New Lebanese government will finish off Hizbullah?

Seymour Hersh's bleak and somewhat sensational New Yorker article on the US administration's alleged planning to bomb Iran contained the following reprisal scenario:

Iran could also initiate a wave of terror attacks in Iraq and elsewhere, with the help of Hezbollah. On April 2nd, the Washington Post reported that the planning to counter such attacks “is consuming a lot of time” at U.S. intelligence agencies. “The best terror network in the world has remained neutral in the terror war for the past several years,” the Pentagon adviser on the war on terror said of Hezbollah. “This will mobilize them and put us up against the group that drove Israel out of southern Lebanon. If we move against Iran, Hezbollah will not sit on the sidelines. Unless the Israelis take them out, they will mobilize against us.” (When I asked the government consultant about that possibility, he said that, if Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel, “Israel and the new Lebanese government will finish them off.”)

So, a Pentagon consultant seems to think that if Hizbullah fired rockets into northern Israel, the Lebanese government will and can finish them off with the help of... Israel?

Have we all missed something? What kind of futuristic Lebanese government can take Hizbullah out, let alone enter into a military alliance with Israel?! Just last month, the Lebanese Army chief told Terje Roed-Larsen that he would open the border with Syria in the event of an Israeli attack. Who will finish off Hizbullah? Jumblatt's mighty-flippin power rangers or Hariri's futuristic robot-warriors?

Comments

[Tony]

Given all the useless sources (e.g. Flynt Leverett!) in Hersh's shrill article (what else is new?), I would take this quote, as all the others, with a mountain of salt.

However, should HA fire anything into Israel, I think it's quite safe to assume that the Israelis will most definitely respond with brutal force. Actually, if indeed the Israelis or even the US decide to strike at Iran, who says we won't see a simultaneous (preemptive) strike on all the HA sites in Lebanon so that they don't get a chance to fire much of anything?

[Abu Kais]

It's popcorn. The article, I thought, was a hodgepodge of conveniently edited quotes, and lacked any attempt at clarity, let alone objectivity. It's depressing to see that Hersh also does not understand national security or contingency planning. He never questions what his sources are telling him, as long as they're telling him what he wants to hear, and saying it to him and only him. I mean who are all those supposedly trusted advisors who have all this access and security clearance yet are so eager to pick up the phone and complain to a journalist?

[Ghassan Karam]

The refernce to the ability of the Lebanese government to take on HA is laughable at best. But I recall a Janes report in 2003 that details an Israeli plan to decimate the southern Lebanese from the air. I do not doubt that they have the capability to execute such a plan that depends on complete control of the skies.

[Joseph Kattan]

Israel will prefer to discreetly eliminate Hezbollah's leaders the same way they are eliminating the Hamas leader. The murder of Hamas leaders and Hezbollah leaders is totally condoned by the West as they consider them as terrorist organizations.
So why Israel would bother in confronting HA militarily on the border, cause civil casualties and provoke international protests. This is why I am not surprised Israel is infiltrating some sunni extremists to do the dirty job.

[sa3dan]

I like the robot warriors :D