If Full War With Hezbollah Opens, Israel Will Lose: Special Analysis

After months of sporadic tit-for-tat fighting along Israel's northern border, Israeli leaders are signaling that a bigger war with Lebanese Hezbollah could be imminent. First, on Wednesday the head of Israel’s military, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, announced his belief that the likelihood of a major conflict breaking out in the coming months on the Israel-Lebanon border is "much higher" that it has been.

Second, on Friday Israeli media said Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told his American counterpart Lloyd Austin that Israel is "nearing a decision point" on Lebanon, given that attacks from the Iran-backed group have been daily, and it remains that several dozens of communities in northern Israel remain evacuated due to the threat.

Domestic pressure has grown for the government to take decisive action concerning the fate of the some 80,000 Israelis who must remain exiled from their homes, which are under Hezbollah mortars and missiles.

Echoing Gen. Halevi from days prior, Gallant said the option of greater military force is on the table if things don't deescalate quick. But as the situation in the Red Sea demonstrates, deescalation remains unlikely so long as Israel's operation in Gaza, with its immense civilian death toll, presses on: 

Gallant said the country had a duty to restore security and return evacuated Israeli residents to their communities along the border, and although Israel would prefer to do this through diplomacy, it was "prepared to do this through military force," a statement from the defense minister’s office said.

Touring the Lebanon border Friday, Gallant speculated that “as long as fighting continues in the south, there will be fighting in the north.

“But we will not accept this reality for an extended period. There will come a moment when if we do not reach a diplomatic agreement in which Hezbollah respects the right of the residents to live here in security, we will have to ensure that security by force,” he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also affirmed that bigger escalation is in the air in a Thursday exchange with a reporter. The journalist asked why Israel is only going on the offensive against Iran's proxies and not Iran itself. Netanyahu responded tersely, "Who says we aren’t attacking Iran? We are attacking Iran."

Certainly, a bigger, more direct war on Iran would open up the proverbial gates of hell with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. This has remained a big fear of the West from the start—a runaway conflict where Lebanon would be bombed back to the stone age, as Israeli officials have expressed it from time to time. Last week, the NY Times published a report entitled U.S. and Iran Battle Through Proxies, Warily Avoiding Each Other which highlighted the potential for miscalculation from all sides.

US Intelligence Warning

This leaves the question of what would happen if the two bitter enemies open a full war front, also while the Gaza war persists? Already in early January, Gallant was telling Western backers: "We prefer the path of an agreed-upon diplomatic settlement, but we are getting close to the point where the hourglass will turn over."

That same week (of Jan.7), Israel received a warning from US military intelligence (DIA) laying out that fighting a two-front war with Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north would be devastating, and likely a losing situation. This surprise revelation was buried in a prior Washington Post story: 

In private conversations, the administration has warned Israel against a significant escalation in Lebanon. If it were to do so, a new secret assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) found that it will be difficult for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to succeed because its military assets and resources would be spread too thin given the conflict in Gaza, according to two people familiar with those findings. A spokesperson for the DIA did not offer comment.

This is perhaps why Antony Blinken's office was cited in the same report as saying at the time: "It is in no one’s interest — not Israel’s, not the region’s, not the world’s — for this conflict to spread beyond Gaza," according to the words of spokesman Matthew Miller.

The specific contents of the secret DIA document itself has not been leaked or made public, but the analysts behind it without doubt took a 'realist' view of conflict, and potential scenarios or outcomes. Anyone who has studied or observed Hezbollah over the past decade, and especially going back to the 2006 Lebanon War, knows that it is far more formidable than Hamas or any other regional paramilitary group. What are some of the aspects of Hezbollah's military capabilities that the DIA may have highlighted? One can only speculate, but there is a whole body of DoD and intelligence literature on Hezbollah to rely on.

"A full-scale war with #Lebanon would turn #Gaza “into a sideshow,” said Firas Maksad, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, “What Hezbollah has in military hardware & capability dwarfs #Hamas.”@lizsly @MiddleEastInst @washingtonpost https://t.co/GBxCDVGT9A

— Firas Maksad (@FirasMaksad) October 18, 2023

What made Hezbollah strong then (in the 2006 war) and now is its literally tens of thousands of sophisticated surface-to-surface rockets as well as small drones which are extremely tough to defend against. It also possesses missiles which can lock onto targets, something typically possessed by militaries of sovereign states, as Deutsche Welle has reviewed: 

But the majority of Hezbollah's weaponry consists of small, portable and unguided surface-to-surface artillery rockets. Still, the group's sheer quantity of these weapons can deter larger, more advanced armies. For instance, the militia can deploy swarms of drones simultaneously against a single target to overwhelm Israel's air defense systems.

