Lebanon front with Israel heats up, stoking fears of wider war
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Transcript
00:00 Rob Parsons joins me on set.
00:02 Rob, this threat of a second front, how seriously should we take it?
00:08 We've been talking about it, the possibility of one, for weeks now.
00:11 Yeah, well, very seriously indeed, given the situation, broadly speaking, in the area,
00:16 in the region, and the fact that Israel has an enormous force on its northern border with
00:22 Lebanon and Hezbollah has somewhere in the region of 150,000 rockets and missiles trained
00:28 on Israel just across the border in Lebanon.
00:31 The potential for an incident that would spiral into something much bigger is clearly there,
00:37 and the number of incidents have been ticking up over the last few days.
00:41 You mentioned that incident where 12 people came under fire from the Israeli side of the
00:46 border.
00:47 One person was injured, not too badly.
00:49 Just before that, 18 Israelis were, civilians were hit by rocket fire coming from southern
00:55 Lebanon, fired presumably by Hezbollah.
00:58 One of those people has died since.
01:00 So, you can see the potential is there.
01:02 That massive U.S. strike force in the Mediterranean, another one in the Red Sea, a nuclear submarine.
01:10 Everything is there.
01:11 Everything is there.
01:12 You know, if the spark hits the wrong place, it could all go up in smoke.
01:19 One wonders how long Hezbollah can stay out of it while Hamas is getting hammered in Gaza.
01:25 You know, if Israel gets close to completely destroying Hamas militarily and politically
01:32 in Gaza, you know, will the pressure on Hezbollah to get involved grow even stronger?
01:37 You know, on the positive side, one can say that Hezbollah doesn't seem to have the appetite
01:41 to get involved at this stage.
01:44 Hassan Nasrallah, the chief of Hezbollah, spoke at the beginning of the month and gave
01:48 the impression that he would rather stay out of it.
01:50 But the pressures on him are building.
01:52 And what about Iran?
01:53 I mean, Hezbollah is backed by Iran.
01:55 What does Iran have to say?
01:57 Yeah, similarly, again, I think Iran has looked at what's happening regionally and said, well,
02:02 look, it's not a good moment for us to get involved.
02:04 It understands that for Hezbollah to get involved in a major conflict with Israel now would
02:10 probably be very disadvantageous for Hezbollah.
02:12 It would take serious casualties.
02:14 Its stockpile of weapons would be seriously reduced.
02:18 On the other hand, I think Iran sees diplomatic possibilities for exploiting the situation
02:22 in Gaza.
02:23 We've seen it particularly at the weekend at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation
02:28 Summit in Riyadh, where an Iranian president went to Saudi Arabia the first time in 11
02:33 years, was hoping to get much more out of it than I think it actually did get out of
02:37 it.
02:38 It was wanting at least an oil ban on Israel, supply of weapons to Hamas.
02:44 It didn't get that.
02:45 And it said it was a pretty anodyne statement by the summit at the end of it.
02:51 So I think Iran will be disappointed by that.
02:53 They're looking more for diplomatic opportunities than military at the moment.
02:56 All right.
02:57 Rob Parsons, thank you so much for that analysis.