CIA thinks offensive will make Israel less safe

That's what retired defense intelligence man  Pat Lang  hears:

Serving senior and former U.S. intelligence officials said that this
latest Israeli onslaught against the Hizballah will work to further
undermine Tel Aviv's security in the near future.

They said that the American public and especially officials in the Bush
administration appear to be laboring under several potentially disastrous  illusions regarding the Israeli-Hizballah fighting.

One of the first of these is that Hizballah can be uprooted and destroyed.
On the contrary, they insisted that it is an integral part of Lebanese society and an authentic
representative of the Shia population and cannot be gotten rid of by
bombing installations or capturing some strong points.

They also insisted that HIzballah is NOT a puppet of Iran. One former very
senior CIA official told me that Iran did NOT want this current upsurge in
violence, nor had Iran given any previous green light for the kidnapping
of the Israeli soldiers' Magnus Ranstorp, a British expert on Hizballah
said in an e-mail to me that Nasserallah (sic) made the decision himself, an
opinion which four former or serving U.S. government officials agreed
with. Ranstorp said there are two Iranian representatives from the Iranian
Embassy in Beirut that provide a direct link for matters that require
strategic guidance but said Nasserallah was the source of the kidnap
decision.Both Ranstorp and U.S. officials believe the notorious Imad
Mughniyeh who belongs both to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and
Security (MOIS) and HIzballah, had a part in the implementation of the
decision but was not the author of it.

I don't know about the connections to Iran, but the overall dynamic of anger at the offensive outweighing the military benefits  makes general sense to me.

UPDATE: As Cal points out in comments and I noted in TP, there's a poll out that--if accurate--shows serious uptick in Lebanese support for Hezbollah. From the Christian Science Monitor:

According to a poll released by the Beirut Center for Research and Information, 87 percent of Lebanese support Hizbullah's fight with Israel, a rise of 29 percent on a similar poll conducted in February.

More striking, however, is the level of support for Hizbullah's resistance from non-Shiite communities. Eighty percent of Christians polled supported Hizbullah along with 80 percent of Druze and 89 percent of Sunnis.

Comments

[Cal]

We made the same mistake in the Cold War: thinking that the Soviets ordered the North Koreans or Chinese to do this or that, when often the Russians were just as surprised as we were.

BTW, here's some data on Lebanese anger (CS Monitor):

"...According to a poll released by the Beirut Center for Research and Information, 87 percent of Lebanese support Hizbullah's fight with Israel, a rise of 29 percent on a similar poll conducted in February.
More striking, however, is the level of support for Hizbullah's resistance from non-Shiite communities. Eighty percent of Christians polled supported Hizbullah along with 80 percent of Druze and 89 percent of Sunnis."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0728/p06s01-wome.html