Opinion | Hezbollah Isn’t Getting the Message
Category: Op/Ed
Via: vic-eldred • 5 months ago • 7 commentsBy: The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
While Americans see the war in the Middle East winding down, Israelis worry it is only beginning. Hezbollah has been escalating its strikes on Israel, and the Iranian proxy militia could provoke a larger war unless the U.S. gives it a good reason not to. Washington is too fixated on restraining Israel to notice.
The latest misfire is Sunday’s comments by Gen. C.Q. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to reporters on his way to Botswana. According to the Associated Press, America’s top military officer “said the U.S. won’t likely be able to help Israel defend itself against a broader Hezbollah war as well as it helped Israel fight off an Iranian barrage of missiles and drones in April.”
He warned Israel “to think about the second order of effect of any type of operation into Lebanon,” including danger to U.S. forces, and said the Iranians could join the fray directly and give greater support to their proxy “particularly if they felt that Hezbollah was being significantly threatened.”
That’s a calculated red light to Israel—don’t count on U.S. help, do count on Iran’s wrath—but what message is the general sending to Hezbollah? In the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah’s bunker, it probably sounds like: “Go ahead. You can get away with more.”
He would be mistaken, at great cost to the people of Lebanon. The Biden Administration has warned on other occasions in this war that it might not act to help Israel, and still Israel has done what it needed to do.
The other half of this Biden policy is the withholding of armaments, slowing their flow to Israel over the past four months with bureaucratic delays. This gives the President plausible deniability, even though the delays and extended reviews were absent when the Administration wanted them to be.
The White House goal is to discourage a larger war, but a policy of weakening Israel has the opposite effect. It emboldens Hezbollah to keep shooting and extend its range. This increases the domestic pressure in Israel to do something about it. Unprovoked, Hezbollah has already fired nearly 5,000 rockets, missiles and mortars at northern Israel since Oct. 7, depopulating the region. Not that Iran cares, but a major war between Hezbollah and Israel could wreck Lebanon. Central Israel could take damage like it never has before.
The stakes are high, which makes the U.S. policy of publicly trying to deter Israel even harder to figure. Israel is less likely to be compelled to fight Hezbollah if 70,000 Israelis can return to their homes safely in northern Israel.
This means quieting Hezbollah’s rocket fire and convincing it to remove its fighters from the buffer zone in Southern Lebanon. But Hezbollah has no reason to do that if it thinks it can keep firing away and President Biden will protect it from the consequences.
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The message Hezbollah is getting is the same one North Vietnam got - hang on.
let the religious wackos fight in the religious wars...
We know who the religious wackos are, and it isn't the Jews.]
Bill Maher's New Rule for Pro-Hamas Activists on College Campuses Is Perfect (townhall.com)
of course not, nobody can compete with the body count of xtians in the last 1000+ years...
Iranians sleep secure in the knowledge that Joe Biden will not fight. Biden has been pursuing the Obama policy of reengagement (and appeasement). Biden's own policy toward Iran has made the sanctions against Russia toothless. Quite the contrast with Trump's stance towards Iran; strike in the night without warning.
Iran has an opportunity now and must strike. The risk is that Trump could win reelection and Trump may not be so queasy about fighting Iran. The risk to the United States is that Arabian states may have no stomach to fight Iran. Without an Arabian check on Iran's aggression then it's possible Turkey could be brought into a wider war and that would involve NATO.
The stars don't seem to be aligning for Biden's approach of starting a dog fight and standing back to lead from behind. And it's doubtful the United States can afford to be a two front weapons merchant. Joe Biden's incompetent diplomacy and foreign policy really is setting the stage for World War III.
That is at the heart of all this, and it is why Israel now faces the prospect of a possible defeat and annihilation.
And which administration created this Iranian behemoth?
We have been told repeatedly, and loudly, that Israel doesn't need US support, money, or military aid.
Yet people are still crying when Israel doesn't receive it promptly.
None of the factions listens to Biden. Israel, Hezbollah, and Iran are going to do what they are going to do.
The Lebanese are caught in the middle and will pay the hardest for whatever happens- yet again.
Frankly I don't care what anyone in the most dysfunctional sand box in the world does anymore. So long as US forces aren't put at risk; and the US taxpayer isn't on the hook paying for the fighting- or fixing the damage in the aftermath.