Apparently, within days of the onset of the Israeli offensive, Iran ceased shipments of equipment, in some cases actually unloading aircraft that were ready to take off.
The Iranian reaction seems to have several roots. Naturally, there's considerable irritation over Hizbollah provoking a major crisis without consulting Iran.
This calls into question the whole conventional wisdom (which I've sided with) that Iran provoked the crisis (though they didn't anticipate the forceful Israeli reaction) to distract the West from its efforts to halt Iran's nuclear weapons programs.
Let me just say that this could be right. Or perhaps just the latter part of not realizing Israel would react so strongly is right. Maybe Iran wanted a little distraction but not a war that threatens Hizbollah or even Syria.
It is of course difficult from outside to know what the immediate cause of the crisis is at this early stage. But Iran is displaying caution.
I will say that either explanation makes it unlikely that Lebanon is part of an Iranian plan to start some religion-based catastrophe on August 22nd. Whatever reason Iran has for selecting that date, I'd expect rather more aggressive Iranian support for Hizbollah to ramp up chaos if Tehran thought massive destruction was only a few weeks away anyway.
