Israel hits Hezbollah with deadliest strikes since 2006

World leaders barely had time to touch down in New York for the UN General Assembly before things yet again heated up elsewhere: Israel has now followed up last week’s pager and walkie-talkie attacks with a broader air offensive against Hezbollah.

Quick refresher – Hezbollah is the heavily armed Iran-backed Shiite group based in Lebanon. It’s listed (in whole or part) as a terrorist group in dozens of countries; it claims 100,000 armed members and an arsenal of ~150,000 missiles and rockets (bigger than most countries); and it’s helped neighbouring dictator Bashar Al-Assad in his war that’s left ~500,000 Syrians dead.

Hezbollah then (re)started firing rockets and missiles at Israel the day after the Hamas attacks of October 7, and the two have been trading fire ever since. That then escalated last week:

• Israel’s pager attack killed or injured thousands of Hezbollah members
• Hezbollah leaders then switched to (booby-trapped) walkie-talkies, which Israel then detonated, killing and injuring hundreds more Hezbollah members
• Several top remaining Hezbollah commanders then switched to meeting in person at a secret location in Lebanon, which Israel then bombed.

The result is that, in a week, Israel has destroyed or disabled much of Hezbollah’s command structure, while its airstrikes have wiped out a vast chunk of its arsenal.

The result is also that Israel is now facing more allegations its tactics have violated international law, whether against the use of booby traps or disproportionate civilian casualties: last week’s pager attacks killed at least two children, and Lebanon’s health ministry says Monday’s airstrikes killed nearly 500 people, including dozens more women and children.

Israel is calling it all “de-escalation through escalation” – ie, it’s gambling that by ramping up, Hezbollah might back down. As for Hezbollah and broader Lebanon, it’s now seen its deadliest day since the all-out Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006.

And yet… while Hezbollah has fired 100+ rockets and missiles back into Israel over the weekend, that’s barely a fraction of what it’s long threatened. Why? There are a few theories here:

• Hezbollah is now being partly run by those not important enough to have HQ-issued pagers last week, and they may not feel authorised to pull the trigger
• Even if any remaining higher-ups wanted them to pull the trigger, there’s no comms system to relay that order, and
• Even if orders could reach the front, many Hezbollah triggers are now gone.

Meanwhile, members now seem paranoid at the extent of Israel’s intel penetration, which isn’t surprising — broader Lebanon has been engulfed in a political and economic crisis since 2019, sending millions into poverty, driving inflation up to 269%, and gutting the lira by 98%. That’s what spies would call a ‘target-rich environment’, with no shortage of locals willing to trade information about Hezbollah (which many blame for Lebanon’s woes) in return for a few thousand bucks.

So with each day that Hezbollah delays, it’s becoming less a question of when, and more a question of whether Hezbollah can strike back at all. Against a backdrop of heavy losses, there’s also potentially an incentive for Hezbollah to just fire everything it’s got.

INTRIGUE’S TAKE

After the last war of 2006, Hezbollah went on to invest vast amounts of cash (much of it from Iran) to build up the war machine we’ve outlined above. The result has been a narrative that Israel’s hands were tied: the balance of power seemingly meant any Israeli move would be too costly, particularly while it was already fighting Hamas.

But of course, it’s now clear Israel was incorporating its own lessons from that 2006 war, with more of a focus on intelligence. And it’s managed to hold off Hezbollah while pursuing Hamas, rather than fight both at once. So at this point, with Israel now grabbing the upper hand, it’s hard to see a way back out for Hezbollah.

Either way, that then brings us to its sponsor Iran, which has now seen two of its key proxies (Hezbollah and Hamas) degraded significantly. But with an ageing supreme leader and discontent in the streets, Iran’s own options seem pretty limited also.

Also worth noting:

• The Hezbollah leaders killed in recent days include Ibrahim Aqil, who was subject to a $7M bounty over his role in two 1983 bombings that killed 300 people at the US embassy and a US barracks in Beirut.
• The US is now sending a “small number of additional troops” to the region.
• Oil prices have now spiked on fears of a wider regional conflict (plus a hurricane looming over the US, the world’s biggest crude producer).