Above photo: Lebanese Ambassador to the UK Rami Mortada in a September 2024 interview. Sky News video screenshot.
And Europe If Israel Expands War.
Rami Mortada says the Lebanese army ‘will not standby’ if Israel invades southern Lebanon to attack Hezbollah.
An Israeli ground invasion of southern Lebanon would be a “doomsday” scenario leading to an all-out regional conflict and the radicalization of Muslims in Europe, a senior Lebanese diplomat warned in an interview with The Times on 20 September.
Rami Mortada, Lebanon’s ambassador to the UK, warned that the UK-trained Lebanese army would not “stand idly” by and watch if Israel launches a ground invasion or “heavy aerial attack” on Lebanon.
Israel has said it seeks to create a buffer zone in south Lebanon by pushing Hezbollah’s forces some 30 kilometers away from the Israel border to behind the Litani River.
Since 8 October, Hezbollah has been striking Israeli military sites near the border with missiles and drones, forcing Israelis in the northern settlements to evacuate their homes. Hezbollah says it will continue targeting Israel until its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza is halted.
Israel has been striking Hezbollah targets in Lebanon’s south, causing Lebanese civilians to evacuate as well.
The Lebanese Ambassador to the UK spoke after Israel carried out a terror attack in Lebanon by two remotely detonating electronic devices over two straight days, killing 37 people and injuring more than 3,000.
In an interview with The Times, Mortada said the region was on a “perilous path” with the prospect of Iran and fellow members of the Axis of Resistance in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria all joining the conflict should the crisis escalate.
“We are facing all the risks of an all-out regional conflict and that’s what we have been tirelessly trying to avoid,” he said.
Mortada added that Hezbollah had become a “formidable fighting force” in recent years and that Israel should learn from its past “humiliating” defeats, including during the war with Hezbollah in 2006.
“Let’s hope that we don’t get there because this is a doomsday scenario for everyone. It’s definitely a doomsday for Lebanon, but Lebanon will not hurt alone in this war. That’s what recent history has taught us. So all efforts should be focused on avoiding such an outcome,” he added.
Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, told supporters in a video speech on Thursday that the terror attacks “could be called a declaration of war.”
“Yes, we were subjected to a huge and severe blow,” Nasrallah said. “The enemy crossed all boundaries and red lines.”
He warned of a “reckoning” in response, “I won’t talk about place, time, location, details. You will find out when it happens. This reckoning will happen.”
“There are many dangerous aspects for the Middle East that could get as far as Europe and beyond,” he said.
Pentagon says tens of thousands of troops across West Asia ‘enough to protect Israel’.
The US is confident in its ability to defend Israel given its current force levels in West Asia, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said on 19 September, amid heightened fears of a wider war between Lebanese Hezbollah and Israel.
“We’re confident in the ability that we have there right now to protect our forces and should we need to come to the defense of Israel as well,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said in a press briefing Thursday.
The possibility of full-scale war increased following Israel’s terror attacks in Lebanon, which targeted Hezbollah cadre and civilians with exploding pagers earlier this week. The attacks killed 37 Lebanese and injured thousands more.
US military officials began sending additional forces to the region in July. Tensions escalated after Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shakr in Beirut and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran at the end of that month.
While US officials say they will help defend Israel, they claim they will not help it in an offensive war against Iran or Hezbollah.
“We are there in the defense of Israel, should we need to come to their defense. We’re not going in and supporting offensive ground operations in what they do, whether it be in the north or in Gaza,” Singh stated in the press briefing.
US officials speaking on condition of anonymity told the AP that additional resources sent to the region since July have helped as the US forces carry out operations targeting Axis of Resistance groups in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
In addition to Hezbollah, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI) and the Ansarallah-led government of Yemen have hit US and Israeli targets in the region in an effort to oppose Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
The AP reported that about 34,000 US troops have traditionally been deployed to West Asia. The number grew to about 40,000 in October last year as additional ships and aircraft were sent in after the start of the war on Gaza.
Several weeks ago, the total temporarily spiked to nearly 50,000 when US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered two aircraft carriers and their accompanying warships to stay in the region.
One aircraft carrier has since left, but US navy warships remain scattered across the region, from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Gulf of Oman. Air force and navy fighter jets are strategically based at several locations.
The USS Abraham Lincoln and its three destroyers are in the Gulf of Oman. Two US navy destroyers are in the Red Sea.
There are six US warships and three naval destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
Six F/A-18 fighter jets and the USS Georgia guided missile submarine are in the region, but US officials refuse to say where.
The air force has four land-based fighter squadrons in West Asia, which include a squadron of A-10 Thunderbolt II ground attack aircraft, F-15E Strike Eagles, and F-16 fighter jets. US officials also declined to say where the planes are based.
Should the US join Israel in fighting a war against Iran, the air force can also launch attacks from bases within the US itself.
In February, two B-1 bombers flew more than 30 hours from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas and back to strike 85 Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) targets in Iraq and Syria.