Larry seems to have stepped in a mess here, but this point stuck out for me:
Iran, meanwhile, is sitting in the catbird’s seat. They have a well-trained and highly competent surrogate force in Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s successful attack on Friday on an Israeli naval vessel is a reminder that Hezbollah is not a bunch of crazy kids carrying RPGs and wearing flip flops. I would be willing to wager that at least one Iranian military advisor was helping Hezbollah launch the missile that hit the Israeli ship. But Iran is doing more than simply engage in tit-for-tat. They are thinking strategically.
My history classes, where they mentioned the Spanish Civil War, usually worked in the fact that Franco’s troops used tactics and equipment supplied by Hitler’s Germany: the war in Spain was a proving ground for what became the bloodiest conflict the world has yet to see.
In a purely pragmatic sense, can you blame Iran for leveraging this, especially as it offers real-world testing of their capabilities against the enemy they expect, even want, to fight?