The Israeli government is hoping it can force Washington to help it fight a multi-front war with Hezbollah and Iran while the IDF is “deep in Gaza,” but that’s a fool’s errand, since Israel’s problems are of its own creation and not the problems of the American people, a former CIA officer told Sputnik.
In an article for Al-Mayadeen earlier this week, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter argued that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu is trying to escalate the situation in Lebanon in order to draw the US into a multi-front war against Hezbollah and ultimately Iran. However, Ritter also argued that such a maneuver would not succeed, because Hezbollah won’t be goaded into a conflict that will put it at a disadvantage on the global stage.
Ritter said if Hezbollah takes the initiative and launches a full-scale attack on Israel, “people will stop talking about Palestine. People will stop talking about Israel’s aggression, and they will now focus on a new front that will probably include Iran.”
“This is again why [Hezbollah leader] Hassan Nasrallah speaks of perseverance. Perseverance means that you have to struggle through the difficult times to ensure that you are not distracted from the strategic vision,” Ritter said, adding that “Hamas is winning this fight. Israel cannot prevail. Israel cannot defeat Hamas on the ground. Israel has lost the propaganda battle globally; they have lost in the United States.”
John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer and whistleblower about the US torture program, told Radio Sputnik’s “The Critical Hour” on Tuesday that Ritter and Nasrallah are right: the US cannot win a war against Hezbollah and should not get involved in such a fight.
FILE – In this Friday, July 25, 2014 file photo, an Israeli army officer gives journalists a tour of a tunnel allegedly used by Palestinian militants for cross-border attacks, at the Israel-Gaza Border. – Sputnik International, 1920, 30.10.2023
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“I think Scott Ritter is right. And, you know, I would remind everybody, too, if you recall a month ago, in the immediate aftermath, just in 24 or 48 hours after the Hamas attack on Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu said – and he said it definitively at the time – that the Iranians were behind it all, that that Iran was supplying weapons to Hamas, that Hamas couldn’t have pulled this off by itself, this had to be an Iranian operation. And it wasn’t an Iranian operation. But that was very consistent with Netanyahu’s thinking over the past two decades,” said Kiriakou, who is also the co-host of “Political Misfits” on Radio Sputnik.
“Netanyahu has asked three successive American presidents to either attack Iran or to join with Israel to attack Iran, and the answer has been ‘no’ three times. And so now he sees this as an opportunity to bring the Americans in, to either help defeat Hezbollah while the Israelis focus on Hamas, or to defeat Iran, while the Israelis focus on Hamas. Because the truth of the matter is: Israel cannot fight a two-front war. It’s just not equipped,” Kiriakou said.
“Now, we heard from Netanyahu’s office today that the IDF is – their words – ‘deep in the heart of Gaza’. Well, good luck with that. Good luck with miles and miles of tunnels, good luck finding an enemy that is intertwined with the civilian population. Good luck. That doesn’t mean that the United States should be dragged into it. We have our own problems now with Ukraine and with what seems to be an overwhelming national desire to jump in on the side of the Israelis from a distance – but that doesn’t mean that we have to send American troops to help Israel fight its war.”
Turning to the question of the “propaganda war,” or what the Israeli government calls “hasbara,” Kiriakou said the world’s conscience was being shocked by the videos coming out of Gaza as well as by the comments by Netanyahu and figures in his government.
“Over the weekend there was a statement by a minor cabinet official, the Israeli minister for heritage affairs, who said on a radio station, he answered a question: would it be appropriate to use a nuclear bomb on Gaza? And he said that is something that should be on the table,” Kiriakou recalled.
“Well, first of all, that would be a crime against humanity of epic proportions. And secondly, that’s the first time that any Israeli government official, ever, in the history of the country, has ever admitted that Israel has a nuclear weapon. And so, you know, the Israelis just can’t seem to get it right, they can’t seem to get this information war or propaganda right.”
Israeli troops aim their weapons during confrontations with Palestinian demonstrators in the West Bank town of Al-Ram on January 27, 2023. – Sputnik International, 1920, 08.11.2023
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“Look also around the world at what happened this past weekend. We had as many as 300,000 people marching in the streets of Washington calling for a ceasefire – that’s after a prediction of 30,000 people showing up for this demonstration. They had ten times the crowd. There was a bigger demonstration in London on the same day, 500,000 people, more than 500,000 in Jakarta. There were equally huge demonstrations in Berlin and in Tokyo. There were demonstrations across the United States, in San Francisco and Denver. They’ve already lost the information war.”
“You know, I had a guest on my own show today, Dan Kovalik, who said that when push comes to shove, the American people usually do the right thing. And the American people – not the American government, the American people – and they will call out outward injustice. And we’re only four weeks into this fight and already they’re seeing an injustice. Your last guest mentioned that more than half of the deaths so far in Gaza have been women and children. Most of the deaths have been civilians. That is unacceptable, no matter what country you come from, that is unacceptable. And the Israelis don’t care about things like that.”
“There was a release from WikiLeaks back in 2009 in which an American State Department cable quoting an Israeli government official as saying that the Israeli government goal in Gaza is to allow them just to live, nothing more than just barely eking out a living, and it would never get better. That’s an Israeli government policy. So we ask ourselves, you know, what did Hamas think Netanyahu was going to do? And I would say that the question we should be asking is, what did Netanyahu think the Gazans would do?”
Gaza Strip – Sputnik International, 1920, 07.11.202
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“You know, Martin Luther King said that we should never underestimate a man’s desire to be free,” Kiriakou said, “and I think we’re seeing it play out now on a day to day basis.”
Kirakou said Nasrallah “asked a very important question” in his speech last Friday.
“He probably meant it rhetorically, but I think it should be taken literally. The United States cannot and should not fight Hezbollah. We don’t live in that neighborhood and they know that they can wait us out – just like the Afghans did, just like the Iraqis did, just like the Vietnamese did. We have no business being over there. That is Israel’s fight. You remember the last time Israel fought Hezbollah? They went into southern Lebanon, they were there for whatever it was, two years, three years, and they were eventually forced out. They didn’t win that war. So why would we want to get involved in something like that? I think it would be a catastrophic foreign policy mistake to become involved in a hot war where we really have no real national interests,” Kiriakou said.
By Fantine Gardinier
Published by Sputnik Globe
Republished by The 21st Century
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of 21cir.com