Former ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg made three points this morning in a Fox News interview: 1) Hezbollah wouldn't conduct cross-border raids into Israel without the green light from Iran; 2) the failure of the US and other nations to keep heavy pressure on Damascus following the Cedar Revolution was a mistake; 3) the UN Security Council has called repeatedly for the Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon to be dismantled. One of the latest, Resolution 1583, was unanimously adopted in 2005. Obviously, the disarmament never happened. Hezbollah has been stockpiling weapons, including rockets, near the Israeli border for quite awhile. In his November 2005 Wall Street Journal editorial " Our Troops Must Stay" in Iraq, Senator Lieberman noted that "the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias should be next" to be disarmed if we are to continued putting terrorist groups and their client states on the defensive. Ultimately, the images on today's television screens aren't the fault of Jerusalem or Washington. Damascus and Tehran have given the green light to their clients. Iran, in particular, seeks to divert the world's attention from its continued stiff-arming over its nuclear enrichment activities. It would be nice if other capitals woke up to this reality.
Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, meets Syria's Assad yesterday for talks (via the Islamic Republic News Agency)