Special to WorldTribune.com

TEL AVIV — Israel faces an Iranian-sponsored war of attrition from Lebanon and Syria.

Officials said the government and military were bracing for the prospect of a sustained Iranian campaign to destabilize Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Syria. They said the campaign could include repeated mortar and missile attacks as well as infiltration from southern Lebanon and Syria’s Golan Heights.

“Iran has been trying for a while now — through Hizbullah — to open another terror front against us on the Golan Heights,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

On Jan. 28, two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven others injured in an anti-tank guided missile attack from the Lebanese-Syrian border. The attack, claimed by Hizbullah, sparked one of the heaviest Israeli retaliation since the war with Hizbullah in 2006 and resulted in the killing of a Spanish member of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.

Officials said Hizbullah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — which lost up to 13 officers in a purported Israeli air strike on Jan. 18 — have organized a force to attack Israel from the Golan Heights as well as the neighboring Shebaa Plateau. They said the unidentified force would enable Teheran to disavow responsibility for what could result in a war of attrition that would tie up the Israeli Army along the 80-kilometer northern border.

“There is a confidence in Iran that we have not seen before, and we believe they are ready to test us with repeated, albeit low-level, attacks,” an official said.

A leading Israeli defense analyst agreed. Ron Ben-Yishai said Iran was using non-Hizbullah proxies to generate increasing tension that would preoccupy the Israeli military and drain the resources of the Jewish state ahead of national elections scheduled for March 17.

“Does Israel now enter into a broader conflict with Hizbullah or should it let it go on the grounds that this is Hizbullah settling their account with us?” Ben-Yishai said in an analysis for the Ynet news site. “On the other hand, Israel must consider the fact that if it does not act now, and harshly, it may well see similar events in the future. At this stage, the IDF top brass, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are facing a real dilemma.”

So far, Iran and Hizbullah, both of which threatened retaliation, were believed to have coordinated two attacks on Israel in as many days. On Jan. 27, Hizbullah was said to have fired several rockets toward a Jewish community in the Golan Heights and a military outpost on Mount Hermon.

“Iran and Hizbullah are trying and will continue to try to strike Israel through unrestrained terrorist infrastructures that aim to operate against military and civilian targets,” Ya’alon said.

  Tensions rising on Golan Heights as Hizbullah attack kills two Israeli soldiers, WorldTribune.com