Ambassador: 'Iran Opens War With the West'

Newsmax | July 23 2006

As Israeli Defense Forces tanks and troops roll into Lebanon in yet another ramping-up of the Middle East crisis, an Israeli statesman warns that the conflagration is not just a local one – the whole region and the world is at risk.

On the phone to NewsMax from Jerusalem, Dore Gold, Israel's ambassador to the U.N. from 1997 to 1999, left little doubt that Israel knows that it is locked in a deadly struggle with Iran – albeit through that country's proxy in Lebanon, the Hezbollah.

Israel, he noted, at the moment is a convenient surrogate for the larger enemy Iran perceives – the West.

"If Iran was devoting all of its resources to the destruction of Israel, it would not waste a single penny building a missile with a range that goes beyond 1300 kilometers, which is the range from the Iranian territory to Israel," Gold, currently the president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told NewsMax in an exclusive interview.

"We know that Iran is building longer range missiles and recently they procured the BM-25 ballistic missile from North Korea, which comes in two versions - a 2500-kilometer range missile and a 3500-kilometer range missile," Gold described. "With that capability, Iran could pose a threat in the future to London or Berlin, not just Tel Aviv . . ."

"So now that finally the Iranians have given a green light to Hezbollah to launch missiles into major Israeli cities, we can see this as the first Iranian move to challenge the West," Gold said.

Gold wants the world to understand that Israel's current offensive in Lebanon is vital to "defeating Iran's opening shot in this Middle Eastern war, and is not just in Israel's interest, but the collective interest of the entire civilized world."

For years Iran built up a huge military capacity in Lebanon precisely for the purpose of holding Israel hostage to ballistic missile attack in the event that the West sought to neutralize its nuclear and missile programs, explained Gold.

Gold emphasized that Israel's strategy depends upon isolating the Hezbollah insurgency in Lebanon from any reinforcement from Iran and its allies by air, land, or sea.

"The only way to win against an insurgency of this sort is to first cut off all of its reinforcements and then the second stage to begin to dismantle is its current capacity," Gold instructed. "But if Israel did not cut off the lines of reinforcement of Hezbollah, this war would last not for weeks or months but for years."

When asked about the war climate in Israel, Gold noted:

"Israel very much has the sense of being a country at war today. All television broadcasts have been completely shifted and we have around-the-clock coverage of every missile attack on Haifa, Nazareth, Safed and Tiberius. We have camera crews that immediately report the casualties."

Gold recounted how many people have left their homes in northern Israel and are now living in central Israel. There are calls for people to open up their homes to Israeli refugees from the north.

"So this is not a local conflict. It is felt by the whole Israel," the former statesman said.

The Failure of the United Nations

Gold gave background on how Israel was finally forced between a rock and a hard place – with, in his opinion, an idle U.N. standing by.

Since the 1982 Lebanon War, the United Nations Security Council has repeatedly demanded that all foreign forces leave Lebanese territory. This evacuation of outside armies and terrorist groups was seen as the prerequisite for the pacification of the volatile Israel-Lebanon border and the restoration of Lebanese sovereignty.

Israel unilaterally withdrew May 24, 2000 to a line which the U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan recognized as a new international border. He informed the Security Council that Israel had fulfilled the U.N. Security Council's Resolution 425 and withdrawn fully from Lebanon - and that became known as the Blue Line.

However, explained Gold, "after Israel withdrew right above the Blue Line, Hezbollah came right down to the Israeli border and built up on strategic hills all kinds of reinforced positions - bunkers, storage areas for rockets and missiles.

"Many of these positions can not be taken out by airpower alone but require a ground assault," Gold said, addressing the rationale for Israel's latest land invasion into Lebanon.

In 2002, Lebanese media reported the arrival of Iranian Revolutionary Guards to train Hezbollah in the use of Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 medium-range missiles with a range of 70 kilometers - deployed in southern Lebanon and aimed at Israel's northern cities.

A Bad Bargain

"So in return for Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, it acquired a more powerful Hezbollah, as well as Iranian forces taking up positions directly on its borders," said Gold.

"Israel's experience with United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, that has been in Southern Lebanon all of these years has been extremely negative," Gold said.

He recounted when on October 7, 2000, about five months after Israel withdrew its last forces from Lebanon, Hezbollah terrorists crossed the Blue Line and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers on Israeli territory and brought them back into Lebanon.

According to Gold, the Israeli Army determined that the UNIFIL post opposite of the place of the kidnapping had a direct line of sight on the area and, therefore, probably witnessed the entire attack on Israeli territory.

"But instead of taking action against this Hezbollah act by, for example, putting up road blocks in Southern Lebanon to prevent the kidnapped soldiers from being brought into the interior of Lebanon, UNIFEL did nothing," Gold lamented. "It didn't lift a finger to either prevent or stop the attack or to prevent the smuggling of the soldiers."

