Why not? Their Hezbollah allies have achieved something even better than total victory in Lebanon. The Europeans in UNIFIL are begging them for protection. They've upgraded their military and diplomatic ties with Russia - something they've been working on for years - while their relationship with the DPRK remains solid. They're obviously not afraid of Israel.

And the Democratic Party - which is about to take firm control of two-thirds of the US government - is stacked with current and former leaders who have a penchant for dropping in to Damascus. At this point the only people still trying to isolate Assad are other Arab leaders, and there's no way they're going to publicly come out against a Sunni bomb. So - again - why not:

One year after Israel allegedly bombed a partially constructed nuclear reactor deep in the heart of Syria, the nuclear aspirations of Syrian President Bashar Assad have not subsided, with the country redoubling its efforts to develop a nuclear program, Asharq Alawsat reported on Thursday. According to the report, Israeli military sources told the London-based paper that following the reported airstrike against the nuclear reactor at Al-Kibar on September 6, Syria changed course and began a nuclear program based on the Iranian model of simultaneously building multiple facilities in various sites throughout the country.

The rest of the article goes on to say that Israel is wiping out Syrian nuclear officials as fast as Syria can replace them. But that's very small comfort given how Iran - despite having planeloads of nuclear techs who keep regularly crashing - is just a few months away from going nuclear. Next up: Egypt.

References and previously after the jump.