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  The Hand That Feeds the Fire
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ContributorArmyDem 
Last EditedArmyDem  Jul 21, 2006 07:40pm
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News DateTuesday, July 25, 2006 01:00:00 AM UTC0:0
DescriptionBehind The Crisis: How Iran is wielding its influence to wage a stealthy war against Israel and America.

By Christopher Dickey, Kevin Peraino and Babak Dehghanpisheh
Newsweek

July 24, 2006 issue - The cool rage of Hassan Nasrallah crackled over the telephone line to a Beirut television station. Israeli jets had just tried to kill him from the air, destroying his home and office. "You wanted an open war, and we are ready for an open war," the Hizbullah leader warned. His missile-armed militia would reach deep into Israel. "Our homes will not be the only ones to be destroyed, our children will not be the only ones to die," he vowed. "You wanted to change the rules of the game? You don't know who you're fighting."

He had a point. Israel's nearby enemy was clear enough. The crisis began in Gaza on June 25, when a corporal in the Israeli Army was taken hostage by Hamas guerrillas. Then it exploded across the region last week after Hizbullah guerrillas crossed into Israel to snatch two more soldiers, killing eight. Israel's reaction was swift, brutal and massive. Its forces took the whole of Lebanon hostage, treating the state on its northern border just as it treated the Palestinian territory to its south, tearing apart highways, blockading ports, blowing up the runways and fuel dumps at Beirut's international airport—setting out not only to free the hostages but to eliminate Hizbullah once and for all. Yes, this was war. Nasrallah was right about that.

But battles—and battle lines—are rarely if ever simple in the Middle East. Nasrallah knows that. So do the Israelis, who saw hidden hands behind the Lebanese and Palestinian militants. They accused Syria, which harbors the Hamas leadership in exile and has a longstanding alliance with Hizbullah in Lebanon, of complicity. But they also saw the long arm of their ultimate enemy, Iran.
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