Drishtikone
US wanted to attack Iran – specially its Nuclear Arsenal. But they could not because that would unleash Iran’s and Hezbollah’s fury on Israel. So, that wasnt’t a good option. Instead Israel preemptively attacked Lebanon and tried to deplete the rockets and missiles that Hezbollah and their sponsors Iran have! Thus paving the way for US to attack Iran’s nukes. So, according to Gareth Porter, basically, the attack on Hezbollah is phase ONE of the US War on Iran!
In planning for the destruction of most of Hezbollah’s arsenal and prevention of any resupply from Iran, Israel appears to have hoped to eliminate a major reason the George W. Bush administration had shelved the military option for dealing with Iran’s nuclear programme — the fear that Israel would suffer massive casualties from Hezbollah’s rockets in retaliation for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
One leading expert on Israeli national defence policy issues believes the aim of the Israeli campaign against Hezbollah was to change the Bush administration’s mind about attacking Iran. Edward Luttwak, senior adviser to the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, says Bush administration officials have privately dismissed the option of air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities in the past, citing estimates that a Hezbollah rocket attack in retaliation would kill thousands of people in northern Israel.
But Israeli officials saw a war in Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah’s arsenal and prevent further resupply in the future as a way to eliminate that objection to the military option, says Luttwak.
The risk to Israel of launching such an offensive was that it would unleash the very rain of Hezbollah rockets on Israel that it sought to avert. But Luttwak believes the Israelis calculated that they could degrade Hezbollah’s rocket forces without too many casualties by striking preemptively.
“They knew that a carefully prepared and coordinated rocket attack by Hezbollah would be much more catastrophic than one carried out under attack by Israel,” he says.
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