'Hezbollah and Iran are to blame'

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Martin Indyk, director of the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, and a former US ambassador to Israel, says that while the potential is there, neither Israel nor Syria want the Lebanese crisis to explode into a regional conflict.

Before joining the US State Department, Indyk served for eight years as founding executive director for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He has taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Columbia University, Tel Aviv University, and Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

Indyk has published widely on Middle East issues.

What was your reaction when this latest conflict between Lebanon and Israel began?

My reaction was to think that it was foolish of Hezbollah to kidnap the two Israeli soldiers. This was an unprovoked act of aggression across an internationally recognised border, which gave Israel the justification it had been waiting for to take down Hezbollah's strategic capabilities.

Israel has been observing Hezbollah build up its power with Iran's help and was just biding its time. Nasrallah is renowned for his cleverness, but he seems to have miscalculated in this case.

al Jazeera