Geoff Elliott in The Australian, with thanks to JE, examines the larger agenda behind recent headlines:
FIRST the Hezbollah attacks on Israel, now this. Yesterday, Hezbollah’s key sponsors, Tehran, indicated it would not comply with any UN resolutions trying to suspend Iran’s nuclear program.
“Iranians will not accept unfair decisions, even in the framework of resolutions by the international bodies,” Iran’s state-run radio said.
The announcement provides the backdrop to what plenty in Washington are saying about the Hezbollah-Israel conflict. It appears as no coincidence that Hezbollah started to fire rockets into Israel just as the Security Council sat down to draft its resolutions on how to deal with Iran and its ambitions to go nuclear.
“It sure looks an attempt by Iran to remind us (what) it has the capability of doing if we pursue a tough policy towards Iran,” says Philip Gordon, a former White House National Security Council adviser now at Washington think tank Brookings.