**** SCROLL FOR UPDATES **** 

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that:

Forty to fifty percent of Hizbullah’s military capability has been destroyed in the six days of the IDF counter-attack following last Wednesday’s Hizbullah raid in northern Israel, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The IDF, it is understood, believes it needs another week or so minimum to achieve its military goals in terms of alleviating Hizbullah’s capacity to threaten Israel. 

My question: how would they know this without boots on the ground?  Here is the problem.  As long as Hezbollah has men with AK-47s who can run around screaming Allahu Akbar after this is all over, they will claim victory.  This absolutely has to be a grand slam by Israel.  There is no in between, and I fear that Israel holds the fate of the war on terror in their hands.  Radical, militant Islam is emboldened, or it is defeated, and this battle will prove decisive.

Will Israel send boots in, or will they try to do this with sanitized air power and stand-off weapons like artillery?  How will they know about those thousands of rockets inside of homes, buried in the hillsides …

Still watching.

**** UPDATE #1 ****

Iran says through the AP:

TEHRAN, Iran – No part of Israel is safe in the current fighting with Lebanon, Iran’s parliamentary speaker warned Tuesday, referring to the range of guerrilla rockets.

Speaking to a crowd of thousands of anti-Israel demonstrators in Palestine Square, Tehran, Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel told Israelis: “The towns you have built in northern Palestine (Israel) are within the range of the brave Lebanese children. No part of Israel will be safe.”

While the speaker is not among the most influential office-bearers in Iran, Haddad Adel’s comments call into question the Tehran government’s official position that it is not involved in the conflict between Israel and Lebanon. 

There is nothing called into question because there is no question.  Iran is behind it all.

Still watching …

**** UPDATE #2 ****

Bill Roggio over at the Counterterrorism Blog has a roundup of information related to a potential new “buffer zone” right at the border.  It appears that the calculus is not an overwhelming destruction of Hezbollah:

Israel is currently signaling it is interested in establishing a buffer zone on the Israeli border, and not planning a major ground invasion of Lebanon and a large scale advance into the Bekaa Valley. “One of the aims of the [military] operation is to establish a security area in Lebanon, without the presence of IDF soldiers,” Defense Minister Amir Peretz said. “Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz declared that the IDF currently had much better alternatives than to launch a major ground incursion into Lebanon,” reports the Jerusalem Post.

The post ends by saying:

The continual launch of longer range rockets into Israel may change the calculus. Today, the Israeli Air Force destroyed “at least one long-range Iranian missile capable of hitting Tel Aviv.”

I rather hope that Israel revisits the calculus of the current battle.  I am not entirely sure what one long range missile has to do with anything?

***** UPDATE #3 *****

The Washington Times has a good piece on Israeli air capabilities:

Israel is in the best position militarily in its history to mount air strikes against Iran, after a decade of buying U.S.-produced long-range aircraft, penetrating bombs and aerial refueling tankers.
    Tel Aviv has ratcheted up the volume in attacking the hard-line Islamic regime as it fights the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. In the past, Israeli politicians have talked openly of attacking Iranian nuclear sites to prevent the U.S.-designated terror state from building atomic warheads.
    Israel has purchased 25 $84 million F-15I (I for Israel) Ra’am, a special version of the U.S. F-15E long-range interdiction bomber. It also is buying 102 of another long-range tactical jet, the $45 million F-16I Sufa. About 60 have been delivered.
    The Jewish state also is buying 500 U.S. BLU-109 “bunker buster” bombs that could penetrate the concrete protection around some of Iran’s underground facilities, such as the uranium enrichment site at Natanz. The final piece of the enterprise is a fleet of B-707 air-to-air refuelers that could nurse strike aircraft as they made the 900-mile-plus trip inside Iran, dropped their bombs and returned to Israel.
    “They have the capability to strike Iran,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney, a former fighter pilot who has trained with Israelis. “It would be limited, though. They could do 30 to 40 ‘aim points’ in the array. I’m not worried about them hitting the targets. They will suffer losses, but they are capable of doing it.” 

The piece goes on to discuss the fact that Israel has pressured the U.S. on Iran and potential nuclear weapons.

Still watching … and wondering if and when Iran will be dealt with and by whom?

**** UPDATE #4 ****

A view from Israel.  Saul Singer writes a piece carried over at NRO today.  A tantalizing paragraph follows:

Not a single mayor, or even a man-on-the-street can be found, even in the bomb shelters of our bombarded cities, who wants this war to stop a moment before the IDF has finished the job, and the threat from the north is permanently erased.