Below The Beltway

According to reports out of the Middle East, Iran and Syria have agreed between themselves that they will not allow Israel to defeat Hezbollah in the current conflict with Israel.

Iran and Syria have agreed to work together to keep Hezbollah from being destroyed in its fight against Israel, Syria sources have said.

The sources, quoted in the Qatar newspaper Al-Watan, said the two governments have agreed that Hezbollah must not be defeated politically or militarily and they have agreed to do all they can to prevent such an outcome, ynetnews.com reported Wednesday.

The ynetnews report goes into more detail about the reasons behind this apparent decision:

According to Israeli estimations and reports in Arab media, Syria and Iran are working to support Hizbullah and help it survive the conflict with Israel. The aim is to safeguard the organization so that it can serve the two states in a future confrontation, around Iran’s nuclear program for example.

Qatari newspaper al-Watan said that Damascus and Teheran reached an agreement according to which a Hizbullah defeat must be avoided, and that supporting this organization and Palestinian organizations in the territory will serve the strategic interests of Damascus and Teheran.

Israel, on the other hand, is sending a message to the Syrians to be careful about getting involved too closely in the war:

Israel sent a message to Syria through Jordan, warning the country against arming and supporting Hezbollah, a diplomatic source in Tel Aviv told ynetnews.com. The warning said Israel was aware of weapons convoys traveling from Syria to Lebanon, and that Damascus is frequently the site of meetings between Hezbollah and Iranian officials. The source did not confirm whether the message included a warning of military action against the country.

The one event that could change the course of this war would be the Israelis catching the Syrians red-handed funnelling weapons to Hezbollah. If that were to happen, it would give Israel all the excuse it needed to launch attacks into Syria proper in an effort to disrupt the weapons convoys. What might happen after that is anyone’s guess.

In other news, a Hezbollah rocket killed three people today in Nazareth, home of Jesus and one of Christianity’s holy sites:

NAZARETH, Israel — Hezbollah rockets Wednesday slammed into this Arab-Israeli town revered as the place Jesus grew up, killing two young brothers as they played outside and wounding 18 other people, Israeli authorities said.

The attack on Nazareth _ the first by the Lebanese guerrillas to reach near important holy sites _ came hours after Israeli troops engaged in a fierce firefight with Hezbollah inside Lebanon, a clash that killed two soldiers and one militant.

Ironically, most of the people who live in Nazareth are Arab.