DAILY ALERT

In-Depth Issues:

Thousands of Iranian Soldiers in Lebanon - W. Thomas Smith Jr. (National Review)
    Between 2,000 and 3,000 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps are currently in Lebanon, supporting Lebanese Hizbullah fighters with weapons, military equipment, and cash.
    They are also training them in camps (at least five such camps in the Bekaa Valley and two or three in southern Lebanon) in a variety of infantry/commando operations and terror-bombing techniques.
    See also Hizbullah Show of Force in Christian East Beirut - W. Thomas Smith Jr. (National Review)
    Hizbullah is rehearsing for something big. A few days ago, between 4,000 and 5,000 Hizbullah gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling "show of force," positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city.
    The operation served as a probing action to determine local reaction, and as an exercise to gauge the time required (speed, synchronization, etc.) to achieve control of key points.
    Amazingly, there was no response from the police or the army.
    Hizbullah is jamming cell-phone signals almost daily. Their lookouts are everywhere, and they are watching the people I'm with and me.
    Hizbullah is far better armed, equipped, and tactically proficient than most Americans might realize.
    They are terrorists to be sure, but they are also a very strong Iranian-trained guerrilla force and they seem to be getting a pass from far too many people in high places.

Iran's New Fighter Plane: Technology of Two Generations Ago - Reuben F. Johnson (Weekly Standard)
    The Sa'eqeh (Lightning), the first military aircraft to ever be designed and produced in Iran, is not a modern-age weapon system.
    It is based almost entirely on the old Northrop F-5 fighter, the chief U.S. export fighter of the 1960s and 70s, 166 of which were sold to Iran before the revolution.
    After the embargo was initiated, the Iranian armed forces were able to purchase spares through illegal channels and on the arms black market.
    In one case Iran was able to purchase F-5s and a large stock of spare parts from Ethiopia, which had initially purchased the aircraft from Vietnam. The communist government in Hanoi had captured these aircraft from the South Vietnamese when they took Saigon.
    The Sa'eqeh - a copy of yesterday's military technology and less powerful than the oldest fighter in the U.S. or Israeli air forces - is entirely for show.

Pentagon Readies $1.2 Billion Package to Replenish Israel Air Force War Stocks - Barbara Opall-Rome (Defense News)
    U.S. and Israeli defense officials are hammering out details of a potential $1.2 billion arms sale to the Israel Air Force, whose inventory of front-line missiles, munitions and other expendables was depleted in the summer 2006 Lebanon War.
    The series of U.S. administration-proposed Foreign Military Sales (FMS), presented to Congress in four packages, breezed through the customary 50-day legislative review process that ended in late September.

News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:

Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):

Observations:

Denial and Hope in the Mideast - Mortimer Zuckerman (U.S. News)

• Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, came to America to stick his thumb in our eye and deliver a sanitized version of "Death to America!" and "The Holocaust Never Occurred." Ahmadinejad's use of the Goebbels technique of the Big Lie has a purpose: to undermine the legitimacy of the State of Israel. It is of a piece with the refusal of Palestinians to this day to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist, even though some acknowledge the fact that Israel does exist. It is also one of the main reasons that efforts to broker a peaceful outcome in the Middle East have thus far been futile. And it will likely overhang the newest peace initiative, which the Bush administration hopes to launch this fall.
• This campaign of repudiation cuts deeply into the Israeli psyche. The Israelis know that the Jews have lived in the Land of Israel without interruption for nearly 4,000 years. They know that, except for a short Crusader kingdom, they are the only people who have had independent sovereignty on this land. And they are the only people for whom Jerusalem has been their capital.
• They are not a foreign occupier because the State of Israel is the child not of European colonialism but rather of Ottoman decolonialization. It was that Jewish historical bond that led the League of Nations 85 years ago to establish the right of the Jewish people to reconstitute a Jewish homeland on all the territories west of the Jordan River, all the way to the Mediterranean.
• That same right to a national home was sanctioned again 59 years ago by the new United Nations. After an Arab invasion 40 years ago, the UN passed a resolution affirming Israel's right to "secure and recognized boundaries." As Winston Churchill noted in 1922, "The Jews are in Palestine by right, not sufferance." The refusal of the Palestinians and of Ahmadinejad to recognize this has, for decades, undercut Israeli confidence in their true motives.
• Jerusalem is the site of the binding of Isaac by Abraham, the place where David built the altar on the threshing floor of Aravna to halt the plague. The Temple Mount was where Jesus was brought as an infant and where he later chased away the money-changers. Mentioned 20 times in the New Testament, the Temple Mount is one of the cornerstones of the Judeo-Christian ethical tradition of the West. Yet it is all denied by the Palestinians. This obduracy, combined with waves of terrorism, has shattered the Israeli-Palestinian relationship.