Without tremendous guts, the IDF would not have succeeded in operation after operation since August to bring Hezbollah to its knees, IDF Col. (res.) and Northern Command Situation Room chief Anan Abbas has told The Jerusalem Post in one in-person interview and one very recent follow-up.
One of the two interactions was focused on the stunning IDF victory over Hezbollah in a massive operation on August 25, while the second looked backward at the assassination of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, the September 23 massive IDF aerial attack, the elimination of multiple levels of Hezbollah’s leadership, and the September 30 invasion of southern Lebanon.
Looking back on all of those recent incredibly successful operations, Abbas told the Post, “Guts is what is needed in order to stand one’s ground and to achieve things and lead the way. It takes a lot of courage to carry out major moves. Without that bravery and determination, we could not have done anything.
“We are attacking aggressively and bringing the enemy to the point of collapsing in fear and a sense of being chased down. We are trying to create a new reality in order to achieve our mission goals,” he said.
Moreover, the situation room chief, who has been at the center of so many key Israeli attacks on Hezbollah at crazy hours of the night but surprisingly showed little in the way of being tired or weary, said, “Through the attacks and actions of our forces, we are bringing about great achievements and are breaking the chain of communications of the Hezbollah organization, which is negating part of its capabilities and is bringing about comparative advantages in combat.
“We operate at all times. There is always someone on duty” in the situation room, he said.
Even before he became one of the heroes of the northern front, Abbas was well known as one of the more senior Druze-Israeli officers and also because his paratrooper son, Jamal Abbas, fell in battle against Hamas in Gaza.
Reviewing the war versus Hezbollah over the whole past year, Abbas noted, “They decided to join the war and are partners with a radical axis led by Iran. They are close to an organization that kills children, rapes women, and carried out actions as heinous or worse than during the Holocaust [Hamas on October 7, 2023].”
Next, he stated, “We have been fighting them day in and day out. We have a spectrum of possible responses and capabilities. We exposed Hezbollah [on August 25] when they wanted to carry out a big attack on Israel, including targeting innocent civilians. We sometimes forgo hitting Hezbollah operatives in order to be precise so our attacks don’t hit innocents, while Hezbollah does the opposite.”
During the war, his situation room had directed the IDF in “destroying lots of Hezbollah forces and infrastructure which could be used to harm civilians.
“We pushed back the [elite] Radwan Forces from being close to the border; we reduced their capabilities. Our actions completely stopped them from being able to approach the border,” he said.
Also, “We keep striking senior officials of the organization.”
Comparing how the IDF acted against different Hezbollah attacks and provocations over the course of 2024, including times where some criticized the military as too restrained, Abbas responded, “We don’t wait for a specific incident, and we are always prepared to attack with the air force and other organizations.”
Furthermore, over the last year, “We sometimes attacked 100 kilometers deep [into Lebanon], 40 kilometers deep, or 50 kilometers deep. We analyze what is appropriate to that specific moment.
Attacking wherever is necessary
“We attack anywhere we think we need to attack. We attack to remove Hezbollah threats against our military or our civilians. Our attacks are part of how to increase security so as to bring the [evacuated] northern residents back to their homes,” he declared.
Leading up to the IDF’s August 25 and September major operations, Abbas stated, “From the company commander up until the head of Northern Command, we were and are ready for the moment of the big order from the high command.
“We’ll return the northern residents either through a diplomatic deal or an invasion – whatever the political echelon decides.”
Comparing the Second Lebanon War of 2006, when Hezbollah’s rockets tore into Haifa and other more sensitive places, to what a big war with Hezbollah would do to Israel in 2024, he essentially prophesied before the major September attacks, “The capabilities of the air force to respond are deeper than in 2006.”
Regarding the August 25 operation specifically, he said secrecy had been at unprecedented levels, with “most soldiers finding out only the day before; and those who were in on the secret earlier than that were a very small group.”
Right before the operation, “We were at the conference room of the Northern Command. All of the senior representatives of the various arms of the Northern Command were there. The group went over all of the plans and the order of their military actions.
“You have adrenaline and you are super ready.... You also get the home front ready,” he stated.
His role was also to “look at all of the personnel and forces involved, the kind of munitions, the next attack, and whether there need to be evacuations” on either side of the border.
