US should push Russia to drop Hizbollah

Israel’s warning some months ago that the next war with Hizbollah will be far more ferocious than the 2006 conflict is beginning to sound like an understatement.

Since then, Hizbollah has also staged an impressive military parade near the Lebanese border in the Syrian town of Qusair, where the group has a number of military bases and outposts.

There it showed off not only newlyacquired, Russian-made military hardware — including armoured personnel carriers and tanks — but also US-supplied weapons, which, astonishingly, appear to have fallen into the group’s hands.

Small wonder the intelligence group Stratfor now calls Hizbollah “the best-equipped non-state fighting force in the world”.

With US President-elect Donald Trump set to end military funding and diplomatic support for the Sunni rebels in Syria, it may appear that Israel can do little but prepare for future conflict.

Israel, though, might just offer Mr Trump a way out of the Syrian quagmire in a way that also serves its own ends.

And it could do so by encouraging him to pressure Moscow to abandon Hizbollah, with the prize of offering tacit American backing for Vladimir Putin’s power-grab in the Middle East.

Notwithstanding the antisemitism that suffused his electoral campaign, Mr Trump himself is unequivocally pro-Israel while also contemptuous of the Iranian regime. And, crucially, he has to square the following circle: bringing Russia back into the fold and accepting Assad as the legitimate Syrian leader, while remaining loyal to Israel and pressuring Iran over its alleged nuclear programme. That Mr Putin has allowed Israel to attack Hizbollah positions in Syria during the civil war strongly suggests he considers the group expendible.

He could certainly turn on Hizbollah without risking serious blowback from either Syria or Iran, which need him on the international stage far more than he needs them.

And post-civil war, Assad himself will be eager to ensure Hizbollah does not set up a state within a state inside Syria’s borders.

Such a deal, which would involve Moscow pressuring Syria and Iran to stop funding and arming Hizbollah, would give Mr Trump something to sell to the American public while reducing the possibility of the group instigating what would surely be the deadliest conflict the region has witnessed for decades.

Mr Putin could turn on Hizbollah without risking blowback’