Additionally, Hezbollah has defense systems such as the Russian SA-22, which can target aircraft, helicopters, ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as drones. These assets pose a substantial challenge to the Israeli military, which heavily relies on its air superiority.

Nasrallah has repeatedly stated that his militia has what it takes to be a formidable opponent against Israel. However, the IDF still has the upper hand. In the 2006 war, Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets into Israel. The conflict killed about 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians. Israel, on the other hand, saw fewer than 160 casualties — most of them soldiers.

By all accounts Hezbollah has only grown its sophisticated arsenal since then, and grown in manpower and tactical capability as well—given also its been honing its battlefield prowess in the decade-long war in Syria, against well-armed Sunni jihadists supported by the West and Gulf states. 

Israel was Shocked in 2006 War

The dirty little secret about the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War, which has long been hidden and suppressed in ill-informed Western mainstream media reports, is that the 34-day expanded conflict is often discussed as a "loss" for Israel both within Israeli domestic discourse and in US military war colleges. For example, below is an excerpt from the introduction of the US Army's Combat Studies Institute Press publication entitled We Were Caught Unprepared: The 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War:

Despite Israel assuring the United States of a “quick and decisive” resolution to the conflict, Hezbollah’s short-range Katyusha rockets continued to rain down on the Israeli population. As days went by, it became increasingly apparent to both the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and western military analysts that the IAF was having little effect on Hezbollah’s rockets.

When the IDF reluctantly moved its ground forces into southern Lebanon, the apparent ineffectiveness of the operation and the stubborn resistance of Hezbollah fighters stunned military observers worldwide. After years of highly successful counterinsurgency (COIN) operations against the Palestinians, the IDF appeared remarkably inept to conduct a successful conventional ground campaign against Hezbollah.

Without question, the Israeli ground campaign revealed an army confused by its new doctrine. Soldiers were deficient in training and equipment, and senior officers seemed woefully unprepared to fight a “real war.” By the time the United Nations (UN) cease-fire went into effect on 14 August 2006, many military analysts were convinced the IDF had suffered a significant defeat. One source held that Hezbollah’s military and political victory was absolute and irrefutable. Even more revealing were the comments by Mossad Chief, Meir Degan, and the head of Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin, during a meeting with Prime Minister Olmert in the immediate aftermath of the war. Both men pointedly told Olmert "the war was a national catastrophe and Israel suffered a critical blow."

The publicly available US defense literature examining the lessons of the war is replete with commentary like this. Again, this is likely why the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) produced a very negative outlook on the IDF's prospects if another full-blown war opens with the Lebanese Shia paramilitary group in the context of ongoing Gaza operations.

For another brief example, US military analysis in the years that followed the 2006 war, including from West Point, took as a basic assumption that the IDF was woefully unprepared for what it would face in a battle with Hezbollah and their feared guerrilla tactics. Hezbollah's performance was a bit of a 'shock' by many accounts. Further examples like the following snippets from West Point's Combatting Terrorism Center abound...

That said, the comparison between the IDF and the U.S. Army and Marine Corps is admittedly tempting. Following Israel’s 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon, the IDF grew accustomed to operations in the Palestinian Territories which, in some ways, closely resemble the counter-insurgency operations currently being undertaken by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in Iraq. The IDF then grew complacent and rusty. Furthermore, although many units performed admirably in southern Lebanon, as a whole the IDF was caught off-guard by the kind of fighting they experienced there.

The reserves, especially, were poorly prepared and inadequately equipped. There are several reasons, however, why this analogy does not hold as much water as some would like. First, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps are not the IDF. Whereas the U.S. military, post-Vietnam, is a professional military, the IDF is still largely manned by conscripts. While the IDF soldier’s ferocity, patriotism and tactical decision-making have often been noted as being among his strengths, individual soldier discipline is rarely mentioned as a trait for which the IDF soldier is praised. Some units take particular pride in their indiscipline and scruffy appearance. This may have positive effects on morale in some cases.

