| Iran's Grand Plan As Israeli troops moved into southern Lebanon, they began coming to the realization that the infrastructure of bunkers, launching sites, and missiles that Hezbollah built up is even more elaborate and sophisticated than Israel had expected. All of it was done through the financial support, bidding and training from Iran. Israel is now estimating that Iran has spent billions of dollars to create this network. Why? The answer is clear and speaks to why Israel's chief of staff Dan Halutz has described this battle as possibly Israel's most crucial since the War of Independence. Iran is generating a three-pronged threat to Israel's very existence. By developing a nuclear weapon, by arming Hezbollah to the teeth, and by public statements of its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran is trying to recreate the idea that Israel's existence as a Jewish state is not a sure thing, that the notion that Israel is now a permanent entity, if not a beloved one, which had taken hold in the Middle East in recent years, is not true. Israel, the United States, and indeed the entire civilized world must understand the nature of this threat now and must not equivocate in combating all three dimensions of this sinister Iranian strategy. Undoubtedly, the huge infrastructure that Iran has built up with Hezbollah in south Lebanon would have been expanded in the coming years in parallel with Iran's nuclear development so that the time would arrive when Iran could threaten Israel from Teheran with a nuclear bomb and from Lebanon with chemically-tipped missiles. Indeed, it wasn't the extremist Ahmadinejad who expressed Iranian intentions most clearly but the more "moderate" Iranian leader Rafsanjani who several years ago chillingly said with regard to the nuclear issue that Israel is a tiny country and one nuclear bomb would devastate the country while Iran was a large country that could sustain ten such bombs. This is what Israel's war against Hezbollah is about. It is to begin to reverse Iran's implementation of its plan for Israel's destruction. Of course, it is not Israel's problem alone because Iran's aspirations threaten the Gulf states, ensure nuclear proliferation throughout the region, and menace the west through terrorism and the spread of Islamic extremism. The west should be fully supporting Israel, as has the United States, in this struggle for its own interests. At the very least, the world must understand that Israel will defend itself and do everything in its power to destroy Hezbollah and combat the Iranian threat. It has no choice. | 
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