Martin Jay
The temptation by Netanyahu to arrange a false flag attack on the Americans is too great if and when he sees the conflict not going his way.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is banking all he has on a single bet: that the U.S. will go the full nine yards in his madcap idea of a regional war between Israel and Iran's proxies in the region.
For Netanyahu, this was always the plan from the very beginning. But it will take a series of stepping stones to get to this objective. First off is that he has to convince the Biden administration to join the IDF in its war within the Gaza Strip. And even that's not going to be easy.
He would ideally like Washington directly involved in the conflict with Hamas because he hopes to expand the war to Lebanon and Iran, a former senior security policy analyst at the U.S. Department of Defense, Michael Maloof, told Russia Today recently. Maloof is certainly right but the move by Biden to send an armada of battle ships to the eastern Mediterranean coast is a dangerous move on so many levels. It's easy to see that Biden wants to show support to Israel and to also show a physical presence in the region for Hezbollah, to make Nasrallah thinks twice about taking advantage of the IDF's work being cut out in Gaza to launch a surprise attack. The problem with this mindset is that Hezbollah is not easily threatened by such moves and more than likely will be forced to think in a bigger and bolder way about carrying out such an attack with the U.S. ships ready to pound southern Lebanon, than if they were not there. This is definitely an own goal.
But secondly, the temptation by Netanyahu to arrange a false flag attack on the Americans is too great if and when he sees the conflict not going his way.
The other concern to consider is the Americans themselves making a tactical error. Miscalculation in this situation is fever-pitched and the Americans have a history of doing this in the region. One such error would plunge the entire region into the war with Iran which Netanyahu has dreamed of all his life. And there would be no easy "off ramp" for the Americans.
On Monday October 9th, the U.S. ordered the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and five guided missile destroyers to the Eastern Mediterranean. According to Maloof, this "meets Netanyahu's wildest dreams."
"He wanted the U.S. involved in this conflict," the former Pentagon official told RT.
Netanyahu "wants to open up the war with Lebanon, by attacking Hezbollah" in pursuit of his ultimate objective, "to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities," Maloof added. For that to happen, "he has to have a Gulf of Tonkin moment, if you will."
Some will remember U.S. President Lyndon Johnson kickstarting the Vietnam war with a neat little piece of fake news by sending ships to the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. An alleged North Vietnamese attack on two U.S. destroyers was then used as a pretext for direct involvement. In those days all the LBJ government had to do was to simply announce that these ships had been attacked by North Vietnam forces. That's all it took to justify the Vietnam war starting, a war, like so many U.S. interventions that not only Americans lost but one which redefined U.S. foreign policy for decades to come.
The U.S. has also pledged to help Israel with deliveries of weapons and ammunition, with the Pentagon insisting it has enough to do so and continue supplying Ukraine. Maloof is skeptical of that assertion, however.
And so, all the ingredients are there for the caldron to boil over. If Netanyahu is satisfied that the assault on Gaza is going to plan - a military strategy based on starving the enemy first before sending in second-rate IDF infantry (the worst secret in the Middle East is how poor Israeli infantry is on the battlefield) - then he may decide not to turn to the Americans for the big plan. But if the going gets tougher, he may well open up direct talks with Biden and his advisers about the level of support he could hope to get in a bigger, wider war. It is unlikely Biden will support him though, as the last thing he needs leading up to a re-election bid is a world war in the Middle East and American body bags. And so the natural progression is that Netanyahu's people will conclude that the only way to draw America in is if it was no choice. The only real way to guarantee this is if those U.S. battleships are supposedly attacked by Hezbollah's missiles in southern Lebanon.
Getting the Lebanese Shia group to do this might be harder that Netanyahu might reckon. Hezbollah understands only too well the ruse and is careful not to be pulled into a provocation. And there is always the possibility that Hamas itself fires a missile at one of them and this is conveniently seen as an attack from Lebanon. It actually won't matter where it comes from. The Americans will fake all the forensic audio visuals later on and hand it out to journalists happy to file a good story just as they are lying to U.S. journalists about having enough ammunition to supply any such war, when the whole world and his dog knows that stocks are running very low.