Hizbullah Fever in Egypt: Some Links

The whole Hizbullah-Egypt feud is having repercussions around the region. While I'm trying myself to figure out what it all means, I can also refer you to the views of others. Some items from the last couple of days:

• Al-Shurouq al-Jadid is reporting that four Iranian Revolutionary Guards were arrested in Egypt in December. For those who don't read Arabic, The Arabist has a summary.
• And now, there are reports that the group under arrest includes two members of Fatah who were trained in Sudan and Libya; the English version of this Al-Masry al-Youm story is here.
• Middle East Strategy at Harvard has a piece by Carnegie's Michele Dunne on Egypt's possible calculations in all this. And CSIS' Jon Alterman has a response to it in the comments. [Note: Earlier misdirected link is now fixed.]
  
• Here's an Economist Intelligence Unit assessment.
  
• Israel is now using Hasan Nasrallah's image in an anti-drug campaign. A bit odd but not completely, since Hizbullah controls Baalbek and other areas in Lebanon's richest hashish-producing lands.
• The plotters' lawyer, veteran Egyptian defender-of-Islamists Montasser al-Zayat, says the lead conspirator's confession is now being denied. (Arabic here; an English version here.)
• Egypt is expanding its propaganda campaign from targeting Hizbullah to including Iran as well.
• Unrelated to the Egyptian claims as such, here's an interesting post on Hizbullah's electoral strategy in Lebanon, called "The Age of Nasrallah," by the blogger who calls himself (or herself?) "Qifa Nabki," a Harvard Ph.D. candidate based in Lebanon. (For those who don't know Arabic, Qifa Nabki are the first two words of what is perhaps the single most famous classical Arabic poem, the Mu‘allaqa of Imru'l-Qays, and mean, roughly, "Stop and weep.") It's an interesting blog.

We are clearly witnessing an Egyptian full court press of propaganda here, whether or not all these allegations have a foundation. Egypt is going out of its way to attack Hizbullah and Iran and, now, maybe Libya and Sudan are going to be implicated as well.