Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah has castigated Israel and U.S.-allied Arab countries as Israeli troops press further into Gaza, but he has also refused to unleash Hezbollah’s rockets, which could wreak havoc in northern Israel. So why, as Tom Ricks wonders, hasn’t Nasrallah joined the battle?

Because he isn’t suicidal. IDF generals have made clear that another war with Hezbollah would likely be far more destructive than the 2006 confrontation and would likely include a ground invasion. Hezbollah is adept at fighting an insurgency in South Lebanon because they have always been able to draw on the support of the Lebanese Shia and capitalize on a weak or complicit central government in Beirut. If Hezbollah initiated a war with Israel, there is no guarantee that it would benefit from either of these factors.

“If they start something, they know the biggest loser will be their constituency, the Shia community of Lebanon,” former UN Interim Force in Lebanon spokesman Timur Goksel told me. Many of the predominantly Shia villages in South Lebanon have not yet been fully reconstructed from the Israeli assault in 2006. The Shia support Hezbollah because it represents their sectarian interests, provides social services, and defends them from Israel. Hezbollah does not want to test whether their constituency is ready to once again pay the price for furthering its international agenda.

In the larger Lebanese political scene, this is an awkward time for military adventurism. The pro-Western forces in the government have insisted on a “national dialogue” to determine a national defense strategy, which could constrain Hezbollah’s use of its militia. Hezbollah and its allies have managed to stall this discussion, but if Hezbollah were to unilaterally launch a war against Israel they would be subject to renewed pressure from their domestic opponents.

Lebanon is also gearing up for parliamentary elections on June 7, and Hezbollah hopes to win enough seats to be the primary player in a government of its own. The near-unanimous condemnation of Israel’s actions in Lebanon plays into Hezbollah’s hard-line stance towards Israel, and puts America’s allies in Lebanon in a difficult position. For Hezbollah, using the Gaza issue to sweep into power is a far better option than launching a war it cannot hope to win.

Photo: ANWAR AMRO/AFP/Getty Images

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is hitting all the Middle East power centers in a two-day tour of the region. First, he held talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at Sharm el-Sheikh. Then it's off to Ramallah to meet with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, before landing in Jerusalem in time for dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. On day two, Sarkozy jets off to Lebanon and Syria.

The French president has tasked himself with the modest goal of negotiating an immediate ceasefire to the carnage in Gaza. Even if he fails to score a diplomatic victory, his whirlwind tour will no doubt represent a triumph of travel booking.

Sarkozy's extremely personal brand of diplomacy has taken him to over 40 countries in the first year and a half of his Presidency. His hyperactive travel schedule has spawned a long list of diplomatic initiatives: he went to Damascus to meet with President Bashar al-Assad, and attempted to enlist the Syrian president in joining his Union of the Mediterranean. He traveled to Moscow and Tblisi during the Russian invasion of Georgia, attempting to arrange a ceasefire.

He visited Abu Dhabi to sign a deal establishing a French naval base in the emirate, making it the only Western power other than the United States to have a permanent military installation in the Gulf. He paired with Gordon Brown to launch an initiative aimed at ending the genocide in Darfur, caused a diplomatic row with its traditional ally Morocco by first visiting its regional rival Algeria, and enraged many Africans by highlighting the positive aspects of European colonialism during a speech in Senegal.

All this travel has caused France's 2009 travel and entertainment budget for Sarkozy to balloon 29% over the previous year, to $55 million. The French taxpayers are getting precious few diplomatic victories for their money, but many headlines. And that seems to suit them just fine. Sarkozy's trips have raised France's international profile, much to the pleasure of many French voters. Whether the people of Gaza will reap any of the benefits of Sarkozy's diplomacy, however, remains to be seen.

Photo: AFP/Getty Images

One week later, Zaidi-mania shows no sign of slowing down. The Turkish company that makes the shoe Muntadar al-Zaidi threw at President Bush has seen demand for the thick-soled model explode:

Baydan has received orders for 300,000 pairs of the shoessince the attack, more than four times the number his companysold each year since the model was introduced in 1999. Thecompany plans to employ 100 more staff to meet demand, he said.

“Model 271” is exported to markets including Iraq, Iran,Syria and Egypt. Customers in Iraq ordered 120,000 pairs thisweek and some Iraqis offered to set up distribution companiesfor the shoe, Baydan said.

They also claim to be in talks with a U.S. distributor.

Ilker Akgungor/Getty Images

An undersea cable near Egypt in the Mediterranean was cut today, disrupting Internet access for millions:

The main damage through is to the four submarine cables running across the Mediterranean and through the Suez Canal.

