By Henry
Srebrnik, [Saint John, NB] Telegraph-Journal
My wife and
I have only been to Las Vegas once, and even there we didn’t gamble. So I’m no
expert on betting. But I’m reasonably confident bookies don’t take wagers on
sure things, like the winners of WWE wrestling matches where the results are
already decided.
In
the world of international relations, there are also conflicts so likely to
erupt there is basically nothing for soothsaying political scientists to argue
about. For instance, there would be very short odds on the likelihood of a war between
Israel and the Hezbollah-run state in Lebanon. Because that’s a certainty.
Israel fought a punishing battle against Hezbollah in 2006, but the group
has since re-armed. Hezbollah is believed to have an arsenal of between 100,000
and 150,000 rockets and missiles, though the vast majority are thought to lack
precision technology.
UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of August 11, 2006 -- which ended
the war-- hoped that the Lebanese government would reassert its authority
throughout the country, including the disarmament of all Lebanese armed groups
apart from the Lebanese army and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), from
operating in southern Lebanon.
Nothing of
the sort happened. In fact, in an operation dubbed Operation Northern
Shield, Israel has
now begun destroying Hezbollah attack tunnels the group has dug from its side
of the Lebanese-Israeli border into northern Galilee in preparation for the
next confrontation.
“But the war
itself has not been won,” observes Ben Caspit, a writer for the Middle East
news site Al-Monitor’s Israel Pulse,
in a Dec. 5 column.
“The
decisive rounds are still ahead of us and they are not connected to tunnels but
to the precision missile project and the direct flights that have begun to
land in Beirut’s international airport, straight from the Revolutionary
Guard Corps of Tehran.” They “do not bode well for Israel’s future.”
Iran has delivered advanced GPS components to Hezbollah which will
allow the group to make rockets into precision guided-missiles.
The American government justifies its policy in Lebanon, including
support for its army, with nonsense about strengthening Lebanese “state
institutions,” but this is farcical. To all intents and purposes, Hezbollah calls
the shots – literally – in this failed state and operates with the tacit
support of the Lebanese army and government.
Neither Lebanon’s military nor UNIFIL do anything to stop them -- they
don’t even control the country’s main airport. They will never take action to
prevent Hezbollah’s arms smuggling, because the Lebanese government doesn’t ask
them to. It is itself a hostage.
Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies, in a Dec. 13 column published on the American Jewish online
magazine Tablet, put it well. “The paradox of current U.S. policy of ‘preserving
the stability’ of a country whose politics and armed forces are directly controlled
by an Iranian terror group has created an open political farce.”
It’s a political farce that is
propelling Israel and Lebanon toward another war, and soon. You can take that
bet to the bank.
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