The last time Israel went to war with Hizbollah in 2006, it threatened to “turn Lebanon’s clock back 20 years” and drive the militant movement from the border. When the conflict ended a month later, Hizbollah had been battered and bruised but its fighters remained in place.
The back-to-back assassinations of senior figures in Hizbollah and its ally Hamas this week have intensified fears that the two arch foes — which have traded blows with increasing intensity since Hamas’s October 7 attack — are once more sliding towards all-out war.
A full-blown conflict would pit the Middle East’s most sophisticated military, bolstered by advanced western hardware and weaponry, against arguably the world’s most heavily armed non-state actor. The capabilities of both Israel and Iran-backed Hizbollah have also evolved since that last conflagration 18 years ago, which threatens to make the next conflict that would likely draw in others even more destructive.
“Dynamics have changed since 2006. What would make this time worse is that a war today would not be a conflict just between Israel and Hizbollah”, with other members of the Iran-led “axis of resistance” becoming involved, said Sanam Vakil, head of the Middle East programme at the Chatham House think-tank.
This group that includes Yemen’s Houthi rebels and militias in Iraq and Syria, as well as Hamas, is “operating and coordinating in a transnational way, meaning a war would not be limited to a specific geography and would drag in and impact the wider Middle East”, she added.
Israel is among the world’s best-equipped armies, equivalent to Nato standards and with US-made weaponry such as F35 fighter jets as well as top-of the-range air defences and other new equipment. It has also cultivated a well-developed domestic arms industry that produces its own tanks, armoured vehicles, air defences, missiles and drones.
But Lebanon-based Hizbollah, which analysts estimate has 20,000 to 40,000 fighters, also presents a more formidable force than it did in 2006. It now possesses a far more voluminous and sophisticated arsenal of missiles and drones, much of it provided by Iran, to create a fighting force that is significantly superior to Hamas, the militant group that Israel has been battling in Gaza for 10 months.
The US-based CSIS think-tank estimates Hizbollah has between 120,000 and 200,000 projectiles, including precision-guided missiles and armed drones as well as anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles.
Hizbollah is also now able to strike across Israel and accurately calibrate strategic targets — meaning that no town or city would be safe.
Hizbollah has kept up a barrage against Israel since the October 7 assault that ignited Israel’s war in Gaza, with the two sides trading near-daily attacks.
It has sent surveillance drones deep into Israel, which penetrated the country’s sophisticated air defences to capture footage of military sites. Hizbollah also used an Iran-made surface-to-air missile for the first time in June, compelling Israeli fighter jets to retreat.
Kassem Kassir, a Lebanese analyst close to Hizbollah, said the group has deployed about 5,000 missiles from its stockpile since October while keeping many of its most advanced projectiles in reserve, including longer-range weapons. He estimated the group had used just 10 per cent of its military, logistical and personnel capacity over that time.
Hizbollah is opaque about its arsenal to maintain a “strategic ambiguity” but claims to have some 100,000 fighters. Its forces also have battlefield experience after being deployed alongside Russian and Iranian forces as part of Syria’s civil war that erupted in 2011.
Israel also presents a different proposition to 2006, with new technology and a greater resolve hardened by the ferocity of October 7. Israel’s leaders have warned that, if all-out war erupted, its military actions would go far harder and deeper than they did in 2006, with devastating consequences for Lebanon.
Israel is the world’s biggest recipient of US foreign aid, which comes mostly in the form of military assistance. The long-standing US commitment to maintain what it describes as Israel’s “qualitative military edge” ensures the Jewish state has a technological advantage over its neighbours.
That means it has access to the most advanced American weaponry, including the F35 fighter jets. Washington has provided at least $12.5bn in military aid since the October 7 attack.
Israel is also the only Middle East state with nuclear weapons — although it does not publicly acknowledge the fact.
The country has in recent years been able to use its superior air power and its intelligence network to launch hundreds of strikes against Hizbollah and Iranian-affiliated targets in neighbouring Syria.