It is thought that 65% of traffic to India was down, while services to Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan and Pakistan have also been severely affected.

The cause of the cut is unknown though there was some seismic activity recorded near Malta. This certainly seems like a pretty serious story:

Jonathan Wright - director of wholesale products at Interoute which manages part of the optical fibre network - told the BBC that the effects of the break would be felt for many days.

"This will grind economies to a halt for a short space of time," he said "If you look at, say, local financial markets who trade with European and US markets, the speed at which they get live data will be compromised." [...]

"We've lost three out of four lines. If the fourth cable breaks, we're looking at a total blackout in the Middle East," said Mr Wright.

"These three circuits account for 90% of the traffic and we're going to see more international phone calls dropping and a huge degradation in the quality of local internet,"

 

If financial transactions as far away as Singapore were really blocked by a minor undersea earthquake near Malta, it's a pretty sobering reminder of the fragile physical ties that make our virtual world possible.

Shoe-chucking journo Muntadar al-Zaidi is already an icon of Iraq's anti-American opposition. But ladies, did you know he's also single? Some Middle Eastern dads apparently see him as marriage material as well.

An Egyptian man called Zaidi's brother earlier this week to offer his daughter as a wife for the imprisoned celebrity. The daughter, a 20-year-old university student, was apparently receptive to the idea, saying:

"This is something that would honor me. I would like to live in Iraq, especially if I were attached to this hero."

There may be some competition though. The AP reports today that the father of a large family in the West Bank is also offering Zaidi one of his daughters, plus dowry.

When he gets out of jail, I see a reality show in this guy's future.

AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images

Today, the last publicly viewable statue of fascist Spanish dictator Francisco Franco on the European continent was taken down in the city of Santander:

To commemorate this occasion, here's a look at some other notable statue-topplings:

Nov. 2, 1956: Residents of Budapest, Hungary, destroy a statue of Stalin during a demonstration against communist domination. The statue had been toppled Oct. 23, 1956, at 9:30 p.m.

Aug. 22, 1991: A crowd watches the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka (a predecessor of the KGB), being toppled in Moscow.

Aug. 23, 1991: The statue of Lenin is dismantled in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius as the government banned the Communist Party. Lithuania was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 and declared its independence in 1990.

April 9, 2003: Iraqis watch a statue of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein falling in Baghdad. Before it fell, a U.S. marine had briefly covered its head with an American flag. The impression it conveyed of conquest rather than liberation prompted the U.S. military to bar display of the U.S. flag in most circumstances.

Nov. 23, 2003: Protesters topple a papier-mâché statue of U.S. President George W. Bush in central London. They were demonstrating against the state visit of Bush to Britain and the war in Iraq.

Oct. 13, 2007: A man jumps on a statue of former Mexican President Vicente Fox in Boca del Rio. The statue, which was going to be unveiled the next day, was knocked down by a group of unidentified people.

Photos: RAFA RIVAS/AFP/Getty Images, AFP/Getty Images, ANATOLY SAPRONENKOV/AFP/Getty Images, WOJTEK DRUSZCZ/AFP/Getty Images, PATRICK BAZ/AFP/Getty Images, EVA-LOTTA JANSSON/AFP/Getty Images, SAUL RAMIREZ/AFP/Getty Images

The truce between Hamas and Israel in Gaza is nearing its end, and may have, for all practical purposes, already expired. While the ceasefire will officially terminate on December 19th, over 90 Qassam rockets and 70 mortar shells have been fired from Gaza into southern Israel during the past month.

The approach of Dec. 19 has created an interesting split within the Hamas leadership. Speaking from Damascus, the exiled leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, announced definitively that the truce would expire on the 19th. He was quickly contradicted by Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas leader in Gaza, who declared that Hamas had not taken its final position.

And it's not only the Palestinians who are embroiled in a leadership struggle. Lagging behind in the polls to the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu, Kadima Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has recently been more aggressive in condemning Hamas. She told a group of high school students on Monday that Israel "cannot tolerate an extreme Islamic state on its southern border," and had previously remarked that she was "ashamed" about the state of the Gaza truce.

Further complicating matters, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah has also called for open-ended protests in Beirut to protest the "siege" of Gaza. With Lebanese Parliamentary elections scheduled for May, Nasrallah no doubt believes that he can rail against the situation in Gaza to cement his pro-Palestinian bona fides while not actually launching an attack on Israel, which could provoke an even more destructive conflict than the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war.

