/ world today news/ US President Joe Biden’s envoy, senior adviser to the State Department for Energy Security Amos Hochstein will visit Lebanon in early January 2024.
According to Axios, there is “growing concern” in the White House that following the assassination of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) adviser Seyed Razi Mousavi in Syria, “Iran will involve Israel in the war with Hamas Hezbollah”, which “will turn the Middle East into a powder keg that could explode at any moment.” US Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shay said before leaving Beirut that Hochstein’s “goal is to cool the atmosphere to prevent the war from spreading from Gaza to southern Lebanon.”
Last year, Hochstein helped finalize an agreement on the demarcation of the maritime border between Israel and Lebanon, which led to some compromise between the countries as they closely watched the results of energy exploration on the shelf.
This time, according to Al-Akhbar, he will discuss with Lebanese officials a plan based on the idea of border demarcation as part of negotiations to end the conflict around 13 border points and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Lebanese part of Ghajar city.
Earlier, there was increasing talk of Israel and the United States wanting to push Hezbollah north of the Litani River area by amending UN Security Council Resolution 1701 to keep Palestinian groups away from Israel’s southern borders. The administration of US President Joe Biden believes that with the return of the occupied territories to Lebanon, Hezbollah will no longer need its presence in the south, which will free Israel from the threat to its security.
Observers believe America is looking for a non-military way to eliminate Hezbollah. Washington believes that by demarcating the land border, the Lebanese state has extended its sovereignty over its entire territory through the deployment of the army.
Observers add that any attack on Israel from Lebanese territory, if it occurs after the demarcation of the border, “will show the whole world who is waging war against Tel Aviv.” “There is another point of view: Hezbollah is no longer limited to these territories and is present in Syria and Iraq, and its goals have expanded beyond the borders of Lebanon.
On the other hand, information “leaked” that Hochstein must neutralize the obstacles that arose at the secret US-Iranian talks in Amman to prevent the option of an armed coalition from Hezbollah. Aaretz outlines a more dramatic scenario for the upcoming negotiations.
The paper believes that in light of the belief that “Israel’s intention is to provoke an all-out confrontation involving the United States, the elimination of Mousavi must be presented as an action coordinated with the United States, and if Iran, through Hezbollah, starts a war with Israel, then the United States will support Israel.” But at the same time, it is assumed that Hochstein “will put more pressure on official Beirut, highlighting its difficult “financial, household and economic situation”.
At the same time, Israeli experts point out that “The United States is already in Iran’s grip, from Iraq to Syria and from the Red Sea to Lebanon, and any incident could plunge the United States into war in a presidential election year.” That’s why the American media calls Hochstein “Joe Biden’s firefighter.”
In this context, there are new statements by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres that “Israeli-Lebanese border clash portends wider escalation and has stability implications,” while Haaretz military analyst Amos Harel warns that “there is a danger that the Lebanese front, which is the most threatening, will escalate to the level of war and could be integrated into a wider conflict with Iran and other militaries.
So far, according to Israeli media, “100,000 Israelis have left the border area with Lebanon and no one in Israel has set a time frame for this situation.” But the problem is that according to the Lebanese publication Lebanon depayt, “every event that happens on the Lebanese scene cannot be separated from the main players associated with them at the international and regional level,” and “Lebanon may turn into Syria, where the problems between the US and Iran will be transferred, because Mousavi has been working for 30 years in the file of the Lebanese-Syrian format.”
The question of how Iran might react to Mousavi’s assassination, and whether it will react at all, depends on many factors and remains open. But when three years ago, on the orders of US President Donald Trump, IRGC General Qassem Soleimani was killed in Iraq, Iran promised revenge, but no concrete action followed, other than symbolic bombing. But many things will be decided after Hochstein’s visit to Lebanon.
Translation: ES
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