Hezbollah has asked Iran in recent days to attack Israel in response to the dramatic escalation in Israeli attacks in recent days, but Iran has so far refrained from complying with the request, Barak Ravid reported in Walla Tuesday night, citing two senior Israeli officials and a Western diplomat.
Israel and Hezbollah have been entangled in their most intense fighting since the 2006 Lebanon War over the past two weeks. And while Israel has sustained some damage to property and a few cases of light injuries and panic attacks, Hezbollah suffered huge losses with many of its top military commanders killed and its communications systems obliterated. Senior Israeli officials are saying the IDF has destroyed a significant portion of the terrorist organization’s rocket and missile arsenal in thousands of sorties since last Friday.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeskian told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that Israel wants to expand the war to the entire Middle East (Erev Rosh Hashanah?), stressing, “Israel could not achieve its goals in Gaza and could not destroy Hamas.”
Referring to the Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, Pezeshkian insisted that the Islamic Republic would decide on the time, the manner, and the extent of its response to “the Israeli crime.” According to Raviv, Hezbollah has been begging the Iranians to deploy their planned vengeance ASAP because, you know, they’re dying here.
Iran has publicly pledged to take revenge for the assassination of Haniyeh. The US and Israel said at the time that they were concerned that Iran would carry out another missile and drone attack against Israel, similar to the attack in April. But two months have passed and the Iranians still haven’t attacked.
The fact is Iran has no intention of letting Hezbollah fire its remaining arsenal of rockets and missiles, some of them GPS-equipped, at Israel, because this would mean giving up its human shield, a.k.a. Hezbollah, which it has been financing and building for 20 years as leverage against an Israeli attack on their nuclear facilities.
Pezeskian, in New York for the UN General Assembly, told reporters his country refuses to fall into Israel’s trap. Which means Nasrallah and the surviving Hizbs are on their own.
On Tuesday, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf insisted Iran continues to provide ongoing support for the government and the people of Lebanon. He also called on “all countries and justice-seekers of the world, especially Muslim governments, to stop the Zionist killing machine.”
In other words, no Iranian attacks at this stage.
