Hezbollah’s Miscalculation in Syria
There has been much speculation of late as to the likelihood that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will launch a war against Israel as a diversionary tactic to deflect attention from his brutal crushing of the Syrian popular uprising. A corollary concern is Hezbollah, which is allied with Assad and which uses Syria as a conduit for Iranian arms.
Hezbollah, too, has the capability to divert attention, both domestic and international, from its assorted crises by picking a fight with Israel. And there is little question that the walls are starting to close in on Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has thrown in its lot with Assad against the Syrian people, supplying gunmen to execute Syrian soldiers who refuse to take part in the killing of Syrian citizens. By siding so unequivocally with the Alawite dictator over his captive, predominantly Sunni population, and in a dispute that has nothing to do with Israel no less, Hezbollah has exploded its carefully constructed image as the standard-bearer for the Muslim common man against the Zionist enemy. Outraged Syrians are now being filmed burning posters of Hezbollah’s chief, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.
Hezbollah’s image has been looking a little frayed for some time. It is an open secret that Hezbollah members were instrumental in the assassination of popular former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. This revelation confirmed that when necessary, the group will take the gravest of measures to secure its position, even measures that are in direct opposition to the will of the Lebanese people. The discomfiture this exposure caused Hezbollah threatens to be revived now that once-quashed rumors are reappearing that Assad ordered the hit.
And as if all that weren’t enough, Hezbollah is now dealing with an internal crisis: several senior members have been arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel.
So is a diversionary aggression against Israel by Hezbollah in the cards, then?
No, it probably isn’t.
IDF Major General Giora Eiland, former head of the Israeli National Security Council and now senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said yesterday in Jerusalem that the squeeze Hezbollah is currently experiencing makes the likelihood of their starting a war lower, not higher. The Syrian crisis, Eiland believes, is “even more helpful” in this regard.
Hezbollah will not do anythng without Iran’s approval and right now Iran is not ready for war with Israel. The same goes for Syria, where Assad was helped big time by Iran. But after the Muslim Brotherhood takes over Egypt and Iran finally gets its nuclear weapon, that is when Iran will give the green light to attack Israel. Iran is probably trying to de-stabilize Jordan as well, which would totally surround Israel if that pro-western government fell. A Jordan in the hands of a radical Islamist would also help in de-stabilizing Saudi Arabia too, the ultimate prize for the Iranians. So after Egypt falls to the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran gets its nuclear bomb, that is when Iran will call in all its favors and push for the elimination of Israel, with Egypt, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and possibly even Jordan being forced to do its bidding.
With all due respect, a Muslim brotherhood run Syria will get along fine with Hezbollah- both are radical fascist groups
What concerns me far more is Turkish intervention, think new Ottoman empire and restoration of the Syrian province to the control of PM Erdogan and you now have a very big Islamist enemy right at israel’s border and teamed with Iran and hezbollah. The world is changing quickly. Old powers are falling new ones are rising, a betting man would think war is just around the corner.
OMG, that possibility never occurred to me. I mean Turkish “intervention”. It’ll be ironic since that is how Syria took over Lebanon. They intervened during the civil war to stabilize the country. Never really left since. Of course, if that is to happen, the Turks will control Syria by proxy, from behind the scenes, like Syria and Iran are doing in Lebanon. The Syrian province in the Ottoman empire included Israel, Lebanon, parts of Jordan and other lands. Hafez el Assad actually claimed Israel, as well as Lebanon, as part of Syria.
From my perch inside Israel I ‘smell’ war around the corner.How it starts, who actually makes the first move is up for debate.What is NOT up for debate is that Israel is in all their cross hairs, regardless of their own infighting.
When it comes to the ‘Zionist entity’ they merge forces.Period.
As to Erdogan’s plans, he is circling for the Ottoman game plan, whichever way he can align the Caliphate goal.Coincidentally-or not-Erdogan is now bosom buddies with Obama.
Curious and curiouser….
I agree, war is very likely.
Hezbollah, to re-establish it’s bona fides & to distract from it’s support of Assad plus the usual Iranian instigation, might well attack. Even a miscaclulation in staging a small incident could escalate in a matter of hours.
However, I see Turkey as no threat. Erdogan has been burned by his ”Arab policy” & Turkey’s natural enemy is Iran, not Israel. If Turkey wants to seize parts of Syria, that’s fine with me. And, the Kurds are a ticking time bomb for Turkey.
