Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad famously described Israel as a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the face of the earth". Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is more hard-line than his predecessor, told students in Tehran that a new wave of Palestinian attacks would be enough to finish off Israel. This in October 2005. Did we listen? Kofi?
This is the same Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proudly defying the UN and building a nuclear bomb. Kofi? You have anything to add on this?
And why do we blame the UN? Because the UN has been watching Hezbollah take over southern Lebanon, fortify itself, and attack Israel repeatedly for years. Officially called the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, commonly called Unifil, these "peacekeepers" have been between Lebanon and Israel for 28 years at a cost of about one hundred million dollars a year.
And what have they been doing for 28 years?
"They [Unifil] are barely able to take care of themselves," said Timur Goksel, referring to the UN peacekeepers. "How can you expect them to do their work?"
The blue-helmeted UN Unifil soldiers include a moderately trained and semi-disciplined Irish brigade. These Irish UN troops were routinely referred to as the "whisky army" by both Islam and Jewish observers who came into contact with them. The Israeli-backed Christian militiamen - known by the Unifil acronym LAUIs (Lebanese Armed and Uniformed by Israel) countered any effort by the Irish troops to stray far from their base at Camp Shamrock.
And I hate to throw red meat to red necks but who is commanding Unifil just now? The French.
Finally, why do we refer to Hezbollah as a "nation"? Because they have all the trappings of a nation.
Hezbollah controls its own media, runs hotels and restaurants, and operates a thriving economy in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah provides social services that the government of Lebanon cannot afford to supply. It controls some 25% of the Lebanese land mass and almost half a million people. It runs its own schools, elderly centers, clinics, hospitals and libraries.
Hezbollah has seats in Lebanon's governing councils. But more importantly, Hezbollah owns southern Lebanon and is the law in that region near Israel.
But what makes Hezbollah very different, in fact unique in the history of stateless terror groups to date, is its access to very sophisticated missiles and other weapons. When did any group but a nation have Chinese-made C-802 "Silkworm" missiles capable of hitting an Israeli warship before? Kofi?
How else is Hezbollah more like a "state" than a terror group? According to Israel's Dr. Boaz Ganor, the deputy dean of the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy and the founder of the Institute for Counter Terrorism in Israel said, "The Hizbullah has succeeded in creating a situation in which it deters Israel more than Israel deters it. It is unprecedented for a terrorist organization to deter a state and not vice versa."
For the last 50 years deterrence meant nuclear weapons. Is that next for Hezbollah? Kofi?
We do not know, and may never know, if Hezbollah possesses or has access to weapons of mass destruction or really long-range ballistic missiles. But certainly Israeli military planners fear and are at least somewhat deterred by Hezbollah because of what they have done in the past and what they may yet do in the future.
Mr. Carey has been a military analyst for thirty years.
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