The Latest From Armageddon's Doorstep

Operation Summer Deluge continues to expand and intensify, as, to hear Hezbollah tell it, rockets keep falling on Israeli cities from an alternate dimension that not even Allah himself has anything to do with:

Israel imposed a blockade on Lebanon by land, sea and air on hursday, striking the capital's airport twice, cutting off its ports and wrecking bridges and roads in attacks that killed at least 47 people in the last two days, nearly all of them Lebanese civilians. Israel said the radical Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah fired 150 rockets into northern Israel, including two that reached the port city of Haifa. Israeli jets repeatedly crossed over Beirut before dawn Friday. At least two explosions were heard, and antiaircraft fire and flares lit up the night sky.

For both sides, the fighting appeared to cross a psychological barrier that had earlier contained the frequent clashes between Israel and Hezbollah. The Israeli attacks on Beirut's airport - a morning strike on runways and an evening attack on fuel depots - were the first since Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. After the rockets crashed into Haifa, Hezbollah denied firing them.

Nice to see the WaPo report ludicrous Islamist denials as gospel while portraying the IDF as beyond bestial. You can't break their anti-Israel template with armor-piercing ammunition.

The "constraining psychological barrier" isn't mutual, but entirely the unilateral "restraint" that the Israelis have been "exercising" for the past fifteen years. That they have "crossed" it reflects the fact that they see where it has gotten them: besieged in their own homes. All "land for peace" has done is "constrain" the size of the territory they have left to defend. Small wonder that they have chosen to fight on the "land" occupied by their immediate enemies.

The strategic barrier remains the border with Syria. That will be the tripwire between the current, still-containable level of hostilities, and a regional conflagration. Which is more than reason enough to be looking for the Iranians to find some other way of dragging the Israelis across it in the days ahead.

The "Twelfth Imam" won't change his itinerary just for Lebanon, after all.

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Here might be one of the mullahs' gambits:

A missile fired by Hezbollah, not an unmanned drone laden with explosives, damaged an Israeli warship off Lebanon, the army said Saturday. Iranian troops helped fire the missile, a senior intelligence official said. One sailor was killed and three were missing.

The intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information, said about 100 Iranian soldiers are in Lebanon and helped fire the Iranian-made, radar-guided C-102 at the ship late Friday.

The attack alarmed Israel because initial information indicated the guerrillas had used a drone for the first time to attack Israeli forces.

But the army's investigation showed that Hezbollah had fired an Iranian-made missile at the vessel from the shores of Lebanon, said Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan.

"We can confirm that it was hit by an Iranian-made missile launched by Hezbollah. We see this as very profound fingerprint of Iranian involvement in Hezbollah," Nehushtan said in an interview with the Associated Press.

It seems to me that Iranian troops firing missiles at Israeli warships is scarcely any less alarming, or provocative, for what it clearly discloses about Iran's aggressive intentions. They appear to be determined, even obsessed, with goading the Jews into crossing that line in the sand.

The question at this point is what the mullahgarchy will do if Israel refuses to take that step. Just how desperate are they for Armageddon? Can they afford to let Plan R stall?