Rebels Losing Ground in Qusayr

The rebels must be getting their clocks cleaned in Qusayr. How else to explain the West's braying about Hezbollah in this morning's paper? Yesterday, Secretary of State John Kerry, meeting in Jordan with foreign ministers and their clients in the Syrian opposition, warned ominously about the destabilization of Lebanon due to Hezbollah fighting alongside the Assad government. Where were the ominous pronouncements from the State Department when month after month Sunni fighters streamed from Lebanon to wage jihad inside Syria? The Amman meeting was designed to get all the anti-Assad nations on the same page prior to next month's peace conference. This from "U.S. Fears the Fighting in Syria Might Spill Over Into Lebanon, Kerry Says," by Michael Gordon and Mark Landler:

The planning for the Geneva meeting also comes as the Assad government has been making gains on the battlefield and the leverage of the United States and its partners to induce Mr. Assad to vacate his post appears to have declined. 

“Yeah, he’s made a few gains in the last days,” Mr. Kerry said during his news conference, referring to Mr. Assad. “But this has gone up and down in a seesaw.” 

Mr. Kerry asserted that any progress the Syrian government had made in the war would prove to be ephemeral. He warned that the United States and its partners were prepared to increase support for the Syrian opposition if Mr. Assad refused to negotiate an end to his rule and agree to the establishment of a transitional government. 

If Mr. Assad is not prepared to negotiate in “good faith,” Mr. Kerry said, “we will also talk about our continued support and growing support for the opposition in order to permit them to continue to be able to fight for the freedom of their country.”

In other words, if Assad doesn't agree prior to the peace conference to give up power and accept a new government -- which is what the war is being fought for -- then the West along with the Gulf monarchies will continue to destabilize the region. This is not a tenable position. But it is consistent with what we've come to expect from the United States and Israel. So expect more war. Expect more instability in the Middle East. What began over two years ago as a legitimate democratic uprising has been crushed by militarized Great Power conflict.

More proof of Hezbollah's gains on the battlefield is found in Nicholas Kulish's "3 in Europe Now Oppose Hezbollah." Britain is being joined by Germany and France -- in a sudden about-face -- in an attempt to have the European Union brand the military wing of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization:

Neither the British nor the Germans mentioned the situation in Syria, but it clearly has affected attitudes toward Hezbollah. “Obviously they’re all sitting in Amman getting worried about Hezbollah,” said Sylke Tempel, editor in chief of Internationale Politik, the journal published by the German Council on Foreign Relations, referring to the foreign ministers gathered in the capital of Jordan. 

There was no official reaction from Jerusalem, but one Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he had not been authorized to address the matter, called it “a half-baked move.” The official objected to the notion that only a “militant wing,” and not all of Hezbollah, would be deemed terrorist, saying it was akin to “trying to get in the pool and not get wet.”

Jodi Rudoren reporting from Jerusalem has a piece, "Israel Finding Itself Drawn Into Syria’s Turmoil," while being a little muddled is worth reading because it shows that Israel is not in a position to go to war with Syria. Israel is keeping its powder dry for Iran, and it does not want a Somalia rife with Al Nusra Front jihadists on it's northeast border.