Juan Cole: Seymour Hersh <http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060821fa_fact> says that sources knowledgeable about Israeli and Bush administration planning maintain that the Israelis laid out last spring in Washington and gained administration support for a plan for a bombing campaign against Hizbullah in Lebanon based on the Kosovo campaign. Moreover, the exercise was intended as a demonstration project and a preparation for a Bush administration war on Iran. The campaign against Hezbollah would have two major benefits. It would remove Hezbollah's rocket capability, which was a form of deterrence against Israeli or American bombing of Iran. And, what Israel learned from attacking Hezbollah would be useful in formulating tactics in the American assault on Iran.
Let me say this loud and clear, drawing on Pat Lang <http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0721/p09s01-coop.html>. *Any US attack on Iran could well lead to the US and British troops in Iraq being cut off from fuel and massacred by enraged Shiites. Shiite irregulars could easily engage in pipeline and fuel convoy sabotage of the sort deployed by the Sunni guerrillas in the north. Without fuel, US troops would be sitting ducks for rocket and mortar attacks that US air power could not hope completely to stop (as the experience of Israel with Hizbullah in Lebanon demonstrates). A pan-Islamic alliance of furious Shiites and Sunni guerrillas might well be the result, spelling the decisive end of Americastan in Iraq*. Shiite Iraqis are already at the boiling point over Israel's assault on their coreligionists in Lebanon. An attack on Iran could well push them over the edge. People like Cheney and Bush don't understand people's movements or how they can win. They don't understand the Islamic revolution in Iran of 1978-79. They don't understand that they are playing George III in the eyes of most Middle Eastern Muslims, and that lots of people want to play George Washington. <...> http://www.juancole.com/2006/08/israel-kills-38-civilians-on-eve-of.html