I’m not saying, by the way, that Turkey will suddenly change course & renew it’s alliance with Israel (or America). Erdogan is an Islamist & that says it all. But his hostility will be confined to rhetoric in my opinion.
As for Obama, well, the man is a moron, America has elected a radical sophomore college student (intellectually) who in his intellectually shallow way, lacks all coherence in his policies or their consequences.
I might add that Israel has no interest in the survival of the Syrian nation-state. Our real national interest is in destroying Syria’s military capability & the break-up of Syria into fiefdoms run by competing war-lords.
You all are playing a very dangerous game over there. The fire that starts might eat you all away. NATO and the west are not being careful in dealing with Syria and are grossly under-estimating what the reactions of Assad + Hizbullah+ Iran will be in case Assad’s regime is pushed to the brink. Any miscalculations on their part will start a war there that no one knows how it will end.
Yet in a strange way you all seem to me that you are wanting it. Be careful, you might get what you wish and it might burn you, and your families no matter where you are.
We’re not playing anything for the moment. And I doubt the Israeli government and security institutions share the analysis of my compatriots above, except the part of the likelihood of war against Israel. I doubt Israel sees Turkey and Iran as natural enemies of each other when in reality they are allies. There might have been hostility in the past, but that isn’t the case between Turkey and Iran at the moment, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be the case in the foreseeable future.
As for Syria, the current regime is an ally of Iran and helps arm Hamas and Hizballah, but it also avoids a direct military confrontation with Israel because every time they started a war they lost and they know they are *currently* weaker. If the current regime falls maybe the next regime will be more democratic and moderate, but maybe it’ll be a more radical Arab-nationalist or Islamist one or any combination of the two. The veteran regimes in Israel’s neighboring countries all started wars against Israel and lost them, so they hesitate to go to another war. But they tell the people they won wars, so the people don’t understand why they don’t start another one. They think the rulers are either cowards or are Zionist lackeys or CIA implants.
The veterans in the regimes and in the armies who had direct conflicts with Israel realize it’s not as easy to conquer it as it seems, but the fresh ones, the Islamists and other radicals that were never in power, believe that Israel is weak in spirit and mentality, and that tactical decisions such as the withdrawal from Lebanon and Gaza, which were taken in the hope of reducing the conflict and casualties, where huge game-changing military victories for Hizaballah and Hamas. They believe god is on their side, and that they have the mental advantage that they love death as much as we love life (in their own words). They also believe the US has lost its power, and that most of the world supports their cause against Israel. They believe that with unity and determination they can destroy Israel because in their view Hizabllah and Hamas defeated the Israeli army and similar types of relatively small and primitive forces defeated the American army in Iraq and Afghanistan, so imagine what they can do if they join (yet again) all their military forces to destroy Israel. In other words, the fresh inexperienced new radical regimes are more dangerous than the experienced regimes, even where the latter are radical too, such as in Syria.
Then there’s the possibility of a breakup of Syria. Supposedly a civil war in Syria will be in our benefit because they’ll fight each other instead of us, but this is a wrong perception. The Assad regime, as bellicose and terror-supporting as it is, isn’t interested in a direct confrontation with Israel, and having such a strong central government it can prevent the formation of militias that will attack Israel from Syrian soil. They allow it in Lebanon because they can wash their hands of it. If the central government of Syria falls and the coutnry is plunged into internal conflict for power or a civil war, the chaos will allow independent militias to form, take over southern Syria and use it to launch terror and rocket attacks on Israel, just like the PLO and later Hizaballah did and do respectively from southern Lebanon. They might also use Syrian missiles and other military equipment they’ll manage to lift from the Syrian army, possibly even WMD (not nuclear because Israel destroyed the Syrian nuclear reactor, but there are other types of WMD).
And if Turkish intervention is possible, so is Iranian intervention, or Iranian-Turkish intervention. The Iranian proxy Hizaballah is already on the ground there shooting Syrian civilians to help preserve the regime. If the Assad regime falls Hizaballah might take over parts of Syria.
If there’s a civil war that threatens to spill over into Israel like that, or if the Assad regime is replaced by an even more radical regime, Israel might ally with Syrian factions that oppose the radicals for their own reasons, just like it did in Lebanon. I believe Israel does have relations with various groups in the Middle East. But I don’t think Israel has an interest in civil war in Syria that is very likely to end with Hizballah and/or other militias opening a second active northern front against Israel, while at the same time Israel faces the threat of a second southern front with the new Egypt. That would be 4 active fronts. And who knows what’s gonna happen in Jordan.