Yet, in asking how Hizb Allah intercepted Israeli communications during the 2006 war, it is worth noting that in cases when encrypted communication failed, IDF soldiers simply used their personal cellular phones to communicate on the battlefield 3. It is hard to imagine a U.S. Marine Corps gunnery sergeant allowing a similar situation. In the same way, it is similarly hard to imagine the U.S. military’s professional and non-commissioned officer corps allowing the kind of institutional complacency that haunted the IDF in the years following 2000. 

One might argue that by now, the situation has evolved and Israel's military learned the hard lessons of 2006 and has adapted in preparation for a potential future war (which is increasingly looking like now). 

Below: Hezbollah shocked Israel and the West when in 2006 it used an Iranian-supplied Noor anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM) to destroyed an Israeli corvette off Lebanon's coast, killing at least four Israeli navy crew members. Lately, pro-Hezbollah media accounts have been circulating a resurfaced video purporting to show possession of advanced Russian anti-ship missiles...

Lebanon
Hezbollah has released a video of their advance long range anti ship missile with words future is near. These missile are capable of destroying any military ship & capability was demonstrated by Hezbollah in 2005 when a Hezbollah missile took out Israeli Sa'ar 5 Corvette pic.twitter.com/6TpKGkNEux

— Bharwana (@pain___killer) November 6, 2023

While the IDF has no doubt evolved since 2006, so has Hezbollah, along with other Iranian proxies—'resistance' forces which went through the hardening crucible of the Syria proxy war.

Iranian Proxies' Autonomy Makes Them More Dangerous

Recent analysis by Moon of Alabama highlights a further difficulty that Israel is up against in any broader war with Iran and/or Hezbollah, according to the following excerpt:

The resistance axis is a collection of groups loosely connected to Iran. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp has trained these groups. But it did much more than the usual U.S. military training would do. The IRGC encouraged the groups to contact each other and to exchange knowledge. They now cooperate on all levels. Iran brought in new technologies and weapons and taught each group on how to make their own copies. Today Hizbullah intelligence people teach Houthi how to systematically interpret U.S. actions. Houthi and Iraqis exchange missile and drone building plans.

The axis of resistance has become an assembly of quite autonomous entities who no longer depend on deliveries or orders from Iran. But they all follow the same anti-colonial ideology.

The U.S. tried to interrupt the resistance development by, in 2020, killing Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the IRGC and founder of the resistance axis. It was in vain. The resistance was already too developed. It continued to grew on its own despite U.S. attempts of interference. After Soleimani's death Iranian support for its resistance partners increased:

"...When President Donald J. Trump ordered the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the leader of the Quds Force, in 2020, 'Iran’s response to the assassination of its national hero was very measured,' noted Adnan Tabatabai, an expert on Middle East politics who focuses on Iran-Saudi relations.

What followed, Mr. Tabatabai said, was 'what I would refer to as a severe deterrence crisis for Iran, because in the following two years in particular, Israel carried out the most humiliating operations on Iranian soil.' They included sabotage around the Natanz nuclear enrichment site and the remote-control assassination of the scientist at the heart of the nuclear program.

But in the four years since, Iran has deepened and sharply improved its proxy forces, supplying them with new generations of weapons, the capability to assemble their own arms and more training..."

Until yesterday [Jan.15] all but one member of the resistance axis had responded to the Israeli attack.

Last night Iran itself finally joined in. It fired ballistic missiles from Iran on two far away targets. The headquarter of the ISIS related Turkestan Islamic Party in Idleb, Syria, was destroyed. A headquarter of al-Qaeda aligned Hayad Tahrir al-Sham was also hit.

Of course, the battlefield remains highly unpredictable, but the pattern of mainstream media reporting in the West has been to downplay Hezbollah, while simultaneously simply assuming that Israeli forces will emerge superior and victorious. The internal US government conversation and documentation points to the opposite, however. This is despite the IDF obviously having far superior military technology and manpower numbers, but which doesn't necessarily equate to the same advantage in south Lebanon terrain and with Hezbollah fighters hunkered down in their familiar surroundings, and utilizing insurgent tactics in an attempted occupation scenario.

As a caveat it should be noted that the word "loss" or "lose" is somewhat relative. Any major Hezbollah war against Israel inevitably turns into a "loss" for Lebanon as a whole, as it did in 2006 which saw much of the country, including Beirut International Airport, subject to Israeli bombing raids. On Israel's side, it might lose fewer soldiers among its vastly superior numbers, but this could still be a "loss" in domestic eyes, reputationally, on the political front, and in collective memory (as the Israeli view and memory of 2006 still generally demonstrates).