In Profiles in Surrogacy, former Green Beret lieutenant colonel Gordon Cucullu explains how Iran may be using Hezbollah’s clashes with the IDF and North Korea’s missile launches to test new tactics and technologies:
Ever since Hitler used the civil war in Spain in the mid to late 1930s to test his aircraft, tanks, and blitzkrieg tactics, dictators have looked for surrogates to try out options for aggression. Arguably Josef Stalin used the Korean War to test the mettle of the U.S. and its allies in making a decision whether to invade Western Europe. A lukewarm response by Harry Truman to aggression in Korea might have encouraged Stalin to roll his tanks. More recently in the terror wars, Osama bin Laden attacked in many places around the world, increasingly raising the ante by going after more difficult and sensitive targets until he was convinced that a weak-kneed response from America was the most he had to fear. Then he launched 911, a strike he intended to bring down the entire economic and social structure of the United States.We may be seeing something similar today. Ever more analysts are convinced that Iran is using the current fighting between Hezbollah and Israel as a test bed for new tactics and weaponry as well as a deliberate provocation to incite further popular Muslim anger against the Jewish state. In an example of what looks like a 21st century version of testing prior to an attack, it is now fairly certain that Iranian scientists, engineers, and military and political leaders attended the North Korean missile testing that occurred the first week of July, and some have suggested that Iran sponsored and paid for the testing. Could it have been a live simulation of tactics that Iran intends to use against Israel via Lebanon?