I just wanted to say that I got tired of the pop-ups all over the screen. I gave the boot to NRO for that same reason. Now is your turn. Advertise all you want but avoid the IN YOUR FACE advertising because it only frustrates your readers. I rather read the blogs that don’t resort to aggravating the reader to make a measly buck.
I really enjoyed reading you and participating.
Good luck!
If you are getting pop-ups all over your screen, it is probably malware on your computer and has nothing to do with “advertizing” on this site. I don’t get any pop-ups while I visit this site at all, but then I have a clean computer.
They have a PJ related popover that shows up about every third screen, or something. Annoying, but a click anywhere makes it disappear. That one?
I find the “Click here to subscribe to the Daily Digest, to stay up to…” lie below more annoying. It’s backwards. That check should not be there, we should act to subscribe, not to avoid subscription.
I don’t get popups either. I’m using an iMac and I “disabled” popups on my preferences. I think you might have malware.
#3 Catino, I do sympathize with you. When I use other people’s computers, I find the pop ups and ads very annoying, too.
Are you using Internet Explorer? IE is very limited as what you can do to prevent (block) these ads. I use Firefox as a browser and have added “Adblock” to Firefox. I don’t see any of the crap you are talking about. I think that other browsers have the same capability to block pop ups and ads.
Do other commenters have advice for Cataino?
Since we don’t know what the intentions of the “demonstrators” are, we can’t tell what they want. If they are Hezbollah, which is entirely possible, then Hezbollah has the best of all possible worlds. If the demonstrators want true democracy and liberty, they are Hezbollah’s mortal enemy. The situation in Libya is the same different players, maybe, but just as murky! Of course in both as every other situation in the Middle East the US administration is clueless and acting accordingly.
‘Syria that would splinter along ethnic lines’
Exactly, sooner than latter Syrian and the entire middle east map is going to change along ethnic or natural lines. The writer claims that ‘The third is dangerous by virtue of its sheer unpredictability’. Agreed it will be dangerous and bloody. Unpredictable? no, because the current middle map does not reflect the ethnic, religion or national divisions of the local population. Some of us have been predicting this for a long time. and believed that the mayhem will start with the disintegration of Iraq. Now It look like Syria may be the ignition. Either way after the dust settles the middle east will give birth to a bunch brand new nation states.
Hezbollah has been in a tight spot for 30 years. Call me when the last of them flee to London.
Helping President Assad with his crackdown has put the terrorist group in an awkward position domestically and internationally.
Invading Israel in the summer of 2006 put Hezbollah in an awkward position and moronic cretin & Jew hater extraordinaire, Hassan Nasrallah, emerged from that débacle stronger and more powerful than ever.
Instead of going to jail.
Where he belonged and still belongs.
All it will take is to whisper the word ‘Kurdistan’ and that should pretty much do it for Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Iran… Israel is used as a diversionary tactic, at best, to hold ramshackle arab populations together in semi-coherent Nations. The moment an ethnic Kurdish State arises, all bets are off, as the Kurds are not hated… they are feared. Ethnically they are closer to the Afghani population than any other, and that should tell a lot about how they feel about getting the shaft post-WWI from Turkey.
The road to peace does go through Damascus. Probably with tanks rolling right on through.
I don’t know about the Afghanis but DNA wise the closest relatives of the Jews are the Kurds.
“In the case of the first outcome, democracy, Hezbollah’s advocates inside Syria would be hard-pressed to win over the Syrian people in an election after Hezbollah’s performance during the uprising.”
Your faith in the immunity of popular elections to organized mob violence, terrorism, vote-buying, and demogogy, is as laughable as it is sadly misguided.
“…three possible outcomes to the Syrian crisis: democracy; a Syria controlled by “very religious Sunnis, like the Muslim Brotherhood”; or a Syria that would splinter along ethnic lines. None of those outcomes augurs well for Hezbollah,…”
Judith,
They are Muslims….. Sunni, Shiite or otherwise, they will band together against Israel, or any other non-Muslims, until the infidel is subdued or destroyed… and then sort things out later. Even if democracy prevails there, that will not stop them from hating, and killing, the infidel.
