If Iran acts, we won't ignore it
Iran has kept its distance from Hezbollah's response to the strike reportedly carried out by Israel against a terrorist command cell that had been established on the Syrian side of the border in the Golan Heights. Despite Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah being satisfied with the anti-tank missile attack on Israeli vehicles in Shebaa farms, the regime of the ayatollahs intends to exact a much higher toll. Seething revenge.
The Iranians can be counted on to keep their word; they intend to carry out a large-scale terrorist attack the likes of which requires security apparatuses not only in Israel but around the Jewish world to be on guard. We cannot forget the historic lesson we learned from Iran's role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina for which the Iranians did not pay a hefty price at all. On the contrary, the made a deal with the government in Buenos Aires to dilute the investigation efforts.
Israel must make it clear, via covert diplomatic channels, that it will not allow or tolerate any large terrorist attack even if Iran carries it out without leaving fingerprints. The world will know and Israel will understand, and the distance between Jerusalem to Tehran is not insurmountable. It is best to do this in a clandestine way, to avoid an unwanted public face off between the two sides.
Nasrallah's statements were also not to be taken lightly. On one hand there is something positive in the fact that Nasrallah mentioned three times in his speech that he intended to return to quiet on the border with Israel. But Hezbollah evidently still wants to make changes in the region. Israel is not going to allow transfers of advanced weapons from Syria to Lebanon. In the past it was said that Israel attacked convoys of such weapons, and the acts went without response. If Nasrallah instructs his forces to respond with fire from Lebanon into the Galilee region every time a weapons shipment is intercepted -- Israel will have no choice but to warn him that the escalation will not be one-sided.
Israel can return to the atmosphere that prevailed on the northern border since the 2006 Second Lebanon War, despite that, too, being a violation of the U.N. Security Council's resolution. But Israel cannot allow Nasrallah to change the rules of the game and bring the region to yet another round of violent actions but both sides.
Everything Israel has done until now was to enforce the U.N. decision in 2006 that was breached by Syria and Hezbollah almost the minute it was passed. The fact that the IDF had to carry out an operation against a new base of terrorism on the Golan Heights is not a legitimate reason to change the rules of the game as Nasrallah sees fit. It calls for an immediate clarification.
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