Israel to have ‘difficult’ time against Hezbollah if escalation grows: US intel.
A US intelligence assessment says it would be difficult for Israel to succeed against the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah if the situation in the region escalates further.
In a report published by The Washington Post on Sunday, the US daily quoted a new secret assessment from the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) as saying, “It will be difficult for Israel’s army to succeed because its military assets and resources would be spread too thin given the conflict in Gaza.”
Underlining that Hezbollah has well-trained fighters and tens of thousands of missiles and rockets, the paper referred to a Friday speech by the Lebanese resistance movement’s leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, who vowed a response to Israeli attempts aimed at the expansion of war on Lebanon’s southern areas.
The American daily also said Biden had dispatched his top aides to West Asia with a “critical objective” to prevent a full-blown war from erupting between Israel and Hezbollah.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to arrive in Israel on Monday where he will discuss specific steps to “avoid escalation,” his spokesman, Matt Miller, said before boarding a plane to Tel Aviv.
“It is in no one’s interest — not Israel’s, not the region’s, not the world’s — for this conflict to spread beyond Gaza,” Miller said.