For decades we’ve been hearing about Hezbollah miscalculations. What miscalculations are there, may I ask? Their goal is to replace democracy by tyranny. The more they demonstrate that they can exercise raw power and get away with it scot-free the more they further their ultimate goal. What does it matter in the end if they are secretly hated by a subject populace as long as they are all-powerful?
First things fist …OPEN YOUR DAMNED EYES!!!!!!!! Allk of your considered options for Hezbollah are bad, ergo they won’t start a war? That is exactly why they will do so. Iran cut their budget last time Nasrallah acted up in 2006, cause iran didn’t want him to do so. Since then they installed his cousin in charge of Hezbollah ops below the Litani river line. This time Iran WILL want hezbollah to start an offensive, Syria too. That is the ONLY way ( in their eyes) they can maintain the status quo in both countries. The Hariri indictments will undoubtedly include Assad and Nasrallah and this war will be the only way of both averting Assad’s internal demise and nasrallah’s too, not to mention answer their indictments by the Hague. I suggest you check out Psalm 83/Isaiah 17, and jeremiah 49. God has had their appointments with destiny written down for several thousand years. That destiny will be kept this summer. A Greater Israel along the lines of the Abrahamic covenant and land grant to them by God will be the outcome.
I recently found an article on rumors of war (perhaps only limited?) against Israel by Hezbollah, in Lebanese online media, THE DAILY STAR.
Apparently the rumor comes from sources close to the movement.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah may fight Israel to relieve Syria
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Analysis/2011/Jun-22/Lebanons-Hezbollah-may-fight-Israel-to-relieve-Syria.ashx#axzz1Q6M7yHLN
Hezbollah always seems to be doing the dictator’s (and I mean any dictator’s dirty work). There have been reports of Palestinians aiding Mubarak, Saddam Hussein and even Chavez and the aid always seems to be rioting against the country’s population and making sure the cops are brutal. Somehow that never seems to be a major issue with the media.
As for the last time the Israelis were supremely confident it was against Arab interests to go to war they found themselves fighting the Yom Kippur war.
Oh yeah, give Israel an excuse to intervene in Syria. In their place, I’d hammer Assad’s forces and then see what happens. For that matter, Israel could cite Samantha Powers R2P doctrine to justify intervention in Syria. Or Turkey could, they share a border with Syria and have a refugee issue to worry about.
The Syrian conflict is part of a thousand year old history of wars and genocides between Syrian Sunnis and the Alawaites minority in charge of the country now. The Sunnis are rebelling now and the Alawaites are killing now. This has been a recurrent pattern in Syrian history.
The Alawaites are a fringe branch of Shiia Islam, and Hizzbollah which is a militant Shiia party feel an alleigance to the Alawites.
The Middle east conflicts are much about religion, and in Syria and Lebanon the conflicts have been going on for a thousand years.
If there’s another open attack by Lebanon and/or syria, the fighting will be over in 15-minutes.
You think you saw STUXNET fully operational? I don’t think so.
I think you can set of an electronic-pulse that will wipe out all the tactical abilities that modern weapons need.
As to the rock throwers … Israel puts up with this. The IDF is trained to end this violence without killing anybody. And, it also erupts most often on Friday evenings … when the arabs “yoots” are leaving their mosques.
Assad’s got worries, now. Because Turkey’s upset. And, sealing the border where terrified, and fleeing sunni muslims are trying to get away from Assad’s goons and tanks.
In Libya, so far, Q-Daffy is also still in control.
Hezbollah? I heard they moved some of their missiles in land, when the Israelis began guarding their Golan positions in earnest.
While the “journalists” are very spread out thin, now. Sipping their lattes in Libya’s one 5-star hotel in Tripoli. This is tying the story of Israel being attacked down a bit. And, the gaza flotilla? I think the Israeli will be dealing with them using water canon. While the insurance companies, that cover ships at sea from damage and sinking, refuse to issue policies.
Heck, if anything, I’d bet the Mossad is finding lots more volunteers among the various locals. Happy for cash. And, willing to talk. But believe what you want.
So, there is a proven violently homicidal group running operations out of Syria AND a large number of Iranian front companies/military indutrial organizations there. Wow. That looks frightening.
http://msmignoresit.blogspot.com/2011/08/what-is-in-syria-that-keeps-obama-quiet.html