It is likely that Israel’s decision to turn the tables on Hezbollah and call its bluff via massive airstrikes against it this week will be seen as a turning point in the conflict. It is important to understand how these events unfolded, especially since, for many years, an ingrained fear of Hezbollah was built up in Israel.
On Monday, the IAF launched airstrikes on more than 1,300 Hezbollah targets. They included numerous waves of airstrikes across southern Lebanon and deeper into Lebanon. Lebanese civilians were called upon to flee areas where Hezbollah is present in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.
Many things occurred on Monday that illustrate how Israel is turning the tide against Hezbollah. Calling on civilians to leave areas in Lebanon where Hezbollah is present is one example. The IDF provided details on how Hezbollah has used civilian homes to store arms. This is important information that could have been provided earlier, although this might have tipped Israel’s hand about its plans to turn the tables on Hezbollah.
Another key aspect of the turning of the tide against Hezbollah was calling the terrorist group’s bluff. Hezbollah has always threatened to rain down thousands of missiles a day on Israel and also use numerous new capabilities it had acquired over the last years. For instance, Hezbollah acquired precision-guided munitions and also drones. It threatened to use these capabilities to target Israeli infrastructure.
Hezbollah was seen as so powerful that any war with it would be devastating for Israel. In past years, the description of war with Hezbollah always made it seem almost apocalyptic. According to those predictions, it would mean civilians in shelters across the country for days or weeks on end, widespread destruction, and large numbers of casualties.
The Hezbollah bogeyman was conjured up because of fears of what a major conventional-style war would mean. This model for what war would look like emerged slowly and wasn’t typical in the years after the 2006 war. Instead, in the years after 2006, the main concern was that Hezbollah had proven itself tougher to fight than Israel assumed. The IDF had to put in place reforms for its ground forces after the war. Training was a key element intended to redeploy the IDF from fighting terrorism in the West Bank to being a conventional military force again.
The fear of another 2006 war haunted Israel, and fear soon became an overarching narrative that Hezbollah was some kind of all-powerful monster. Hezbollah increased its capabilities, and it became typical to talk of the group as possessing 150,000 or 200,000 rockets. The rocket arsenal soon came to include precision-guided munitions. Over the past year or two, it became clear that the terrorist group had also acquired thousands of drones.
Hezbollah's weaponry
This huge arsenal painted a picture of a war in which thousands of rockets would rain down across Israel, threatening most of the country. This is because Hezbollah was assumed to have a large number of long-range rockets as well.
Hezbollah benefited from the Syrian civil war. Even though it suffered losses in Syria due to its involvement from 2012-2018, it also achieved a lot. Its fighters gained experience fighting as a conventional ground force. It also was able to penetrate Syria deeply and knit itself in with other Iranian-backed militias. Hezbollah sought to expand the threat to Israel to include the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.
Iran also used Hezbollah to expand its own concept of a multifront or multi-arena war. This is what gave Hezbollah the sense it could get involved in the war against Israel after October 7. Hezbollah broke through any sense of Israel’s ability to deter it by beginning its attacks on Israel on October 8. Hezbollah forced Israel to evacuate the North. Fears that it could carry out an October 7-type attack led to the evacuations. In addition, there was hesitancy about creating a larger war with Hezbollah. The limited proportional war began to take shape, which benefited Hezbollah.
Israel called Hezbollah’s bluff on September 23. It was able to do this by eliminating Hezbollah’s commanders in an airstrike on September 20. In addition, Israel was able to accomplish this via other means. The exploding pagers hurt Hezbollah and caused numerous casualties. Hezbollah struggled to respond, but it found itself in chaos.
Hezbollah was seen as a major bogeyman, but it’s possible it never put in place an ability to launch thousands of rockets a day. Hamas had achieved this on October 7. Hezbollah may not have actually been able to do what Hamas did. In addition, the chaos that emerged after September 18 also enabled Israel to increase its strikes on Hezbollah launchers. The lessons of August 25, when Hezbollah sought to launch thousands of projectiles at Israel, also helped Israel understand how Hezbollah would react.
The overall story here is that Hezbollah became arrogant and complacent. It also came to overly rely on Iran and Iran’s multifront strategy. This reined in Hezbollah. This restrained it and turned it into a kind of secondary front for Iran. Iran wants to preserve Hezbollah, and therefore, it is afraid of Hezbollah entering a major war. This left Hezbollah open to the kinds of attacks it suffered from September 17-23.
It’s possible Hezbollah will be able to get its house in order and carry out large-scale attacks against Israel. It’s possible Iran will enter the conflict or push the Houthis to increase their attacks. Many things can happen in a war. Once you decide to go to war, there is contact with the enemy, and one cannot know how the war will unfold.
Israel will also have to decide what to do. Israel shaped the battlefield in strikes on September 20-22. That is why September 23 will ring out as a major shift in this conflict. Israel has sought to turn the tide on the Iranian-backed terrorist group. It has called Iran’s bluff and pushed away the bogeyman of Hezbollah. Now, the sum of all our fears about Hezbollah’s capabilities has been deflated a bit.
I drove along the border of northern Israel on September 23 and expected to see wide-ranging Hezbollah rocket fire. I expected to see the enemy launch anti-tank-guided missiles along the border.
As I drove home at sunset, after most of Israel’s 1,300 airstrikes had been carried out, I saw numerous barrages of Hezbollah rockets over my head. But it appeared that Hezbollah’s capabilities to launch its arsenal of rockets had been degraded to a similar level that Hamas had in October 2023. It’s still a major threat, but the fear of Hezbollah has now diminished.