A former US military intelligence analyst warned that Israel risks a major war in Lebanon for the political survival of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Former US Army Major Harrison Mann resigned from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency earlier this year over US support for the Israeli massacre of Palestinians in Gaza, and has been speaking out against President Biden's policy of full support for Israel.

In his comments to The Guardian, Mann said: “We know specifically that the Israeli prime minister must continue to be a wartime leader if he wants to prolong his political career and stay out of court, so that motive is there.”

His comments echo a Washington Post report published at the beginning of the year. She added that American officials are concerned that Netanyahu may consider the war in Lebanon essential for his political survival.

Mann said he expected Israel to target residential areas in southern Lebanon in the event of an all-out war, a tactic known as the “suburb doctrine,” named after a Beirut neighborhood that Israel bombed in 2006.

“It's not like actual written doctrine, but I think we can be very comfortable assessing that bombing civilian centers as a means of coercing the enemy is clearly an accepted and shared belief in the Israeli military and the Israeli leadership,” said Mann, an American Jew. During the past nine months.

He warned that Hezbollah would be able to respond forcefully to Israel. “They may have the ability to at least partially overcome Israeli air defenses, strike civilian infrastructure across the country, and inflict a level of devastation on Israel that I'm not sure Israel has ever really seen in its history — and certainly not in its last war.”

Mann said that the heavy bombing of Israeli cities would increase the possibility of direct US involvement. He added: "Our least escalatory engagement would likely be to strike supply lines or associated targets in Iraq and Syria to help cut off lines of communication and weapons flowing to Hezbollah." “But that in itself is risky, because if we start doing this, some of the people we hit could be from Hezbollah, but they could be from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.”

Iran has warned Israel that any large-scale attack on Lebanon will lead to a "war of obliteration" in the region. It is unclear whether Iran will intervene directly, but it is possible that Shiite militias allied with it in Iraq and Syria will intervene.

Mann said he did not expect the Biden administration to choose to target Iran directly, but he warned that the risk of a direct war between the United States and Iran would increase significantly. He said: "I am confident that the administration will not do that, but I believe that between us and the Israelis who strike Iranian targets outside Iran, the risk of escalation will become much higher."

The United States claims that it is working hard to avoid war in Lebanon, but it continues to provide strong support for Israel, which may encourage Netanyahu to escalate the situation. The American media reported last week that President Amos Hochstein's envoy informed Lebanon that it would ultimately support Israel if an all-out war broke out during his recent visit to both Lebanon and Israel.