The Iranian People unlike some of its Leaders are not suicidal and know that any attack which caused mass Israeli casualties could send Iran and its puppets (Hamas and Hezbollah), back to the stone age.

obama gifted iran an advanced us uav that was downed in iran. obama refused the us army's advice to either capture or destroy the uav. the uav could be reverse engineered and most likely it was. hezbollah will have to be destroyed completely in the near future.

1000 dead and probably at least twice as many seriously wounded and incapacitated out of 15,000? And those numbers are increasing, daily. That is 20% of their force and rising. No army can take this kind of degradation. They will have weapons but without men, those weapons are useless. I might add that there are only 1.5 million Shia in Lebanon. One thousand dead in no small number. That is like the US losing 200,000 dead - and achieving nothing.

so: what's new Pussycat??

Let them both butcher each other for a very long time.

Facilitate anti Assad parties and let them deal with the shia-alawi alliance, their own way. Already Assad & co. can scarcely control Damas routes from the south. Soon they will fight in Damas suburbs and retreat to Alep region, while the hunt for the shia infidels will spread to Lebanon. Once this done nobody will complain if we blast jihadist militants from al Qaeda or ISIS. Who will ever complain? US, Russia, China, EU, human rights? Everybody will be more than happy we do it, while jihad spreads into western cities.

just like our(us) firepower, idf's firepower is hamsung by a vocal, significant fraction of civil society that will scream bloody murder if it was activity used to to full effect. that is a key statement, for it says alot about how politicians weigh its application. these politicians do not fear the jidhadists as much as they fear the fallout of resulting puppet show to the ecomony and civic order. it serves as a natural break to have a vocal anti war crowd, but to cut ones throat for their sake only makes the day of reconning all the more deadly. their efforts to prevent war are sadily going to be proved wrong sided. all great human unheavals have occurred as the result of hope tumping fear in the short term, only to have it explode in worst possible manner and having to confront the original fear on a vastly larger scale. history does repeat itself.

good article. necessary article. but important to note that hezbollah and iran recently starting to have several losses in syria. they may be overextended in iraq, syria and yemen. if israel can 'help' the sunnis a bit and bring the war to lebanon, then hezbollah could be destroyed without israel needing to put troops on the ground. if not, hezbollah will have to be completely destroyed, and the casualties for israel will be very, very high.