If so, you have a problem.

Some of the bodies of the dead Iranian soldiers have been shipped back to Iran.

Alex: Yes, I am going to deny it. Even the Israelis don’t claim that. What is your reference for dead Iranian soldiers being shipped to Iran?

My original references came from a few Middle East newspapers. Anyone could Google up the info. One paper was from Iran.

The latest information, of course, came directly from the Israel government. They have the bodies and the identity paperwork of some Iranian guard soldiers killed later on.

Do you intend to deny this anymore?

If so, on what basis of fact?

In any case, more sources have weighed in on the matter. You’ll be happy to know that, although they broadly agree with me on the question, the Financial Times do agree with you that Iran has officially denied their involvement in Hezbollah’s actions.

“Iran is an important player in the Lebanon crisis. Officials in Tehran deny any direct involvement in the conflict. But in Beirut, government officials see Hizbollah’s July 12 capture of two Israeli soldiers–the event that sparked the Israeli offensive–as linked to Iran’s attempts to underline its regional power and divert attention away from the dispute with the west over its nuclear programme.

[...] A protracted conflict could widen into a regional war, more directly drawing in Iran and Syria–the two states that support Hizbollah.”

(”Risks rise for Iran as conflict continues,” Gareth Smyth, Financial Times (US), Friday August 4, 2006, p. 3)

I should say again that I don’t think this escalation on Israel’s part was a good idea, most especially because of the loss of civilian life in Lebanon (not to mention Israel, as Hezbollah has shot more than 2000 missiles back in reprisal). Nor by any means do I want this conflict to widen to include Iran. I believe that would be a disaster, first for similar humanitarian concerns, and secondly even in terms of the US or Israel achieving any of its goals of stability and harmony in the region.

As I mentioned to begin with, I primarily blame Britain and Eisenhower’s deposing of Prime Minister Mosaddeq of Iran, 55 years ago, for the mess we’re in now. We got rid of the best hope for a progressive Iran, so that he wouldn’t nationalize the oil industry. We worshipped the dollar and the oil barrel over representative government.

However, I continue to believe that Iran funded, armed and manned Hezbollah (though for Alex, this is delusional propaganda perpetrated by Time Magazine, the Financial Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Economist, and too many other organs to mention). I also believe that, with the thousands of rockets they’ve shot over the last month, Hezbollah is a threat to Israel (and 80% of Israelis polled agree), and would be more of one if more towns were in range of more of their rockets. Before this round of fighting began, there were at least 19 rocket attacks on Israel by Hezbollah in the last 5 or 6 years alone. Unless this too is propaganda, there is a growing certainty that yes, bigger, longer-range rockets are being given Hezbollah, which will soon (some say already) reach Tel Aviv. Though I wish they hadn’t done what they’ve been doing, what is Israel to do about this?

Thank you for your time, and keep Yorkshire green.

Then if all approaches to Lebanon were hermetically sealed prior to the end of the civil war, how exactly did the arms to fight that civil war appear?

Strawman. Insofar as it’s worth even replying, each faction in the civil war got their arms imports through the part of Lebanon they controlled. Hezbollah didn’t control a major port of entry until after the Israeli withdrawal. Possible sources would include their fellow Shia militia Amal, who did have access to the sea and might not have been averse to cutting them in, the Lebanese army’s stockpiles, and arms diverted from the Israeli-backed militias in south Lebanon. And, no doubt, some of them came from *enter demon state here*.

Agreed that Iran is one of only dozens of countries that have the Soviet-designed Katyusha, but if it’s some other country, then wouldn’t that country be implicated by Israel instead? Because “that country” is irrelevant. Who would you indict - the Soviet Union of 1950-odd for making them in the first place? Random post-Soviet or African state for having a civil war and losing control of the stockpile? Unknown arms dealer for buying them?

Once again, and I’d like you to answer this finally instead of dodging it, if Iran were no threat to Israel, why on _earth_ would they indict Iran as supporting Hezbollah?

Because, as pointed out above, there are political advantages to such a course. It offers an easy answer. It suits the Israeli government to portray itself as struggling against an Iranian-directed world conspiracy against Western civilisation. Politicians frequently lie when it furthers their interests to do so.

Oh, besides which, if there was this huge conspiracy to implicate Iran, in the propaganda-conscious Middle East (that is, unless you think the only propaganda is Israeli), then where are all the frenzied denials from Hezbollah or Iran, regarding their connection? Surely they wouldn’t have kept mum?

They haven’t “kept mum”. They have denied it. Your point is?

Is there any convincing you that you’re simply wrong about this?

Yes. One man, one rocket, or one dollar would do.

Katyusha, which is just the russian generic name for a stalin organ, can be bought on the open market. And the rocket itself isn’t especially hard to make. The USSR has given many away (that is how the leftist palestians got them). It is also no secret that Iran sells them and that fact is in itself as wrong as the US selling weapons before thuis war started

Is there any convincing you that you’re simply wrong about this?

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iran/mrl-iran-specs.htm

It may well be that Iran has or will soon have rockets capable of reaching Israel. Global security also reported that Iranian rocket scientists have been training at Russian facilities. This, I think, is the reason that the Russian Hut and other rockets have been matching speed records previously held by the Russians themselves.

Alex,

>From the global black market in arms. After all, the port and airport of Beirut have been wide open ever since the end of the civil war.

Then if all approaches to Lebanon were hermetically sealed prior to the end of the civil war, how exactly did the arms to fight that civil war appear?

Agreed that Iran is one of only dozens of countries that have the Soviet-designed Katyusha, but if it’s some other country, then wouldn’t that country be implicated by Israel instead? Once again, and I’d like you to answer this finally instead of dodging it, if Iran were no threat to Israel, why on _earth_ would they indict Iran as supporting Hezbollah? They plainly have no problem bucking world opinion when they feel it’s a security issue, so that obviously isn’t it.

Again, what you’re arguing makes no sense. You’re saying that no Iranian men nor rockets could have been smuggled in to Lebanon before the end of the civil war, because the countryside and coast were hermetically sealed. Absolutely no smuggling was possible. And that the rockets brought in later were all brought in from other places than Iran?

I know you’re in love with this idea that Iran has nothing to do with Hezbollah, and love is blind and makes you say that those who criticize that love are maniacs, but please. You’re stretching our credulity awfully far. But at least your argument is clarified: along with never having sent a man to the Lebanon, Iran, and presumably Syria, since Israel also indicts them as a state sponsor of Hezbollah, have now apparently never sent missiles there either? Great–now all you have to do is declare that “money can come from anywhere, so the $50 million per year is an illusion too. There. Iran has absolutely no connection to Hezbollah.”

Well the one and only point upon which I must insist that you concede is this: CONSIDERING the HUGE bulk of articles and expert opinions that I’ve read that assert exactly the opposite (some of which I’ve cited here), and that your and Charly’s opinions are the only such opinions I’ve EVER read (unless you can also point to some huge bulk of documentation supporting your view), will you not allow that it is hardly “maniacal” to imagine that Iran has influence over Hezbollah, and that you should not say that without more cause next time?