mohandasgandhi:

Iran ‘could order Hezbollah hit on Israel’

Lebanon’s Hezbollah may not want a new war with Israel but an order to attack would come from Tehran in the event of a strike on Iran, a senior military official in Israel’s northern command told AFP.

And if the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad collapses, the resulting unrest could see Al-Qaeda type groups create chaos on the Syrian Golan Heights, he said in an interview conducted on Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Any military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would likely spark a deadly response from its ally Hezbollah, whose leader Hassan Nasrallah warned on Friday that its missiles could strike anywhere inside the Jewish state.

But senior military officials do not believe Nasrallah wants another war with Israel and would only attack as a direct result of orders from Tehran.

“The biggest spending of Iran in 30 years has been on the nuclear programme, and Hezbollah is the second,” the Israeli official told AFP, adding that Tehran’s aim was to create “Iranian footprints near the border with Israel.”

“If something would happen in Iran, it’s a tool that they can use in all kinds of scenarios,” he said.

“They (Iran) have so many high-ranking officials in Lebanon. I don’t think this is a decision of Nasrallah — he will get orders. That’s why he was created,” said the official.

“If you ask Nasrallah today, he would say ‘no’ (to a new war with Israel) but I don’t think that’s his call,” he said. “Nasrallah understood the power of Israel and he is still licking his wounds.”

He said other scenarios which could spark a new conflict between Israel and Hezbollah include an attack on Israelis abroad or the transfer to Hezbollah of chemical weapons from Syria, which is in the throes of a brutal crackdown on anti-regime protests.

Last month, Major General Yair Golan, head of the Israeli military’s northern command, said the ongoing bloodshed in Syria raised fears that Damascus’ weapons stockpiles, which included the “world’s largest stockpile of chemical weapons,” could end up in Hezbollah’s hands.

But the military official said Israel also feared the collapse of Assad’s regime could see the Syrian Golan Heights fall to groups like Al-Qaeda.

[…]

Should Assad fall, it was likely to deal a very heavy blow to Hezbollah, which stood to lose a key ally in terms of weapons and logistical support, he said.

[…]

Hezbollah’s main fear was losing the support of Assad, whose minority Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

“The top advisers from Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are helping Assad to slaughter his own people because they know that if Assad falls, this axis won’t work any more because most of the (Syrian) people are Sunni,” he said.

But such an outcome could also benefit Israel, he said.

“Without Syria, Hezbollah will be much more careful in its acts,” he said.

[…]

He said Israel’s biggest challenge in any new conflict would be Hezbollah’s positioning of weapons in the heart of civilian areas in around 100 Lebanese towns and villages along the border.

[…]

The Jewish state fought a devastating war against Hezbollah in 2006 that cost the lives of 1,200 people in Lebanon, mainly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

This was quite a bizarre article to read and I think it would be nearly impossible to address each complication. I’d also be fascinated to know what numbers this senior Israeli official was looking at, in terms of Iran’s financial spending in the last 30 years.

In the event that Israel strikes Iran, Nasrallah indicated Hezbollah would only conduct attacks on Israel should Pasdaran order them to. Strategically, it makes sense to hit Israel domestically while Israel (and likely the United States) are striking Iran. Although Hezbollah and Pasdaran forces took a much bigger hit than Israel did during the 2006 Lebanon War, diplomatic reports suggest that Hezbollah has significantly built up its arsenal since then. It also seems unlikely that Hezbollah might get their hands on Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles because although Syria is highly unstable at the moment, Assad still has a tight grip on the country and if chemical weapons were to be used, it seems more likely that it would be against the Syrian people should the situation progress into some sort of a civil war.

Although Hezbollah doesn’t pose a significant military threat to Israel, can you see how these types of complications make the consideration of a potential conflict with Iran even more ridiculous, especially given what we know about Iran’s non-existent ambitions to become a nuclear state?

reblogging to read later.

Palestinian Prisoners’ Day: The numbers

Israel arrests more than nine Palestinians per day on average. Currently, 320 Palestinians are held in prison by Israel without trial.

Yesterday, April 17, 2012, marked Palestinian Prisoners’ Day.

Poll: Israelis Wary Of A Unilateral Attack On Iran

A new poll conducted by Tel Aviv University’s Guttman Center [PDF] finds that 62.9 percent of Israelis strongly or moderately oppose an Israeli unilateral attack on Iran.

Approximately 70 percent of Israelis believe such an attack would be ineffective in “stopping Iran’s nuclearization for a substantial time” and approximately 60 percent think that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is underestimating in his assessment that an Iranian retaliatory strike will cause about 500 Israeli casualties.

The Guttman Center’s findings fall in line with a series of recent polls on Israeli public opinion. A Haaretz poll released yesterday found that 58 percent of Israelis oppose an strike on Iran without U.S. backing. And a University of Maryland poll last month showed that only 19 percent of Israelis support an attack without U.S. backing.

The IAEA has expressed concerns about “possible military dimensions” to Iran’s nuclear program and is reportedly concerned that the Iranians may be attempting to cleanse a military site of nuclear weapons related work. Obama publicly stated that an Iranian bomb would pose a threat to the U.S. and its allies and do damage to the nuclear nonproliferation regime. Neither Israeli norU.S. intelligence officials have asserted that Iran has yet restarted its nuclear weapons program.