Chairman of the Joint Chiefs: We Won’t be Able to Support Israel in a War with Hezbollah

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on June 24 announced to the world that in a war with Hezbollah, Israel shouldn’t count on help from America. This stark warning must have delighted the mullahs in Iran, and caused great consternation in Israel. More on this disastrous statement by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Charles Q. Brown, can be found here: “Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman: US likely unable to assist Israel in war with Hezbollah,” Jerusalem Post, June 24, 2024:

Joint Chiefs of Staff head Charles Q. Brown warned on Monday that the US may not be able to help defend Israel against an all-out war with Hezbollah in the same way that it stepped in during the Iran drone attack in April.

Why would the strongest military power in the world be unable to help its most loyal ally, Israel, in its moment of maximum peril, fighting against the terrorists of Hezbollah who have been supplied by Iran with 150,000 rockets and missiles, enough to overwhelm Israel’s anti-missile system? Why wouldn’t the fighter jets on American aircraft carriers now in the eastern Mediterranean be able to help the IDF attack Hezbollah’s storehouses of those rockets and missiles, its control-and-command centers, its tunnel systems?

Brown, a US Air Force general, also said that Iran “would be more inclined to support Hezbollah.”

Iran, Brown says, “would be more inclined to support Hezbollah.” It would not merely be “more inclined.” It will support Hezbollah, period, just as it has been doing for decades.. Brown should have said something like this: “Iran has already supplied Hezbollah with 150,000 rockets and missiles, and with billions of dollars in financing, and of course Iran will back Hezbollah to the hilt in any war between it and Israel. We must provide Israel, our most loyal ally, not only with all the weapons it asks for, but make clear to Iran that we will not allow Hezbollah to rain down death on Israeli civilians. We will act to help Israel defend Its civilian population against the barrages of missiles from Hezbollah.”

While the Islamic Republic supports Hamas, General Brown said that Tehran would stand more firmly behind Hezbollah, “particularly if they felt that Hezbollah was being significantly threatened.”

In other words, Brown recognizes that Iran would do even more to help Hezbollah than it did for Hamas in Gaza.

Brown also said that any Israeli military offensive into Lebanon could risk triggering a broader war, putting US forces in danger.

What is the “broader war” that General Brown fears? Iran has been engaged in a “broader war” for decades. It has backed the Houthis in the Yemeni civil war, and provided them with the missiles they have fired at Saudi oil installations, and at ships in the Red Sea, disrupting 15% of the world’s sea traffic, that has had to be rerouted round the Cape of Good Hope. Iran has supported Syria’s Assad with weapons and money that have allowed hm to crush his opposition in the Syrian civil war. Iranian-affiliated militias in Iraq have attacked American bases in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan. What General Brown should have said was that “Iran has been engaged in an attempt to create a Shia crescent, including the Houthis in Yemen, the Kata’ib Hezbollah militias in Iraq, Alawite-ruled Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Now Iran wants, through its puppet Hezbollah, to fulfill its dream of destroying Israel. We will not let that happen. There will be no daylight between the United States and Israel if war breaks out with Hezbollah. And the Iranians should be careful not to attack any American forces in the region.”

But that is not what he said.

In the event of war, Brown said the US would likely not be able to provide the same assistance as it did when Iran carried out a missile and drone attack on Israel earlier this year. He also said it was hard to fend off the shorter-range rockets that Hezbollah fires across the border into Israel.

Why let Hezbollah know that the US would not be able to provide “the same assistance” to Israel as it did during the missile and drone attack by Iran on April 13? That will only encourage Hassan Nasrallah to attack the Jewish state. Or is Brown trying to frighten Israel into avoiding a war that most Israelis think will be necessary if the 80,000 Israelis who have fled northern Israel to avoid Hezbollah’s barrages of rockets are to be able to return home?

He asserted that the safety of US forces was the priority and reiterated that no attacks had been carried out on US bases in the region since February.

Are the few thousand American troops in the region of greater concern than the eight million Jews in the state of Israel? Besides, not a single attack on US bases in the region has been launched for the past five months. It seems that Iran and its proxies have learned a lesson— not to attack the American military — the hard way.

Brown said that the US continued to warn Israel against going to war with Lebanon.

“Think about the second order of effect of any type of operation into Lebanon, and how that might play out and how it impacts not just the region, but how it impacts our forces in [sic] regions as well,” Brown reportedly said….

The Bidenites still do not understand: Israel does not want war with Hezbollah. But it cannot tolerate a situation where, because of Hezbollah missile and rocket barrages, 80,000 Israelis have had to leave their homes in northern Israel and will not be able to return until those barrages seize. It is Hezbollah that needs to be persuaded to stop those barrages, and the Americans ought to be warning Hezbollah, not Israel, of the war that will otherwise ensue, and likely leave much of Lebanon in ruins.

All that Israel wants, in essence, is that Hezbollah stop firing at civilians in the north, so that the 80,000 Israelis who have left may now return home, and that it pull back its forces a few kilometers from the Lebanese border with Israel, creating a buffer zone between Israel and the terror group.

Prime Minister Netanyahu told Channel 14 on Sunday night that Israel is open to a diplomatic resolution to the Hezbollah threat, but he stressed, “It must be on our terms.”…

A diplomatic resolution might be crafted by France, which has historic ties to Lebanon. The Quai d’Orsay could enroll fellow members of the European Union to threaten an economic boycott of Iran unless that country directs Hezbollah to stand down, and end its daily barrages into northern Israel.

The Israelis are resolute, determined to put a stop to Hezbollah’s continued aggression in the north. This is the time for the Bidenites to declare their full-throated support for Israel, to deliver at once the shipments of weapons that have been deliberately withheld or slowed down, and to offer to help defend the Jewish state against the massive armory of rockets and missiles that Hezbollah is prepared to rain down on the Jewish state, hoping to overwhelm by sheer numbers the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system. The Americans could use their own ship-borne anti-missile defenses in the eastern Mediterranean to intercept Hezbollah’s missiles.

Instead, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has publicly distanced the Americans from such support, warning Israel that the Americans do not want Israel to take any action that could potentially endanger American forces in the region. But what are those forces for, if not to support our allies and frighten our adversaries in the region?