It has killed more than 350 Hizbollah fighters since October 7 — higher than the number killed in the 2006 war — and launched strikes into Iran, Syria and Yemen.
Despite this, analysts say it would face multiple threats and challenges if it launched a ground offensive into Lebanon.
“Israel’s military is technologically sophisticated, the question is, what type of war we are talking about?” said Seth Jones, senior vice-president at CSIS. If Israeli ground forces moved into southern Lebanon, “that’s a different story, because Hizbollah is on terrain it knows very well, fighting a defensive war”.
Israel would also face the risk that its much vaunted air defences — considered the best in the region and including its Iron Dome system — would be overwhelmed.
That threat would be exacerbated if Iran and the members of its resistance axis intervened in support of Hizbollah by launching their own attacks from various fronts. The Houthis, for instance, have fired multiple missiles and drones at Israel since October, including one last month that killed an Israeli in Tel Aviv.
Then, even with its technological superiority, Israel would be vulnerable. In the event of an all-out war, Jones said, its military would “be able to protect some very specific locations, but not, let’s say, parts of Tel Aviv”.
Emile Hokayem, senior fellow for Middle East security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that in 2006, Hizbollah fired an average of 124 rockets a day for 34 days. “This time, according to western intelligence and Israeli analysts, Hizbollah would be able to fire up to 3,000 a day for 10 days, possibly more,” he explained.
Even Israel’s military acknowledges that Hizbollah has the capacity to fire thousands of projectiles a day.
But one of Hizbollah’s challenges would be protecting its missile launch pads, which are relatively static and have to be on the surface to be fired, as Israeli jets swarmed overhead.
The relatively high casualty rate among Hizbollah fighters since October 7 has been partially due to Israel’s ability to target a launch site seconds after it has fired a missile, three people familiar with the group’s operations said.
Hizbollah has also not demonstrated an ability to shoot down Israel’s fighter jets, although it has taken down several drones over the past few months, including Israel’s Hermes 900.
Matthew Savill, research director at Rusi, a London-based think-tank, said Israel underestimated Hizbollah in 2006, in terms of both the movement’s professionalism and its capabilities.
“What they had in 2006 was decent tactics, knowing the territory and a lot of anti-tank weapons so they were able to surprise Israeli armour,” Savill said. “It seems unlikely that the Israelis would be underprepared this time.”
It is not only Hizbollah that Israel has to worry about. Iran has vowed to avenge Israel’s suspected assassination of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday.
Iran and Israel traded missile and drone strikes in April, after the Islamic republic mounted its first direct assault on Israel from Iranian soil in retaliation for the killing of several of its military commanders in Syria. But the responses were considered “calibrated” to avoid further escalation.
Given the geographical distance between Israel and Iran, any direct battle between the two foes would essentially be an air war.
Iran, under heavy sanctions, lacks the conventional weaponry to challenge Israel, with few aircraft assets, barring a few ageing jets acquired before the 1979 Islamic revolution but that it has been unable to service.
It has, however, built up increasingly sophisticated domestic missile and drone capability, and relies on asymmetric warfare, mobilising its regional proxies and its 120,000-strong Revolutionary Guards force.
Indeed, according to CSIS, Iran has the Middle East’s “largest and most diverse missile arsenal” made up of thousands of ballistic and cruise missiles, some capable of striking Israel and as far as south-east Europe.
Israel insisted this week that its “defensive systems are very good”, adding that it had “international partners who have increased their forces in the region to assist us against the threats”.
US President Joe Biden said on Thursday after a phone call with the Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu that Washington was redeploying forces in the Middle East as part of efforts to protect Israel from an attack by Iran or its proxies.
Yet with tensions high and the risks of the conflict spiralling out of control increasing with every incident, all parties risk paying a high price.
“The problem for the US and others is there are still vulnerable forces spread out over the Middle East,” Savill said. “This is all about the risks that people are prepared to bear.”
Read the full article here