Iran Is Giddy, but Worried; Casting the conflict in apocalyptic terms hasn't resolved the nuclear issue--and won't help Lebanon either.

Byline: Nisid Hajari is Newsweek International's managing editor.

The rhetoric at friday prayers last week blew as fierce and hot as the dry wind outside. In a cavernous hall at Tehran University, Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami thundered against "the Zionist usurper regime" and "the corpse of the U.N." (after complaining about the lack of air conditioning). On the streets outside, young men like 18-year-old Hamed Salamat vowed to troop off to fight in Lebanon the moment his government asked. With each passing day, all across the Iranian capital, officials have strung up more yellow-and-green banners featuring pudgy Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah hoisting a Kalashnikov. wipe israel out the earth insist billboards that alternate space with BMW and Nokia ads.

From a certain vantage point here, one might think an existential struggle between Iran and the West had indeed begun. "Lebanon is the scene of an historic test, which will determine the future of humanity," reactionary Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on July 26, and even the erstwhile pragmatist he beat in elections a year ago, the still-powerful Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, railed against a U.S.-Zionist plot to "massacre defenseless Muslims." As with the ongoing crisis over the Iranian nuclear program, the room for compromise seems limited. What looks like the regime's interests in Lebanon--to inflict a stinging military defeat upon and fundamentally weaken Israel--are, to say the least, incompatible with those of the West.

Casting the conflict in apocalyptic terms, however, hasn't helped resolve the nuclear issue--and won't bring peace to Lebanon either. The Iranian regime is absolutely giddy over how the battle for public opinion is playing out; in their minds everyone except the United States is finally acknowledging the truth they've been bruiting about for years, that the Israelis are nothing but "butchers." The crisis plays directly to the twin pillars of Tehran's psychology: a pulsating sense of victimization, underscored by round-the-clock satellite TV coverage of the carnage, and a presumption of regional leadership, as Ahmadinejad has cast himself as the last true defender of Muslims. Yet analysts with ties to the Iranian leadership say the regime is worried, too--fearful that Hizbullah could be thoroughly defeated on the battlefield, and that being too closely tied to the group's successes now could mean being dragged down by its defeat later.

My guess is that what Iran wants in Lebanon is not so different ...