Gaza seems destined to serve as a political football as all of these different actors vie for power. Until the conclusion of the elections in the Middle East next year, Gaza will likely be forced to muddle through -- neither at peace nor in a state of open war.

Photo: MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/Getty Images

The journalist who threw a shoe at George W. Bush has been badly mistreated in jail, according to his brother:

Muntadar al-Zaidi has suffered a broken hand, broken ribs and internal bleeding, as well as an eye injury, his older brother, Dargham, told the BBC. [...]

Mr Zaidi told our correspondent that despite offers from many lawyers his brother has not been given access to a legal representative since being arrested by forces under the command of Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser.

The head of the Iraqi journalists union contradicts Zaidi's report, but I would hope that at a bare minimum, President Bush takes steps to ensure that this man is not being beaten for the crime of embarrassing him.

In fact, if Bush was in any way sincere after the incident when he said, “That’s what people do in a free society, draw attention to themselves,” he really ought to request that Zaidi be pardoned. This wouldn't just be a magnanimous act. It would be smart politics as well.

The longer Zaidi stays in jail and the worse he is treated, the more likely he is to become a symbol of anti-Americanism in Iraq. What better way for Bush to show he wasn't rattled by the incident and neutralize Zaidi's symbolic value than by pardoning him?

Would freeing Zaidi rehabilitate Bush's reputation in Iraq? Of course not. But it might take away one headache for his successor.

Photo: Abid Katib/Getty Images

With many of the Cabinet-level posts in the new Obama administration already filled, the identity of one big position -- the next U.S. ambassador to Iraq -- remains up in the air. Obama's national security team is convening today and the question of who will act as America's day-to-day emissary to the Iraqi government will likely be on the docket. So, who is in line to be our next man in Baghdad? Here are four possibilities:

Ryan Crocker

Former Ambassador to Syria and Israel Edward Djerejian pushed the possibility of keeping on a former member of his staff, current U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker. "He has a record of seeking out difficult assignments," Djerejian told me. "He knows the region like the back of his hand, [and] he works well with the military." Among other impressive assignments, Crocker served in the U.S. Embassy in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war, and became ambassador at the conclusion of the war in 1990. He also was sent to Kabul to reopen the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan in January 2002, and served as U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan from 2004 to 2007.

David Satterfield

One person who may be able to duplicate Crocker's knowledge of the Middle East, while still allowing Obama to claim the mantle of "change," is another career diplomat, David Satterfield. He currently serves as senior advisor to Secretary Rice on Iraq, and had previously been the deputy chief of mission in Baghdad. He has also served abroad in Tunis, Jeddah, Beirut, and Damascus, as well as a stint in Washington as director of the State Department's Office of Israel and Arab-Israeli Affairs.

Frank Ricciardone

Ricciardone served as the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt from 2005 until earlier this year. Ricciardone has long experience working with Kurdish groups in the north of Iraq. He served as U.S. political advisor for Operation Provide Comfort, an effort by the US and Turkish military to protect Kurds persecuted by Saddam Hussein following the first Gulf War. In 1999, he was selected as the State Department's special coordinator for the transition of Iraq, tasked with coordinating the overthrow of Hussein's regime with Iraq opposition groups.

Richard Holbrooke

Journalist and blogger Spencer Ackerman endorsed the former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke for the position. Ackerman speculates that Holbrooke could use his experience mediating in the Balkans to help Iraq overcome its sectarian obstacles. Having evidently missed out on a place in the cabinet, serving as U.S. ambassador to Iraq is one of the few remaining positions appropriate to Holbrooke's stature. However, he lacks the Middle East experience of the other candidates, as well as fluency in Arabic, which is crucial for public diplomacy.

These are some names currently grinding through the D.C. rumor mill. Who do you think would be right for the job?

Photos: CEERWAN AZIZ/AFP/Getty Images, Mohammed Jalil-Pool/Getty Images, cairo.usembassy.gov, Alex Wong/Getty Images

Al-Baghdadia, the satellite channel that employs Muntather al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush today, is calling for his release in a video posted on its Web site.

Meanwhile, Zaidi is probably on his way to becoming a folk hero in the Arab world. A headline on Lebanon's As-Safir newspaper gives you some of the flavor, "Double Shoe-Strike Almost Hit Bush in His Face: This Is the Iraqis' Farewell Kiss, Dog."

If you haven't yet seen the video of the incident, check it out here:

Die Welt reports from Baghdad:

An Iraqi reporter called visiting U.S. President George W. Bush a "dog" in Arabic on Sunday and threw his shoes at him during a news conference in Baghdad. Iraqi security officers and U.S. secret service agents leapt at the man and dragged him struggling and screaming out of the room where Bush was giving a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

At least Helen Thomas stuck with questions, for the most part.

