IRIB: "Zionist regime facing uncertainty"

Lots of metaphors:

Zionist regime heads for 2007 bracing for uncertainty, with dim hopes of reviving the myth of invincibility on the part of its army and a raft of scandals and crises within its structure.

The bungled invasion of Lebanon and the disgraceful attack on the Gaza Strip undercut confidence in the fledgeling system of the premier Ehud Olmert.

"The calm before the storm," mass-selling Yediot Aharonot wrote recently, predicting political and military upheaval in the coming months.

Zionists began the year with their doomed big head, Ariel Sharon, leaving the Middle East scene when a January 5 stroke left him in a deep coma.

The reins of power limped into hands of Ehud Olmert, whose Kadima party won a narrow election victory in late March.

But everything turned upside for the regime in late June when Palestinian combatants seized a heat-to-toe armed soldier in a daring cross-border raid that killed two other armed occupiers.

Even the regime's ensuing massive bloodshed in the coastal strip, unleashed behind the smokescreen of the 2006 World Cup games in Germany, could not secure release of the seized soldier.

Two weeks later, the regime was dealt an effective death blow when the Lebanese Islamic Resistance Movement Hezbollah retaliated part of the regime's crimes in Gaza by seizing two Zionist soldiers and killing three others in a cross-border raid on July 12.

The regime was quick to invade entire Lebanese soil by air and ground under the pretext of releasing the newly arrested soldier, but faced a robust resistance from Hezbolah fighters in a 33-day war, ended with a UN-imposed truce on August 14.

The seized soldiers remained in Lebanon in hands of Hezbollah combatants. But it was not worse than experiencing the bitter taste of nearly 4,000 revenge missiles that was fired in retaliation of its bloodletting in Lebanon.

Discontent with Olmert and his team grew after the war. It was fanned by sexual and financial scandals involving a number of the regime's officials.

The government also found itself in tatters after its ongoing blodshed in Gaza failed in the face of unwavering resistance by the Palestinian Resistance who had promoted their struggle through improved missiles and direct attacks against the regime's soldiers. The reimge's five-month pounding and incursions shed the blood of more than 400 Palestinians only to further consolidate it.

Tags: Israel, Iran, Olmert, Sharon, Lebanon, Gaza, Hizbullah,