Former deputy defense minister Ehpraim Sneh: If Hezbollah Fires Rockets On Israel, The Israeli Army Should Hit Iran’s Infrastructure
Jerusalem Post/June 21/17
Former deputy defense minister Ehpraim Sneh warned that Israel should be prepared to react to unforeseen aggression from Lebanon by hitting it where it hurts the most. “If Hezbollah fires on Israel” the IDF “should strike Iran’s infrastructure” in response, former deputy defense minister Ephraim Sneh said on Wednesday, urging that Israel should target the Shi’ite terror organization’s sponsor and great supporter Iran. Explaining the logic of this strategy as part of a panel on Iran at the annual Herzliya Conference, Sneh said that Iran uses Hezbollah to attack Israel without any deterrent threat that it cares about. He also explained that the current Israeli strategy is to hit Lebanese infrastructure if Hezbollah attacks Israel with rockets, but that he didn’t believe this was an efficient approach.
“Iran does not give a damn if Lebanon’s infrastructure is destroyed” as Israeli retaliation for Hezbollah rockets, said the former defense official. Regarding the nuclear threat posed by Iran, former deputy Israel Atomic Energy chief Ariel Levite said that Israel lacked a true strategy.
“There is no Israeli policy to deal with the missiles and arms trade aspects” of the Iran nuclear deal, he said. Levite explained that even though Iran is complying with International Atomic Energy Agency inspections, “the ambiguities built into the deal are huge,” causing the deal to function on the ground very differently than it was meant to. As an example, Levite asked: “Is the IAEA responsible for monitoring and limiting Iran weapons tests?” saying that Russia and Iran both claim it is not. “If the IAEA is not responsible, then who is? This is a big gap,” he added. Further, Levite argued that Israel, the US and others must find a way to bind Iran from actions which could move it across the nuclear weapons threshold once the Iran deal ends. Just last week the US seemed to have taken a significant step in that direction when the Senate passed almost unanimously a decision to sanction Tehran for its ballistic missile work, its funding of militant organizations worldwide and its human rights record. The new bill is expected to impose mandatory ballistic missile sanctions, target Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and implement a new arms embargo.
**Michael Wilner contributed to this report.