When asked about the incident shortly after, Bush made light of it. "I didn't feel the least threatened by it," he said.

In Arab culture, hitting someone with a shoe is considered a grave insult.

More photos:

Photos: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Steven Lee Meyers has more:

[Bush's] appearance at a news conference here was interrupted by a man, apparently a journalist, who leaped to his feet and threw one shoe at the president, who ducked and narrowly missed being struck. Chaos ensued. He threw a second shoe, which also narrowly missed Mr. Bush. The man was roughly 12 feet from the lecturn in the center of two rows of chairs, about two feet from a pool of reporters. A scrum of security agents descended on the man and wrestled him, first to the floor and then out of the ornate room where the news conference was taking place. 

Apparently, the full insult was, "This is a farewell kiss, dog." Guess the Iraqi press has a ways to go.

UPDATE: The BBC has the video:

According to McClatchy's Adam Ashton, the man's name is Muthathar al Zaidi and works for an Iraqi satellite television station:

Friends said he covered the U.S. bombing of Baghdad's Sadr City area earlier this year and had been "emotionally influenced" by the destruction he'd seen. They also said he'd been kidnapped in 2007 and held for three days by Shiite Muslim gunmen.

I just noticed that the Jerusalem Post has a top-level link on its Web site called "Iranian Threat":

Kind of unusual for a newspaper, no?

Haaretz, in contrast, plays it straight:

UPDATE: A journo friend in Beirut writes in:

I am loving the Foreign Policy blog as always, but I am curious exactly how Haaretz "plays it straight" with sections titled "Diplomacy" and "Defense"?

I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't really notice this myself until I'd been reading Haaretz for months. It's still the best source I've come across for Israel-Palestine related news.

Any Passport readers out there know how to say "change we can believe in" in the Iraqi dialect? Reuters reports:

Barack Obama's election in the United States has already had an impact in Iraq, inspiring some black Iraqis to run in a forthcoming election in the hope of ending what they call centuries of discrimination.

"Obama's win gave us moral strength," said Jalal Chijeel, secretary of the Free Iraqi Movement.

He said the group would be the first to field black candidates in any Iraqi poll when it joins provincial elections scheduled for January 31.

There seems to be a consensus in Washington about the United States' need to engage in talks with Iran. But how and when? Peter Baker reports on the debate brewing over this latter question:

Two leading research groups plan to issue a report Tuesday calling on him to move quickly to open direct diplomatic talks with Iran without preconditions.

The report by the groups, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations, urges Mr. Obama to put all issues on the table with Iran, including its nuclear program. The proposal calls for "swift early steps" to exploit a "honeymoon" period between his inauguration and the internal political jockeying preceding Iran's presidential elections in June.

The report breaks with experts on Iran who say Mr. Obama should wait until a clear winner emerges in Iran and calls instead for "treating the Iranian state as a unitary actor rather than endeavoring to play its contending factions against one another." The report also calls on him to back Israeli peace talks with Syria.

Karim Sadjadpour, a prominent Iran analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has been arguing that the United States should "refrain from any grand overtures to Tehran" until after the Iranian elections. Sadjadpour worries that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the current president, would otherwise be able to say that his hardline policies brought the Great Satan to its knees.

The trick, then, is to show enough leg that you help bring a more responsible government to power in Tehran, but not so much that the United States looks weak. A delicate task, no doubt.

UPDATE: The report is here. 

The International Atomic Energy Agency's probe into the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor, which Israel bombed last year, has been hobbled by a mysterious lack of satellite footage. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei referred to the absence of commercial satellite footage of the site after Israel's attack last year as "baffling."

Adding to the intrigue, the Associated Press quotes unnamed diplomats as claiming that IAEA officials are considering the possibility that Syria, or another country with an interest in a coverup, bought the rights to all the commercial satellite photos. Others have proposed more mundane explanations for the lack of satellite imagery, pointing out that the countries involved gave out very few details after the attack, making it difficult for companies to find the site immediately after the bombing.

Coupled with last month's IAEA report, which stated that the building that was bombed shared similarities with a type of nuclear reactor design and that inspectors had found trace amounts of uranium particles there, the site in northern Syria continues to raise more questions than answers. Certainly, there are already enough doubts to delay Syria's request for U.N. aid in planning a commercial nuclear reactor. And if definitive proof emerges that Syria was covertly building a nuclear plant, it could derail the much-anticipated American-Syrian rapprochement.

