The Middle East Explodes
Israeli forces pound Hezbollah in Lebanon, as a cataclysmic new war beckons
In the boiling cauldron that is the modern Middle East, violence is a shared language, understood by all sides, and the conversation is apparently only just beginning. After nearly a year of brutal and ongoing warfare in Gaza, Israel’s plunging into what looks to be full-blown hostilities with yet another Iranian paramilitary client, Hezbollah, even as the IDF has yet to bring operations in Gaza to any kind of satisfying conclusion.
Indeed, Bibi Netanyahu’s right-wing government appears to be betting that Israel can manage to prosecute both wars simultaneously, despite the Biden administration’s frantic efforts at conjuring up an elusive peace deal to end the worsening fighting, something at which Hamas, Hezbollah, and Israel have all balked.
The day after October 7th, when Hamas crashed through Israeli borders and decimated a series of Kibbutzim, raping, slaughtering, and kidnapping the Israeli civilians living on the periphery of Gaza, Hezbollah began firing volleys of unguided rockets into northern Israel, allegedly in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza, with lethal effects on civilians caught in the crossfire, including 12 Druze children playing soccer in late July. 67,000 Israelis were evacuated from northern Israel, and have yet to return, even as hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have also now fled the border areas. Still, for months, the cross-border combat was contained, limited, and controlled, though that appears to be over now, replaced by a cycle of mutual escalation.
For their part, Hezbollah has said they will continue firing rockets, drones, and missiles into Israel until the fighting in Gaza ends. They fired their largest and deepest strike on Monday, following major Israeli airstrikes, launching more than 100 missiles at least 30 miles into Israel. Israeli missile defense forces shot down what appeared to be a precision guided missile flying into Haifa, in what seemed like a warning of things to come.
Meanwhile, there has been sustained political pressure in Israel to confront Hezbollah, and restore security in northern Israel, and deterrence more generally, including from many Israelis who believed it was a grave mistake to focus only on Hamas at the beginning of the war. Now, Israel’s calculus is clearly shifting, and they appear to be taking the gloves completely off with Hezbollah, betting that escalation may lead a disoriented and destabilized Hezbollah to back down.
Likewise, Benjamin Netanyahu likely finds it politically expedient to confront Hezbollah, rather than winding down the fighting in Gaza, thus fracturing his far-right governing coalition, and facing an inquiry regarding his failures on October 7th, and pending corruption charges.
Of course, escalation could also plunge the entire region into an even more lethal and destabilizing conflict. As a horrific new ground war threatens to envelop Lebanon and perhaps beyond, the world appears to be unable to stop the tragic tit-for-tat cycle of violence, which is following its own black logic. Amid emergency meetings of the UN’s Security Council, and talk among Israeli commanders of a ground incursion, the stage is set for a nightmarish conflagration in Lebanon.
Mutual escalation
The most recent round of escalations began after Hezbollah launched rockets that killed 12 Druze children playing soccer in July. Israel responded by assassinating Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah commander, and the tempo and intensity of the fighting has only increased since then.
A week ago, Israel executed a stunning intelligence operation, which saw thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah operatives throughout Lebanon explode, leading to dozens of deaths and thousands of injuries. Israeli intelligence operatives apparently burrowed deep into the supply chain of the Taiwanese company supplying the antiquated beepers, after Hezbollah’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah, called on his fighters to get off cellphones, which he correctly believed were vulnerable to Israeli intelligence agencies. Israel created front companies in Hungary, thus infiltrating Hezbollah’s communication systems, and ultimately, detonating thousands of pagers, and the next day, walkie talkies, used by the organization, in a twist of the knife.
Shortly after that, Israeli fighter jets began pummeling southern Lebanon at a vastly increased tempo and intensity, assassinating about a dozen top commanders meeting at a safe house, including Ibrahim Aqil, a Radwan commander long wanted for his part in organizing the devastating 1983 attacks on the U.S. Embassy and the Marine barracks in Beirut. Hundreds of Americans perished in those and other attacks, which included the kidnapping, torture, and murder of the CIA station chief in Beirut, William F. Buckley. That grisly act was recorded by Hezbollah for posterity, and a copy of his brutal interrogation ended up with the CIA.
By Wednesday, Israeli fighter jets had pounded roughly 2000 targets in eastern Lebanon and the Dahiya neighborhood of southern Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold, leading to the worst loss of life since the end of the Lebanese civil war. Israel is continuing to unleash punishing airstrikes on Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah’s military bases, command-and-control facilities, rocket launchers, and weapons depots.
At the moment, it’s unclear how a weakened Hezbollah will respond, beyond desultory rocket fire, nor how much further Israel will go, short of sending armored divisions across the border, and dismantling Hezbollah with a bloody ground invasion into southern Lebanon.
Tactical superiority — Strategic blindness
Per usual, Israel has shown off its dazzling military and intelligence capabilities, while simultaneously betraying a surprising lack of strategic direction. It’s useful to remember that Hezbollah was itself born from another ill-fated Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s, and that another massive ground campaign into Lebanon is hardly going to lead to the kind of safety and security Israelis crave.
What exactly is the endgame here? It’s unclear how escalating sporadic cross-border airstrikes and rocket fire into a full-blown conflagration helps solve any of Israel’s many security problems. Ultimately, Israel may be able to degrade and destroy Hezbollah’s military capabilities, but it’s unclear how expanding the war into Lebanon solves the underlying political problem of the Palestinian issue. It doesn’t.
Still, Hezbollah is a vile, bloodstained terrorist organization; certainly, if Hasan Nasrallah agreed to stop firing rockets into Israel, this war could be avoided. He cannot or will not do such a thing as long as fighting rages in Gaza, tying the fate of these two conflicts together in a tightening Gordian knot that is now on the verge of strangling the entire region.
Perhaps Israel can continue to degrade Hezbollah from the air, and without a major ground incursion. They’ve certainly chipped away at any sense of security felt by the terrorist organization, infiltrating and exploiting their communication links, eating away at their leadership ranks, blinding their command and control, and decimating their chain of command.
However, Hezbollah will almost certainly be able to bleed any Israeli infantry columns that enter Lebanon, through well-honed guerrilla tactics in urban combat that will favor defenders, and which will partly blunt Israel’s technological and military superiority. Likewise, Hezbollah is also a far more potent and sophisticated player than Hamas in Gaza, and their supply lines are less vulnerable to being choked off by blockades. The patron regime in Tehran could also conceivably enter the war on behalf of its Lebanese client, further widening the conflict, and almost certainly drawing in American forces.
If nothing else, a major Israeli ground operation in Lebanon will be a bloodbath, a human rights disaster, and a security vortex for the region. That much is quite clear.
In the days to follow, the Middle East stands on the verge of imminent calamity. American and French diplomats continue to press all sides for a cease-fire, though that appears to be wishful thinking at this point, amid successive rounds of escalation and counterattacks. More to the point, Benjamin Netanyahu, Yahya Sinwar, and Hasan Nasrallah all have yet to step back from the brink. Instead, all three leaders appear intent on tempting fate, and rolling the iron dice of war.
This a fantastic article and analysis. You write beautifully.