’Catastrophic’ Mistake for US to Let ‘Israel’ Draw It into War with Hezbollah, Iran – Ex-CIA Officer

By Sputnik

The ‘Israeli’ government is hoping it can force Washington to help it fight a multi-front war with Hezbollah and Iran while the ‘Israeli’ military is “deep in Gaza,” but that’s a fool’s errand, since ‘Israel’s’ problems are of its own creation and not the problems of the American people, a former CIA officer told Sputnik.

In an article for Al-Mayadeen earlier this week, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter argued that Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu is trying to escalate the situation in Lebanon to draw the US into a multi-front war against Hezbollah and ultimately Iran. However, Ritter also argued that such a maneuver would not succeed, because Hezbollah won’t be goaded into a conflict that will put it at a disadvantage on the global stage.

Ritter said if Hezbollah takes the initiative and launches a full-scale attack on ‘Israel,’ "people will stop talking about Palestine. People will stop talking about ‘Israel's’ aggression, and they will now focus on a new front that will probably include Iran."

"This is again why [Hezbollah Secretary General His Eminence Sayyed] Hassan Nasrallah speaks of perseverance. Perseverance means that you have to struggle through the difficult times to ensure that you are not distracted from the strategic vision," Ritter said, adding that "Hamas is winning this fight. ‘Israel’ cannot prevail. ‘Israel’ cannot defeat Hamas on the ground. ‘Israel’ has lost the propaganda battle globally; they have lost in the United States."

John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer and whistleblower about the US torture program, told Radio Sputnik’s “The Critical Hour” on Tuesday that Ritter and Sayyed Nasrallah are right: the US cannot win a war against Hezbollah and should not get involved in such a fight.

“I think Scott Ritter is right. And, you know, I would remind everybody, too, if you recall a month ago, in the immediate aftermath, just in 24 or 48 hours after the Hamas attack on ‘Israel,’ Benjamin Netanyahu said - and he said it definitively at the time - that the Iranians were behind it all, that Iran was supplying weapons to Hamas, that Hamas couldn't have pulled this off by itself, this had to be an Iranian operation. And it wasn't an Iranian operation. But that was very consistent with Netanyahu's thinking over the past two decades,” said Kiriakou, who is also the co-host of “Political Misfits” on Radio Sputnik.

“Netanyahu has asked three successive American presidents to either attack Iran or to join ‘Israel’ to attack Iran, and the answer has been ‘no’ three times. And so now he sees this as an opportunity to bring the Americans in, to either help defeat Hezbollah while the ‘Israelis’ focus on Hamas, or to defeat Iran, while the ‘Israelis’ focus on Hamas. Because the truth of the matter is: ‘Israel’ cannot fight a two-front war. It's just not equipped,” Kiriakou said.

“Now, we heard from Netanyahu's office today that the ‘Israeli’ military is - their words - ‘deep in the heart of Gaza’. Well, good luck with that. Good luck with miles and miles of tunnels, good luck finding an enemy that is intertwined with the civilian population. Good luck. That doesn't mean that the United States should be dragged into it. We have our own problems now with Ukraine and with what seems to be an overwhelming national desire to jump in on the side of the ‘Israelis’ from a distance - but that doesn't mean that we have to send American troops to help ‘Israel’ fight its war.”

Turning to the question of the “propaganda war,” or what the ‘Israeli’ government calls “hasbara,” Kiriakou said the world’s conscience was being shocked by the videos coming out of Gaza as well as by the comments by Netanyahu and figures in his government.

“Over the weekend there was a statement by a minor cabinet official, the ‘Israeli’ minister for heritage affairs, who said on a radio station, he answered a question: would it be appropriate to use a nuclear bomb on Gaza? And he said that is something that should be on the table,” Kiriakou recalled.

“Well, first of all, that would be a crime against humanity of epic proportions. And secondly, that's the first time that any ‘Israeli’ government official, ever, in the history of ‘Israel’, has ever admitted that ‘Israel’ has a nuclear weapon. And so, you know, the ‘Israelis’ just can't seem to get it right, they can't seem to get this information war or propaganda right.”

“Look also around the world at what happened this past weekend. We had as many as 300,000 people marching in the streets of Washington calling for a ceasefire - that's after a prediction of 30,000 people showing up for this demonstration. They had ten times the crowd. There was a bigger demonstration in London on the same day, 500,000 people, more than 500,000 in Jakarta. There were equally huge demonstrations in Berlin and in Tokyo. There were demonstrations across the United States, in San Francisco and Denver. They've already lost the information war.”

“You know, I had a guest on my own show today, Dan Kovalik, who said that when push comes to shove, the American people usually do the right thing. And the American people - not the American government, the American people - and they will call out outward injustice. And we're only four weeks into this fight and already they're seeing an injustice. Your last guest mentioned that more than half of the deaths so far in Gaza have been women and children. Most of the deaths have been civilians. That is unacceptable, no matter what country you come from, that is unacceptable. And the ‘Israelis’ don't care about things like that.”

“There was a release from WikiLeaks back in 2009 in which an American State Department cable quoting an ‘Israeli’ government official as saying that the ‘Israeli’ government goal in Gaza is to allow them just to live, nothing more than just barely eking out a living, and it would never get better. That's an ‘Israeli’ government policy. So, we ask ourselves, you know, what did Hamas think Netanyahu was going to do? And I would say that the question we should be asking is, what did Netanyahu think the Gazans would do?”

“You know, Martin Luther King said that we should never underestimate a man's desire to be free,” Kiriakou said, “and I think we're seeing it play out now on a day to day basis.”

Kirakou said Sayyed Nasrallah “asked a very important question” in his speech last Friday.

“He probably meant it rhetorically, but I think it should be taken literally. The United States cannot and should not fight Hezbollah. We don't live in that neighborhood and they know that they can wait us out - just like the Afghans did, just like the Iraqis did, just like the Vietnamese did. We have no business being over there. That is ‘Israel's’ fight. You remember the last time ‘Israel’ fought Hezbollah? They went into southern Lebanon, they were there for whatever it was, two years, three years, and they were eventually forced out. They didn't win that war. So why would we want to get involved in something like that? I think it would be a catastrophic foreign policy mistake to become involved in a hot war where we really have no real national interests,” Kiriakou said.