CNN
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“We can plunge Lebanon into total darkness and destroy Hezbollah’s power within days,” former Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz said on Tuesday at a conference at Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel.
This was just the latest threat from a prominent Israeli figure against Lebanon and Hezbollah amid rising tensions.
It would not be difficult for Israel to plunge Lebanon into darkness. The country’s electricity grid, already crippled by decades of mismanagement and the country’s economic collapse, is barely functioning anyway. A few targeted air strikes will easily finish it off.
However, destroying Hezbollah’s power within a few days is a far more difficult task.
Since the inconclusive war with the Lebanese militant group in 2006, Israel has been planning a repeat.
Hezbollah has also been preparing for war for a long time.
Its arsenal includes at least 150,000 rockets and missiles, according to Israeli estimates. Israel estimates that the group has already fired 5,000 of them since October, meaning that much of its arsenal is still intact, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech last week.
CNN reported that Israeli officials were surprised by the sophistication of the militant group’s attacks.
These include systematic, targeted attacks on Israel’s surveillance posts along the border, the shooting down of high-flying Israeli top-of-the-line drones, and attacks on Israel’s Iron Dome batteries and anti-drone systems. But the biggest surprise for Israel was the nine minutes of drone footage that Hezbollah posted online showing highly sensitive civilian and military infrastructure in and around the northern city of Haifa.
Highly qualified and disciplined
In addition to its weapons, Hezbollah probably has between 40,000 and 50,000 fighters – Nasrallah recently spoke of more than 100,000. Many of them have gained combat experience in the Syrian civil war alongside the regime forces.
As a fighting force, Hezbollah is well trained and disciplined, unlike many other guerrilla groups. During the 2006 war, in this correspondent’s experience, encountering Hezbollah fighters was rare. One day, we encountered several of them in the ruins of a southern Lebanese village. They were polite but firm, without boastful bluster and posturing, and insisted that we leave immediately for our own safety. They would not take no for an answer.
Unlike Gaza, Lebanon is not surrounded by hostile neighbors. It has strategic depth and friendly regimes in Syria and Iraq that give it direct access to Iran.
Over the years, Israel has regularly attacked targets in Syria believed to be involved in supplying weapons to Hezbollah, but all indications are that these attacks have been only partially successful.
In the event of war, a full-scale war, both sides could inflict significant damage on each other.
Avihu Shapira/AFP/Getty Images
An Israeli mobile artillery unit fires 155mm shells across the Israeli-Lebanese border during the 2006 conflict.
Fire and blood
Earlier this year, the same Reichman University where Gantz spoke released a report titled “Fire and Blood: The Terrifying Reality Israel Faces in a War with Hezbollah.” It painted a grim scenario in which the Iran-aligned group would fire 2,500 to 3,000 rockets and missiles a day for weeks at Israeli military installations and densely populated cities in the center of the country. In the entire 34-day war in 2006, Hezbollah is believed to have fired about 4,000 rockets – an average of 117 per day.
While there will not be Cold War-style mutual annihilation, the destruction inflicted on Israel and Lebanon will be great enough to be costly for both.
At 6 a.m. on July 13, 2006 – less than 24 hours after the war began – Israeli warplanes bombed and destroyed Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport. It is widely expected that the airport will be one of Israel’s targets if war breaks out now. But unlike in 2006, in 2024 Hezbollah may be able to hit Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport.
In 2006, Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, was within range of Hezbollah’s rockets. This time, the rockets are likely to penetrate much deeper into Israel.
Looking at the Middle East, the strategic balance that has long favored Israel is changing.
Its enemies are no longer corrupt and incompetent Arab regimes, but rather a range of non-state actors – from Hezbollah to Hamas and Islamic Jihad to the Houthis and militias in Iraq and Syria – and, last but not least, Iran itself.
And because of US support for Israel, all of these actors also have the US and Western interests in the Middle East in their sights. US support was underscored by the recent CNN report that Washington had pledged its support to Israel in the event of a full-scale war with Hezbollah.
Yemen’s Houthis, once the epitome of a ragtag tribal militia, are now firing ballistic missiles at Israel with Iranian help. The Houthis continue to attack ships in the Red Sea, despite the presence of a US-led armada off its coast.
Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria have largely ceased fire since three US soldiers were killed in a series of US attacks in Jordan following a drone strike.
However, that could change if Israel and Hezbollah go to war.
Recently, Qais Al-Khazali, the leader of the powerful Iran-backed Iraqi militia Asa’ib Ahl Al-Haq, warned that if America supports an Israeli attack on Lebanon, “it should know that it would jeopardize all its interests in the region, especially in Iraq, and make them a target.”
And then there is Iran. Traditionally, Tehran lets others fight its battles and stays in the background. But that changed in April, when Tehran responded with a barrage of hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel in retaliation for an Israeli attack on its diplomatic complex in Damascus.
In the event that Hezbollah, Iran’s most important regional ally and its crown jewel, is attacked by Israel and is actually “dismantled” by Israel, as Gantz threatened, an Iranian response is likely.
One could simply instruct its allies to throw caution to the wind and fire at US interests and Israel at will. But then there is the fact: Iran lies on the Strait of Hormuz, the access point to the Persian Gulf. In the event of a major conflict, it has long been feared that Iran would block the strait, which would drive up oil prices worldwide.
The situation on the Lebanese-Israeli border has been volatile since October. In recent weeks, however, the situation has escalated and war is becoming increasingly likely. The rhetoric on both sides is becoming more heated. Germany, Sweden, Kuwait, the Netherlands and others are calling on their citizens to leave Lebanon immediately. If there was ever a threat of regional war in the Middle East, this is it.
