All tactics and no strategy is the noise before the defeat
-Sun Tsu
Israel is now in the process of increasing its escalatory moves against Hezbollah in the hope among other things of putting an end to Hezbollah shelling of the northern Israel border area, which depending on who is counting, has displaced between 60,000 and 100,000 settlers. The latest is Israel’s announcement, widely covered in the Western and Middle East press, that it is conducting a limited ground operation in southern Lebanon. Needless to say, an invasion is an invasion. Recall that Hezbollah launched its campaign on this territory on October 8 in solidarity with Hamas and said it would end the strikes if Israel entered into a durable ceasefire with Hamas.
This is not only an overly dynamic situation, as Lambert likes to say, but commentators are also hobbled by the skewed media coverage and the blackout on war-related incidents in much of Israel. For instance, many commentators who see themselves as anti-globalist and therefore not Israel-friendly are still treating the pager explosions as hobbling Hezbollah’s military communications. Alastair Crooke, who has often visited Hezbollah facilities (including rocket/missile silos) continues to maintain that the Hezbollah militia operations moved over to a its own fiber optic network in or even before 2006 and that that had controls that would detect any penetration. The pagers were used by members of the civilian units and never for military operations. He believes they remain secure even after the successful assassination of Nasrallah. He discussed in an interview with Judge Napolitano that the attack was the result of a humint breach (he saw the fact that Netanyahu approved it from the US the opportunity presenting itself through new intel) and stressed that it’s hard to get senior people to do things like never use cell phones (Note that an Iranian Republican Guard members were also killed in the same meeting; it’s possible the breach came from the Iran side).
So to lean against the widespread pro-Israel triumphalism in the Western press, yes, Hezbollah has lost a big swathe of its senior leadership and has been shown to also have suffered severe security breaches, which likely means at a minimum that internal discipline was uneven. However, its network is allegedly intact and secure (whether it was used as exclusively as it should have been is another matter) and Hezbollah has reportedly also replaced all of the slain leaders (Nearly all of those killed were over 60, so having more energetic, younger men assume top roles may not turn out to be a negative and could well be a plus if they adapt quickly). However, the degree to which Israel was able to identify where key people were when is extremely troubling and Hezbollah needs to very quickly understand how that happened to prevent its recurrence.
There is also a widespread, tacit assumption that the decapitation of nearly all Hezbollah leadership would impair their operations. So far, that does not seem to have happened:
NEW:
🇮🇱🇱🇧 The Israeli army has been unable to enter Lebanon because Hezbollah fighters are constantly bombing their positions – Al Manar pic.twitter.com/IswKmgfgbW
— Megatron (@Megatron_ron) October 1, 2024
Hezbollah says it launched a salvo of “Fadi-4” rockets at the headquarters of the Israeli military Intelligence – Unit 8200 and the Mossad headquarters, both located in Tel Aviv.
🟠 LIVE updates: https://t.co/TFMVNuSxKG pic.twitter.com/CkQWpGaDvH
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 1, 2024
Mind you, that does not mean that Hezbollah will soon counter-escalate, say by extending the range of its strikes into Israel. The increase after the pager attacks, of about 50 km, reportedly increases the population in the shelling range to 2 million. That is not to say that Hezbollah is targeting civilians, but that even with attacking military assets, civilians are likely to be in the area too, plus air defense and intercepted rockets and missiles fall where they fall. The result of the increased firing area, however, is that more civilians will need to go into safe rooms or shelters when Hezbollah attacks. That can’t be good for nerves or the economy.
However, driving Hezbollah out of the border area is only one Israel objective. Another is to get the US more deeply committed, ideally by sending in more air support and troops (shame about that busted oiler; wonder how much of an impediment that will prove to be). An ideal scenario would be to get Iran to Do Something that can be presented as enough of an attack on Israel so as to get the US to go full bore after Iran.
Indeed, there has been a lot of criticism in the Arab world for Iran not having stepped up to Do Something. One reason not to do so directly and instead to support allies is that per above, a direct attack on Israel is exactly what Israel wants. Second is the recently elected president Masoud Pezeshkian was opposed and had been led (as in strung along) by the West to believe that if he played nice, Iran would get sanctions relief. Pezeshkian is now making Putin-esque noises about having really been duped and admitting he made a mistake.
But it’s not clear Iran would have had more degrees of freedom up till about now to have dealt more harshly with the assassination of Hamas political leader and negotiator Ismail Haniyeh even absent Pezeshkian having argued for holding fire. In the second half of this Danny Haiphong show, he speaks with Professor Mohammed Mirandi (who was also about 1000 meters from the massive blasts that killed Nasrallah). Mirandi points out that as long as ceasefire talks were supposedly on, Iran was checked in making any kind of serious response. Even if everyone in the Resistance with an operating brain cell knew the negotiations were a big headfake, Iran would not want to be in a position to be depicted by the US and Israel as having sabotaged a possible resolution of the Gaza conflict.
More assets do seem to be moving into the area, even if the numbers are not large:
🚨 Last night, the UK sent a huge A400M military transport plane from its base on Cyprus to Tel Aviv.
The A400 can carry 116 soldiers and a 81,600 lb payload. pic.twitter.com/hrttcCQROU
— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) October 1, 2024
Before one contends that this short overview is not giving Israel credit for its great success, it’s worth remembering that shock and awe campaigns don’t have a great track record. Indeed, the start of both the 1982 and 2006 Israel invasions into Lebanon were ballyhooed at the outset as striking decisive blows, when in the end, Israel lost both wars.
And if you want an even more jaundiced view, John Mearsheimer had a talk in the last day with a reporter from the Spectator, who clearly expected Mearsheimer to affirm the reporter’s enthusiastic reading of Israel’s successive blows against Hezbollah. Mearsheimer exhibits impressive sang froid in calmly debunking the Spectator’s assumptions. This is such a great interview that I don’t want to act as spoiler by showcasing some of Mearsheimer’s key points. Arguably his overarching one is that it does not look at all as if Hezbollah has been defeated, and if that is correct, Israel faces a very long slog when it is not at all prepared to wage a protracted war.
This interview would also be useful to circulate to friends and colleagues who might be opent to a very credible analysis that contradicts media Israel cheerleading.