Abbas noted the broader context was that since July 30, when “Hezbollah found out [about the IDF’s killing of its military chief Fuad Shukr], it had wanted to respond.... We were ready for them to try this, but we had the right intelligence and carried out our actions before they could fire.
“We took out some of their arsenal and a variety of targets with the preemptive strike, which started early in the morning,” around 4:30 a.m. on August 25.
“There were over 100 planes, and we attacked thousands of targets and rockets.... Hezbollah didn’t understand and was in shock by the massiveness of what we did.”
He said the first wave took only several minutes, with a total of four waves.
Next, he added that they quickly knew that “the first wave was successful, that they had achieved their hits. But this needed and needs to be continuous.”
The vast majority of the attack, which changed history, took only 20 minutes.
In real time, he said, “The center for firepower gave a full status update, how many targets were hit,” and there were updates from the air force.
“In the situation room, you can see and understand everything.... With Hezbollah attacking, we see what they are hitting. We knew where they were shooting from,” which was part of what helped the IDF quickly tear apart Hezbollah rocket crew after rocket crew.
Next, Abbas said, “We did broader reviews of the operation afterward.
We saw we achieved something substantial. We knew a lot of it immediately, but some other things take hours until you achieve the full impact required,” he stated.
He implied that even by September 17, when the beeper explosions started and threw Hezbollah off balance even further, it still had not fully accounted for the IDF’s August 25 operation.
The whole world knows that Israel basically clobbered Hezbollah on August 25 and then repeatedly from the air in September, and then on the ground in southern Lebanon in October.
But leading into August 25, Abbas and all of the top IDF officers knew that if the operation went poorly, thousands of Israeli lives could have been at risk. “It is a heavy thing to weigh,” he said with a dark look.
“We needed to limit Hezbollah’s ability to attack northern villages. Without the preemptive strike, they could have hit the North with thousands of rockets,” all at the same time.
After August 25, “Hezbollah understood we could do this anywhere” in Lebanon, which in fact the IDF did within weeks.
Causing further harm to Hezbollah
Of course, the major August 25 operation was not the final highlight of the IDF battering of Hezbollah, but, rather, a sort of proof of concept which helped significantly empower the government and the high command to order the fuller decapitation of Hezbollah over the past two months.
“We are continuing this war against the evil axis of Iran and Hezbollah. They want to destroy Israel and to form a large Islamic state,” said Abbas.
Moreover, he continued, “When Nasrallah [after the August 25 operation] claimed he had hit IDF bases like [the intelligence headquarters] at Glilot, he [Nasrallah] knew this was a lie. He knew his situation was disastrous. This was all about his decision to join the axis of evil, with all of its negative impacts on the Lebanese economy and population.
“This criminal organization is not letting them [the Lebanese] live. Beirut was like Paris. Now they are the worst.... There is no government, and no one is ruling or running the country. There is no one else to blame” but Hezbollah, he noted.
“The Lebanese must understand this, but they are not courageous enough” to overthrow Hezbollah, he bemoaned.
OF COURSE, the mission is not yet over, and while leading into the war the IDF was most worried about Hezbollah rockets, the terrorist group’s biggest successes in killing Israelis has been with drones.
Addressing the drone threat, Abbas said, “We deal with them every day. They haven’t harmed us in a large-scale way. They have harmful capabilities, but these are limited in scope.
“We need to work all the time to develop a response, to learn lessons, and to reduce the number of drones that kill people,” he said, adding, “We need to find an advantage.”
He endorsed using counter drones, the old-school Vulcan antiaircraft system (saying more such batteries must be deployed), jamming GPS, and other solutions, but also did not imply that a full answer would be achieved anytime soon.
“They have technology in the air force.... They are working on this, and they are starting to succeed more, but it cannot be solved in days, but, rather, more like months,” he predicted.
Moreover, Abbas stated, “We need to get the technology right. This is not like the First Lebanon War, where everyone just shoots everywhere [like the Vulcan system is used]. We need the right solution in both technology and human resources, including engineers, which can be anything that will help with defense. It does not matter what it is, as long as it works.
“In Ukraine, they have used many drones, and we have also learned from that. We will apply some of those lessons here,” he emphasized.Directly addressing Israel’s northern residents, he said, “We need to salute you, that you have held true.
Leading into October 7, 2024, he said the year should be a better and unifying year for the nation.
“We will always win because we are a strong nation. In the darkest hour, we win.”