Does Iran Have Pocket Aces?

I agree with Michael Totten who sums it up about as best as can be done:
"War is coming again, and it’s coming like Christmas."

As I stated in part two of my thoughts on the "victory" for Hezbollah, the Israeli citizenry wants the gloves to come off. No namby-pamby, PR-sensitive, hyper Geneva Convention (this doesn't help), short window of opportunity type of war. They want Hezbollah wiped out and if they have to pave over southern Lebanon, so be it. Israelis have given Lebanon, and its internationalist cheerleaders, one last chance to decide if Lebanon wants to be Lebanon or if it wants to be Iran. Unfortunately, I don't think Lebanon has much power to make a firm choice, the cancer might have spread too far.

It is unlikely that Israeli leadership will act with half measures when they are compelled to act again, the only open question is the threshold of their tolerance going forward. The lack of will was the yawning gap this time around, not bullets or bombs. With that gap corrected, I would be reluctant to provoke the Israelis again given their firepower advantage. Beyond that though, Israelis have a strong culture of applied mathematics and economic theorizing. I would give them the strategic advantage in using tools like game theory and situational planning in the battles to come. Perhaps I am just an ignorant, ethnocentric American but I don't see alot of evidence that Hezbollah or the Iranian military establishment are heavy proponents of game theory and advanced situational warfare. Historically, militant fervor driven mainly by religious zeal tends not to be long on the scientific approach to war, so this hypothesis would seem a reasonable starting point. Indeed, we can see that Hezbollah and the Arab world continually focus on the intangible and symbolic in proclaiming victory and arousing enhanced popular support against Israel and the West. I just don't think the Arab world has the culture and the resources to focus on sophisticated war-gaming and planning; their expertise, it seems, is limited to populism and arming themselves. (I could be wrong of course, so I'd love to hear from anyone more in the know than I about how, say, the Iranian military actually functions.)

And as I said, I think that this Israeli "core competancy", so to speak, is likely in full swing now, so in the long run this little foray on the part of Iran/Syria/Hezbollah would not appear to be a brilliant long term strategic move, unless they have the military/strategic equivalent of pocket aces.

Bottom line: If Iran/Hezbollah were to provoke again, they are likely to meet a different response altogether, and to preserve the all-important symbolism and avoid losing face across the Arab world, Iran and its proxies would have to bring much more punch to the battle. We are in dangerous times indeed. I am devoutly pessimistic.