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Hizbullah's Decisions Have Upended Its Relations with Shiites, Lebanon, and Iran
(The National-UAE) Michael Young - Hizbullah opened a front against Israel that virtually no one in Lebanon wanted. Entire villages, towns and quarters in Beirut's southern suburbs are now in ruins. Who will rebuild what was destroyed? This time, there is a general belief that there will be no outside money for reconstruction, including from Gulf countries, some of whom contributed a significant amount in 2006. Nor does it seem that Iran can spare funds to rebuild Shiite-dominated areas. Resolving this problem and reviving a traumatized community will easily be a decade-long task, one that will neutralize Hizbullah militarily for many years ahead - as the 2006 war did for just under two decades. What happened to the vaunted "unity of the arenas" strategy that Iran and Hizbullah formulated just last year? The arenas have been unified in ruination, as Lebanon's Shiite-majority districts go the way of Gaza. The Israelis are able to escalate to ever-higher levels of destruction without Iran and its allies being able to do the same. Iran's two most potent regional allies in the fight against Israel - Hizbullah and Hamas - have undermined their respective publics' ability to endure new wars, which has had a crippling effect on their, and Iranian, power.