients in control of Lebanon, Iran would build a naval presence in the Mediterranean for the first time since the seventh century. Experts from the Revolutionary Guards have visited the port of Beirut and prepared plans for a visit by an Iranian flotilla before the end of the summer. Six Iranian warships are already on their way to the Red Sea, ostensibly to help combat pirates operating from the Somali coast. In Tehran, there is also talk of helping Hezbollah to develop its own naval units for “resistance operations” against Israel.
And that’s not even considering how Iran would act if it would develop nuclear weapons that President Obama is anxious to convince them not to build with lots of nice words.
Crossposted on Yourish.
