Saudi Arabia is opening a new front against Iran and wants Israel to play the dirty game in Lebanon against Hezbollah. This is hypothesized by a long analysis by Haaretz, according to which the Saudi kingdom is trying to move the battlefield with Iran from Syria to Lebanon, with the risk of triggering a chain reaction. According to Al Shapiro, a former American ambassador to Israel at the time of Barack Obama, Saudi Arabia may want to push Israelis into a war with Iran and its allies in the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah militia. The risk is that the Lebanese Shiites respond to the crisis triggered by the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri by seeking military escalation with Israel, in order to unite the country behind them. This is why Shapiro urges Israel not to be manipulated by the Saudis. Dov Zakhiem, a senior Pentagon official from the Reagan era, points out in Foreign Policy that the close ties between American President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman suggest common planning, probably a plan to put pressure on Iran. Meanwhile, the military success of the Assad regime in Syria is creating a new situation. And this, Haaretz writes, is apparently the reason for the numerous Israeli raids on Hezbollah arms depots and convoys in Syria. In these circumstances, the risks of accidents that go out of control increase. If Riyadh deliberately “blows on the fire” the danger becomes “tangible”, the newspaper emphasizes.
