« The Special Ops Hunt For al-Zarqawi | Main | Can You Believe They Said This? (Times Two) »
April 29, 2006
Israel, Iran And A Very Difficult Choice
Two weeks ago Michael Totten tried to get down to the Israel/Lebanon border from the Lebanese side--and was stopped by the Lebanese army at their last checkpoint before entering the Hezbollah-occupied zone. (Hezbollah, you recall, occupies the southern section of Lebanon, including the border with Israel. The Lebanese army is not allowed there.) The Lebanese officer in charge adamantly refused to allow the American Totten to enter the border zone, implying all the while in ominous fashion that the situation had degraded to a perilous state of tension. He gave no details.
By the other day Totten had circled back to Israel, come up to the border from the south and was allowed to approach the border in the company of an IDF spokesman (hat tip to LGF). Along the way they met a lieutenant on border patrol duty:
“How dangerous is it here, really?” I asked the lieutenant.The Israelis have acquired a reputation for military superiority against their Arab opponents--but one must remember the Yom Kippur war in 1973. (See here and here.) Finally convinced of the seriousness of the threat against it, the Israeli government still declined to make a preemptive attack on Syria and Egypt. They attacked Israel six hours later. Ironically, the decision to forego a preemptive attack, which caused disastrous losses the first two days of the war, allowed the US resupply the Israelis later in the conflict; if the Israelis had struck first, public opinion in the US and world political pressure would probably have precluded any US aid.“I say this to my guys every morning: Everything could explode at any moment. Just after I said it this morning a bus load of pensioners showed up on a field trip. An old woman brought us some food. It’s crazy. They shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be here.”
“What’s happening here is very unusual," Zvika, the Israeli Defense Forces Spokesman, said. But he wouldn't tell me what, exactly, was so unusual. Shortly after I left the country, a story broke in the Daily Telegraph that explained it.
Iran has moved into South Lebanon. Intelligence agents are helping Hezbollah construct watch towers fitted with one-way bullet-proof windows right next to Israeli army positions.
Here's what one officer said:
This is now Iran's front line with Israel. The Iranians are using Hizbollah to spy on us so that they can collect information for future attacks. And there is very little we can do about it.More powerful weapons, including missiles with a range of 30 miles, are also being brought in.
But with the nuclear card on the table in eight years later 1981, Israel showed no hesitation--the Iraqi nuclear facility at Osirak was destroyed in a daring and extremely risky raid by the Israeli air force. Iran is much more populous and much farther away from Israel than the Iraqi reactor at Osirak--there's not just one, but many cards on the table.
I hope Israel doesn't fall victim to the powerful urge to fight the last war.
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.thebernoullieffect.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/651
