Israel Update II

There is still a lot of activity in the Israel-Hezbollah war.

Captain Ed notes that Syria made a public pledge to support Hezbollah in ensuring Israel's defeat, but there's one issue. This announcement wasn't from Syria's President Assad, but from Ba'athist party leaders:

The Ba'ath Party left the head of state out of the loop while it crafted this statement? One has to wonder what task so occupied Assad that the war breaking out on his border got shifted to a lower priority...

...This news makes it appear that Assad may have gotten shut out of the decision-making process. The Ba'ath Party may not trust Assad in a shooting war -- and that may indicate that Baby Assad never did have his hands on the levers of power.

Since Israel has destroyed Hezbollah's Beirut headquarters, Hezbollah leaders, including Nasrallah, are leaving the city

According to a London Arabic newspaper report, Israel gave Syria an ultimatum: either stop Hezbollah's attacks and return the kidnapped Israeli soldiers in 72 hours or face an attack of "disasterous consequences":

The London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Hayat reported Saturday that "Washington has information according to which Israel gave Damascus 72 hours to stop Hizbullah's activity along the Lebanon-Israel border and bring about the release the two kidnapped IDF soldiers or it would launch an offensive with disastrous consequences."

The report said "a senior Pentagon source warned that should the Arab world and international community fail in the efforts to convince Syria to pressure Hizbullah into releasing the soldiers and halt the current escalation Israel may attack targets in the country."

Iran has been setting itself up to enter this war. Iran sent its national security advisor, Ali Larijani, to Damascus and then issued the threat that an attack on Syria is an attack on Iran. Since then we have learned that Israel's navy ship was struck not with an unmanned drone but with an Iranian missile. Iran is itching to get into this war, and Israel seems set to bring it to them.