WarSclerotic

Iran using Hezbollah as diversion from nukes – Haaretz – Israel News.

Does a Christian Phalange leader in Lebanon know something that Israeli newspaper readers do not know? In a statement published in Lebanon, Dr. Samir Ja’ja claims that Hezbollah may involve his country in a war in the near future. He also warned that the Lebanese home front is far less prepared than its Israeli counterpart for war and therefore the civilian population in his country will bear the brunt of any future round of fighting.

The unusual statements by Ja’ja, who is affiliated with the Christian-Sunni camp led by Prime Minister Saad Hariri, is only one of a series recently published in Lebanon that discuss a possible conflagration along the border with Israel.

His statements were published yesterday while a Saudi newspaper reported that Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is due to arrive in Damascus for meetings with his Syrian counterpart, Bashar Assad, but also with Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and the Hamas politburo chief in Damascus, Khaled Meshal.

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Last week Ahmadinejad warned publicly that Israel was planning to attack Syria and Lebanon and vowed that Iran would stand by them. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to deny there was any truth to such warnings.

The reports of tension between Israel, Lebanon and Syria are coming at a time when there is a daily torrent of assessments, threats and forecasts concerning the progress of Iran’s nuclear program. The two subjects are linked. In view of the tension in the north, there had been consideration of possibly delaying a visit to the U.S. by Defense Minister Ehud Barak. In the end, Barak decided yesterday to travel to Washington and New York, where he will meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, among others. Syria and Lebanon will be at the center of his agenda in the U.S., as will the efforts to block Iran’s nuclear program and restarting the peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

So, what is happening on the northern border? Ahmadinejad warns of one scenario several days after U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones warns of an opposite likelihood. Iran, Jones argued, may try to divert international public opinion from the Obama administration’s initiative to step up sanctions against it through an attack on Israel via Hezbollah or Hamas. Along with the Iranian connection, Hezbollah is also providing cause for heightened Israeli alertness. In his speech last week Nasrallah reiterated his view on the balance of terror. He claimed he will attack Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion International Airport in response to Israeli attacks on Beirut and Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure.

A possible trigger to such confrontation, besides paranoia, is that Iran’s encouraging its partners is linked to the delivery of arms. Israel believes, in retrospect, it failed when it did not focus its efforts on preventing the transfer of arms from Iran and Syria to Hezbollah following the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006. UN Security Council Resolution 1701 may have declared an arms embargo, but it was never enforced along the border between Lebanon and Syria.

GOC Northern Command Gadi Eizenkot recently said in a lecture at Tel Aviv University that the Israel Defense Forces’ working assumption is that the advanced arms in the Syrian arsenal will also eventually make their way to Hezbollah.

Several times during the past two years Israel knew how to draw red lines, such as when it suspected Syria was about to make the mistake of passing on dangerous weapons. It’s possible the issue of red lines will reemerge in the near future.

This entry was posted on February 24, 2010 at 6:04 AM and is filed under Iran / Israel War. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.