Israel's War with Iran
![handle is hein.journals/fora85 and id is 1003 raw text is: Israel's War With Iran
Ze'ev Schiff
THE START OF SOMETHING NEW
THE RECENT fighting in Lebanon may have looked to some like old
news, just another battle in the long-running Arab-Israeli war. But it
also represented something much more disturbing: the start of a new
war between Israel and Iran.
The Israeli defense establishment, which regards Hezbollah as
a frontal commando unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,
certainly saw things this way. The Iranians may not have been phys-
ically present on the frontlines in Lebanon, but they were active there
nonetheless. A number of Revolutionary Guard members were killed
in the Israeli incursion into the town of Baalbek (close to the Syrian
border) on August 1, and Israeli intelligence claims that Iranians
helped Hezbollah fire the land-to-sea missile that almost destroyed
an Israeli warship in mid-July. Most of Hezbollah's arms-including
modern antitank weapons and the thousands of rockets that rained
down on Israel-came from Iran (as well as Syria). Iranian advisers
had spent years helping Hezbollah train and build fortified positions
throughout southern Lebanon.
Iran, in fact, has been heading steadily toward a confrontation with
Israel for some time now, and its aid to Hezbollah was meant to ensure
that it would have a ready strategic response if Israel took action
against it. From Israel's perspective, it is lucky that the war broke out
when it did. Things would have been quite different if Hezbollah's
patron had already been armed with nuclear weapons and the means
to deliver them. From Iran's perspective, accordingly, the conflict
started too soon. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Tehran did not
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Z E'E V S C H I F F is Chief Military Correspondent for Haaretz.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/fora85&div=97&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Israel's War with Iran
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