Later, explained Gold, when Israel had information that UNIFEL video taped part of this kidnapping effort, the U.N. denied that it had the video tape.

Ultimately the U.N. admitted that it had the video tape, but when it made it available for Israeli observation, it scratched out the faces of the Hezbollah terrorists so that Israel wouldn't identify them.

"This kind of activity which is well known in the Israeli defense establishment, makes the U.N. a very problematic partner in any future security arrangements in Southern Lebanon," said Gold.

As another example of U.N. perfidy, Gold recounted the time when he was Israel's Ambassador to the U.N. and was asked to go up to the Department of Peace Keeping Operations to receive a diplomatic protest for an Israeli artillery attack on a position that was 50 meters from a UNIFEL base.

"I asked the Israel Defense Forces why we were firing 50 meters from the UNIFEL base and I was told that it was counter battery fire because it was a Hezbollah artillery piece lodged in that position.

Gold asked the U.N. why didn't somebody leave the U.N. base and tell Hezbollah to move. "Apparently, nobody thought of that," Gold recounted.

Gold's bottom line: Had U.N. resolutions on Lebanon been implemented, then no Israeli soldiers would have been kidnapped in northern Israel this month and there would be no Hezbollah rockets raining on Israeli civilians in Haifa, Nahariya, Safed, and Tiberias.

When asked if Israel in its own self-defense may ultimately have to go directly after Iran and perhaps Syria as well," Ambassador Gold replied:

"We don't discuss, you know, operational possibilities or options. I don't want to rule anything in or rule anything out."

Gaza

"There is no question that [former Prime Minister and resigned Finance Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu's reading of the Gaza withdraw turned out to be 100 percent correct," said Gold.

Gold noted that soon after Israel withdrew from Gaza, an Al-Qaida unit from the Egyptian Sinia began to move into Gaza and set up some training areas that prepared Egyptian Jihadists for attacks against Egypt.

At the same time, Gold noted, Hezbollah, which maintained a coordination headquarters in Beirut to work with the Palestinian terrorist organizations, moved that headquarters from Beirut to Gaza.

"Gaza quickly became a focal point in the terrorist universe where both Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah could be found," concluded Gold.

the Latest Missile Crisis

Gold finds the turmoil today eerily reminiscent of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

Then, the Soviet Union had only unreliable intercontinental ballistic missiles for striking the U.S., so they positioned shorter-range missiles in nearby Cuba instead, he explained. Today, the Iranians have a 1,300-kilometer-range Shahab missile for striking Israel, and are working feverishly to improve its capabilities, while investing in longer-range missiles aimed at Western Europe.

"Teheran doubtless calculates that if the West tries to take measures against its nuclear program, its Lebanese arsenal could hold Israel hostage," Gold opined. "The difference between 1962 and 2006 is that, while President Kennedy made sure that the Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba, the international community has done nothing about the growing missile threat in Lebanon."

When asked about Israeli fears that they may get hit with weapons of mass destruction as the war escalates, Gold replied that there is no public information out there about weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Hezbollah.

There has been, however, some troubling movement of materials from Syria to Lebanon.

Gold pointed to a fleet of large tractor trailers that was recently caught moving out of Syrian territory and entering Lebanese territory. The convoy was intercepted by the Israeli Air Force and they were eliminated with missile attacks.

Meanwhile, as the conflict grinds on and expands, Gold said that in his opinion the war has already served an important purpose for Iran.

"Recently at the G-8 in St. Petersburg, rather than discussing Iran's illegal nuclear program, which was supposed to be the main item on the G-8 Agenda, the leaders at the Summit, at the G-8 meeting focused on the Israeli war with Hezbolla," he noted.

"Iran was spared new international pressure with respect to its nuclear program."

When British Prime Minister Tony Blair refused to support Kofi Annan's call for an immediate cease-fire, Gold said he was not at all surprised, noting that the British understand the dangers of the Iranian threat to the Middle East.

Their coalition forces are deployed in Southern Iraq in the Shiites areas near Bosara, he explained, adding that Iran was behind military action against British forces as a warning for British involvement in that area.

"The British are fully aware that Iran is seeking to exploit the Iraq war to expand its influence in Iraq and other places in the Middle East and, therefore, they might be the main country in the world after the United States to be able to appreciate how important it is to defeat Iran on Lebanese soil today."

Will the War Expand?

Gold emphasized that Israel had carefully focused its efforts on Hezbollah in Lebanon and on its military capacity, noting large Israeli intelligence teams that constantly review aerial photography to find targets and minimize civilian damage.

"When you drop leaflets in an area you are basically giving a warning that you are going to attack there. So not only the good people leave but also the bad people. But Israel's careful approach to combat is one of the reasons why the war may not necessarily expand - unless the Syrians and the Iranians are the ones to widen the territorial scope of the conflict."

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