Iran's War...

Isn't this really a conflict between Iran and the United States?

The second analysis came from Hussein Shariatmadari, also a top aide to Khamenehi and director of Iran's main daily newspaper Kayhan (Universe).

Shariatmadari believes that with the fall of Communism, the task of challenging the "Infidel" West, under US leadership, in setting the global agenda, has devolved to the Islamic Republic and its Khomeinist ideology. In an editorial bearing the title of "This Is Our War", Shariatmadari made it clear that Hezbollah was fighting not for prisoners, the Shabaa farms or even "Arab causes", whatever they may be at any given time, but for Iran in its broader struggle to prevent the US from creating "an American Middle East."

The consensus in Tehran is that American power is peaking out and that the West as a whole is entering a period of historic decline. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is convinced that it is the turn of rising new powers, brimming with energy and ambition, sustained by strong demographic trends, and ready for endless sacrifice and suffering, to provide humanity with leadership.

Seen in that context the ultimate control of the current war may not be in the hands of either Israel or Hezbollah.

As this war continues, both sides would discover each other's threshold of pain and learn to live with it. Israel has lost 70 soldiers while Hezbollah admits the loss of some 60 fighters. Both could live for a long time with such limited losses.

Does this mean endless war in which Lebanese and Israelis, mostly civilians, will die in what is, in fact, a conflict between the United States and Iran?