Iran sacrifices Hezbollah pawn

"Pundita:
Sam is asking if you've noticed a war has broken out in the Middle East.
Not Born Yesterday in New York"

Dear NBY:
Well, this is not so much war as bailing water. By now the leaders in Hezbollah and Iran's military know President Bush well enough to be certain that there is a certain inexorable quality about statements in his Axis of Evil speech. Iran thought they could simply wait out Bush's presidency.

Then Israel disengaged from Gaza; that, in combination with the erection of a wall meant that it was very hard to attack Israel except by the means of rockets. And disengagement left Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah and countless drug runners and smuggling gangs in a struggle for power. It's not been lost on the world that the stuggle is not helping the Palestinian masses one bit.

In short, Hezbollah was useful to Iran before Israel's disengagement from Gaza; now they are a liability. We've recently seen how Iran sacrificed another pawn -- Zarqawi, who at least had the sense to know when he was targeted by Iran. But Sheikh Nasrallah looks like one of those guys who believes in following his paymaster's instructions all the way to the bottom. In any case Hezbollah is going out with a bang -- shooting off as much of their arsenal as they can before Israel's military kills them.

Pundita does not live in a cave. It's just that I remember to look over my shoulder when taking in the day's war news. Iraq is mostly peaceful. Afghanistan is mostly peaceful. Arafat is dead. Saddam Hussein is behind bars. Syria's Assad is on the ropes. Al Qaeda is on the ropes.

And the Iranian military were forced by the successes of the US in Iraq to promote a hardliner for their national leader. So they finally revealed to the world the true face of Iran's government. What's more, Iran's support of Hezbollah, a Shia organization, has now made them very unpopular wih their Sunni neighbors. In case you've forgotten, the Shia are an island in an ocean of Sunnis.

In fact, the US-led war against the terror masters is going swimmingly well. Yet the Iraq stock market index will have to rival the Dow Jones, and Israel and Iran will have to dance together at each other's weddings, before Bush detractors abandon the Baghdad Bob routine.