The fog of war gradually burns off. Captain Ed surveys the landscape, and sees the Hezbos not so happy with how things went.
The war stripped more than a few masks from the players in the region. Nasrallah now has to contend with the fallout from his impatient attack on Israel, from the Lebanese and also from the Iranians who had wanted Hezbollah and their rockets as a threat to be feared, not an attack to be weathered and then discounted. His image as the protector of Lebanon has been shattered, and the Lebanese now see him as a threat instead of a savior. After years of Syrian control, they now have to recognize that a large portion of their country is under de facto Iranian occupation, and they’re not happy about it.
This has eroded the veneer of victory that Nasrallah placed on the cease-fire. Western commentators and no shortage of Israeli pundits pointed to Nasrallah’s claims to have prevailed as a devastating propaganda offensive that would make Israel and the West look weaker than ever. Arabs have taken a more realistic view of the war’s results, including the fact that Nasrallah has to make those claims from undisclosed locations to this day. They scoff at his bravado, noting that Nasrallah’s vaunted rocket attacks killed more Israeli Arabs than anyone else and proved singularly ineffective as a deterrent to the Israeli incursion.
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