The death toll from cases of "acute pagercide" (hat tip: Ed Morrissey) in Lebanon has now risen to one dozen, depending on how much stock you put in the numbers being released by Hezbollah. Among the twelve were apparently two children. (If so, that's sad, but bad things happen in war.) Making the plot all the more successful, the number of injured is now being cited as nearly 3,000 and the injuries were not minor. Iran's ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani was among the injured. Amani reportedly suffered "serious head injuries" and lost an eye. The Lebanese government is now issuing stern warnings, telling Israel that they should expect "harsh punishment" in response to the attacks. Meanwhile, Lebanon continues to plot against Israel just as they have for years, so nothing has really changed all that much except that Hezbollah has far fewer functional fighters available to carry out their attacks. (NY Post)

The death toll from the exploding pagers that injured thousands of Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon has now risen to 12, including two young children, Lebanese authorities said Wednesday — as the terrorist group warned Israel to brace for “harsh punishment” over the massacre.

Nearly 3,000 people were left wounded when the hand-held devices started exploding near-simultaneously on Tuesday afternoon in a deadly attack that Hezbollah and the Lebanese government have blamed on “Israeli aggression.”

The injured included Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, who suffered serious head injuries and lost an eye, according to Iranian state-run news outlet al-Mehr.

Hezbollah essentially let the cat out of the bag as part of this "official response." The group declared that it would "continue its normal strikes to support Hamas in its war against the Jewish state." When your own leaders come out and flatly admit that they have been orchestrating attacks on Israel and those attacks will continue, they have already acknowledged that they are actively on the playing field. It's not as if we didn't already know that, but these declarations of how Israel "unfairly" attacked them using a bit of fancy remote footwork shouldn't be generating any sympathy. This is a war and Hezbollah was already one of the players on the field. That makes them fair game for Israel.

We should also wonder what Hezbollah and Lebanon are suggesting that they might have in reserve in terms of inflicting "harsh punishment" against the Jews. At least from where I'm sitting, Hezbollah is planning to keep up their "business as usual" model of trying to destroy the state of Israel and eliminate the Jews "from the river to the sea." The only difference now is that they're going to have far fewer fighters available to carry out their plots. Among the fighters they are still able to put in the field, many will find their "work" even more challenging with their hands blown off or their eyes blinded. (It has to be a lot more difficult to assemble rockets and fire sniper rounds under those conditions.)

One potentially useful bit of information still hasn't been fully clarified, though it might help paint a more complete picture of Lebanon's culpability in all of this. How was it that Amani, the Iranian ambassador, had a pager that was part of the Hezbollah secure network in his hand or in his pocket when the initial detonations took place? That would imply that the Iranians are even more deeply embedded with Hezbollah than was already suspected. Lebanese state media said yesterday that it remained unclear if Amani had his own pager or if, "he was injured when someone’s nearby device detonated." That doesn't make a lot of sense. The attack was a technical masterstroke, but the explosions were rather small and localized. Amani had injuries to his head and hand and even lost an eye. He would have had to have been standing extremely close to someone else with a pager to withstand that sort of damage. (Damn the bad luck.) It sounds as if Iran's ambassador was directly tied to Hezbollah's classified communications network as if we didn't already have sufficient evidence suggesting he was.

It doesn't sound to me as if Israel has any more to worry about than they did previously. If anything, some of the pressure may have been relieved when that many Hezbollah fighters were either killed or disabled in a matter of an hour or so. What we're seeing now is just the usual political sidestepping that Lebanon is famous for when they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.