Western officials believe that Iran and Hezbollah will attack Israel in the coming days but are hoping that US warnings of “devastating consequences” along with military deployment to the area will mitigate the attacks, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

“Iran and Hezbollah will launch attacks against Israel in the coming days but doesn’t believe Iran could conduct a much larger military campaign on Israel than it did in April,” two US officials said.

Iran can ill afford a war with Israel now, which would pull in the US, as a new presidential administration prepares to deal with the reeling economy. Hezbollah, which is officially part of the Lebanese government, has similar domestic concerns.

According to Sami Nader, the director of the Institute of Political Science at Saint Joseph University in Beirut, Hezbollah will not have the Lebanese support it enjoyed during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war.

“The situation is totally different from the one in 2006. Lebanon has gone through economic collapse, people lost their savings in the banks, the currency lost 98% of its value, unemployment is high,” Nader told the WSJ. “Hezbollah’s constituency in the south lost their houses once. They don’t want to do it a second time. The timing is not right for a war with Israel.”

“Neither Hezbollah nor Iran wants a comprehensive war now,” said Ali Fadlallah, a Beirut-based independent political scientist familiar with Hezbollah’s thinking. “But at the same time they do not want the Israelis to conclude that their unwillingness to go to war allows them to cross red lines.”

According to a report by the UK’s Guardian, Iran will likely try to target those responsible for killing Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the Mossad, rather than Israeli civilians.

The report added that Iran did not receive support of its plan to attack Israel at a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Jeddah this week.

Although there was unanimous condemnation of Hanieyh’s killing, “no formal collective support for an Iranian attack on Israel was issued.”

“Pakistan’s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, in his remarks called for cool heads and perseverance with a diplomatic path – saying that the assassination must be avenged but that ‘we must not fulfill Benjamin Netanyahu’s design for a wider war.'”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)