Photo: SAMUEL KUBANI/AFP/Getty Images

Curious about what's going on in the photograph above? To find out, check out FP's latest photo essay, "Gaza's (Literal) Underground Economy."

Photo: Abid Katib/Getty Images

One untold story about the security pact that the Iraqi cabinet approved today is the role of Iran. Mary Beth Sheridan's article in the Washington Post leaves this clue:

[T]he accord was attacked by Iraqi politicians when a near-final draft was distributed last month. Some explained their turnabout this week by noting that the U.S. government had accepted last-minute changes demanded by the Iraqi Cabinet.

The changes were mostly minor, according to people close to the negotiations, but may have allowed Iraqi politicians to portray themselves as driving a tough bargain. Lawmakers are wary of appearing too pro-American, and some faced pressure from Iran, which strongly opposes the accord, Iraqi officials and analysts said.

Sheridan reported in October on the Iranian pressure, which allegedly included "attempting to bribe Iraqi lawmakers," according to the U.S. military.

Assuming the deal passes Parliament, the odd man out would appear to be radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose spokesman said he was "shocked and surprised by this approval, which expresses devotion to the occupation by agreeing to the mandate the occupier wanted." Sadr's threat Friday to resume attacks if the agreement passed doesn't seem to have swayed too many votes: The cabinet approved the measure 27-1.

Today, the United Nations is hosting an "interfaith dialogue" on religious tolerance led by... Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy where religious freedom does not exist. I guess it's like John McEnroe holding a seminar on good sportsmanship.

The supposed big news about the event is that King Abdullah just might, maybe, be in the same room as Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, during dinner. Will they shake hands?

Arab News, a Saudi-owned newspaper, credulously reports, "[T]he conference is expected to usher in a new era of peace and prosperity in the world."

Don't hold your breath.

Photo: AFP/Getty Images

President-elect Obama's plans to engage the Syrian regime may have just hit an early snag. Diplomats have revealed that samples taken from the site in Syria which Israel bombed in September 2007 contained traces of processed uranium. This evidence, along with uranium traces found by the International Atomic Energy Agency in oil or air samples, lends credence to the hypothesis that a covert nuclear reactor was being constructed in northern Syria, a thesis that some analysts had been skeptical of after the Israeli attack.

Syria's diplomats are going to have a hard time convincing the Obama administration that Syria can be a force for stability in the Middle East if conclusive proof emerges that they were developing a nuclear program on the sly. The regime seems to have already been spooked by the latest revelations. Syrian Ambassador Mohammad Badi Khattab, his country's chief delegate to the IAEA, allegedly suggested that Syria will not allow further IAEA visits "under any circumstances," citing concerns that an IAEA probe could pass on Syria's military secrets to Israel.

The IAEA is annoyed that diplomats leaked its findings before the release of its formal report. Given the timing of the leak, the diplomats may have been specifically aiming to disrupt any rapprochement between Syria and the new Obama administration. But of course, just because they may have ulterior political motives doesn't mean they are wrong about Syria's nuclear ambitions.

It was inevitable that the world would eventually realize the unhappy fact that President-elect Barack Obama will not represent a complete break with the past 60 years of American diplomacy. By tapping Rahm Emanuel, a fierce partisan of Israel who volunteered as a mechanic in northern Israel during the first Gulf War, it is fair to say that process has already begun.

For example, what does Abu Jayab, the young Palestinian in Gaza who was cold-calling Americans, imploring them to vote for Obama, think about the fact that the president-elect's first major appointment is a man who is being hailed by the Israeli press as "our man in the White House?"

Rahm's father Benjamin Emanuel served in the Irgun, a Jewish terrorist group that targeted British and Palestinian civilians -- most famously with the King David Hotel bombing and the Deir Yassin massacre -- to advance the goal of creating a Zionist state. This week, the elder Emanuel has not exactly assuaged doubts about his son's pedigree. "Obviously, he will influence the president to be pro-Israel," he told the Israel daily Maariv, "Why wouldn't he be? What is he, an Arab?"

But Rahm Emanuel has always combined hyper-partisan rhetoric with relatively centrist policy views, and that may hold true for his stance on Israel as well. During his work on the Oslo Accords under President Clinton, he developed his closest relationships with the aides to the dovish Labor Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. If Emanuel is seen as sympathetic to Israel's plight, but also unafraid to use his legendary toughness to pressure Israeli leaders during the inevitable foot-dragging over the removal of key settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, he could be a key player in the upcoming Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Photo: Lauren Victoria Burke/ABC NEWS via Getty Images