"That's not a pretty picture at all..."

Gilbert Doctorow explains the threat of a regional war in the Middle East. If Israeli soldiers enters Gaza, Hezbollah may attack.

“If the United States believes that it can monopolise the solution finding to this problem, then we will have an unmitigated disaster.”

Gilbert Doctorow is an expert on international and Russian affairs. He’s on Substack, and helped form the American Committee for East-West Accord Ltd. Yesterday, he warned WION viewers of the threat of a regional war in the Middle East.

The following is text from part of the interview, with the full video below:

“The most important regional factor, the Hezbollah of Lebanon.

So far, the exchange across the border, between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, has been very modest, only symbolic. There are estimates that Hezbollah has 1000 missiles it can fire against Israel.

When the supreme religious leader of Iran spoke on TV yesterday, saying that the West underestimates the capabilities, the skills, and the dedication of Palestinians, he was right on target. The issue is that Hamas has allies in the region. The most important and powerful is Hezbollah.

So if Israel goes into Gaza, and commits the acts it’s now prepared to do, which will be massive destruction, the loss of perhaps thousands of lives among the Israeli defence force, and the loss of lives, perhaps by a factor of 10 of Gaza civilians, that would regionalise the war. That will bring in volunteers from Syria, Iraq and Yemen, all under the instructions and training of Hezbollah, and then you will have a real threat to the existence of Israel.”