For­eign Pol­icy, in its “Seven Ques­tions” for­mat, asks regional expert David Shenker about some of the goings on in Lebanon, includ­ing the warn­ings of a “coup” (given by Walid Jum­blatt in his last visit to Wash­ing­ton) and Hezbollah’s rearming:

FP: How actively is Hezbol­lah rearm­ing?
DS: U.N. Spe­cial Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Terje Roed Larsen stated recently that they are rearm­ing. That fact prob­a­bly accounts for Israel’s lat­est fly­over of Beirut and the trial bomb­ing runs. There’s a ques­tion as to whether the rearm­ing going on now involves heavy weapons, but it is prob­a­bly headed in that direc­tion. The degra­da­tion of Hezbollah’s mis­sile capa­bil­ity was the one accom­plish­ment that Israel could point to from the war and if that has eroded, then the war was all for naught.
FP: Has UNIFIL had any impact on Hezbollah’s abil­ity to rearm?
DS: No. In fact, UNIFIL has made it very clear that they will not do any­thing in this regard. [UNIFIL com­man­der Alain] Pel­le­grini was asked recently what he would do if Hezbol­lah were about to launch a rocket. He said he would beg them to stop. There’s also a great arti­cle in the New York Times that describes in great detail how UNIFIL oper­ates a check­point that allows all cars to pass and can’t do any­thing to stop them. There’s no doubt there is some ben­e­fit in hav­ing the increased num­ber of UNIFIL troops and the deploy­ment of the [Lebanese Army] to the south, even just in terms of inter­na­tional atten­tion, but much of what Hezbol­lah is doing in terms of rearm­ing and ready­ing them­selves for the next round is not over.

On a house­keep­ing note, I’m ten­ta­tively turn­ing com­ments back on, even though I know I’m going to get hit with a del­uge of com­ment and track­back spam. But I miss the back and forth on the blog.