On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “11th Hour,” NBC News Foreign Correspondent Matt Bradley stated that the explosions in Iran “could be a deeply, deeply destabilizing move by the Israelis, and again, not just for the Iranians, but for the entire region” including Syria.
Bradley began by saying, “I think for a lot of folks here, the big question is going to be whether or not this whole thing spells out beyond Iran’s borders, because of Iran itself, Iran’s policies, Iran’s sort of belligerency spills out beyond its borders, particularly here in Lebanon, where it’s dominated a lot of the politics, a lot of the military capabilities are dominated by Hezbollah, which is the main cat’s paw of Iran against Israel, and they really are populating the area far south of where I am, down the coast, near the Israeli border. And for the past six months, ever since Hamas’ October 7 attack against Israel, we’ve been seeing, not really a low level, but almost a sort of a simmering boil of a fight over that border between Hezbollah and Israel. Now, that is one of the proxies, Hezbollah, of Iran. Hamas is another one, now we’re talking about the Houthis in Yemen, the Popular Mobilization units in Iraq and some of them in Syria also backed by the Iranians. The regime of Bashar al-Assad is backed by the Iranians. So, we’re talking about not just Iran, but all of these other groups, militant groups, and in some cases, nations, that have connections to Iran that are really, as far as Israel is concerned, legitimate targets. Now, a lot of these groups may have been considering before today that they could have been struck, because as Courtney said, we’ve been waiting for this, the other shoe to drop for the better part of the past week, ever since we saw that salvo of missiles fired by the Iranians at Israel on Saturday night. And this looks like it could be either the beginning or the end of some sort of Israeli retaliation.”
He continued, “But the question is going to be whether or not these proxy groups like Hezbollah get involved. If that happens, in each case, in each of these countries, we’re at the precipice of war, of a massive conflagration that could really envelop the entire region, and take, not just Iran versus Israel, but countries like Lebanon, which is suffering…from a massive financial crisis for the past five years, countries like Yemen, Syria, all of these places that have had serious political instability and suffered from a lot of violence over the past couple of years. None of them, particularly not Lebanon, are ready for a new round of war. And that is what we’re facing right now. So, this could be a deeply, deeply destabilizing move by the Israelis, and again, not just for the Iranians, but for the entire region. And it could even draw in the United States.”
Bradley concluded that Hezbollah is “ready and willing to fight. We’re hearing a lot of bellicose language from a lot of different groups. So, this is a very, very dangerous situation.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.