Israel’s US-backed assault on Lebanon, which began with what ex-CIA director Leon Panetta called an act of “terrorism,” may have dealt a blow to Hezbollah, but it looks like the momentary paralysis has been overcome and now the Israelis are in for a reality check.
On September 17 and 18, Israel pulled off an indiscriminate attack by detonating wireless communication devices supplied to Lebanese Hezbollah members, killing dozens and injuring thousands. Described around the world as an act of terrorism and a violation of international law, the detonating devices dealt both a psychological blow to the Lebanese people and physical challenge to Hezbollah’s chain of command.
What came next was a series of extreme assassinations, killing a large portion of Hezbollah’s first line of political and military leaders. This culminated in the assassination of the group’s Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah on September 27, using around 75 tons of explosives that pulverized an entire civilian block in southern Beirut.
This series of attacks amounted to a decapitation of Hezbollah’s senior leadership and, despite the indiscriminate nature of the tactics used, the American media praised the ingenuity of the booby-trap attacks and US President Joe Biden celebrated the assassinations in the Lebanese capital.
Interestingly, if we look back to the 2004 assassination of Hamas leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, US President George W. Bush actually condemned it, due to the indiscriminate nature of the strikes that resulted in nine other civilian deaths. In contrast, the assassination of Hezbollah’s leader killed around 300 people, according to Israel’s own estimates, and was commended in Washington.
Despite the Israeli media’s gloating over the “humiliated” and “weakened” Hezbollah following the pager attacks and assassinations, in addition to the US claiming that the group had been “taken 20 years backwards,” the tides have begun to turn. As now, near the second month of the Israel-Lebanon war, Hezbollah is beginning to dictate the pace of the ongoing battle.
While Israel hit Hezbollah with successive blows, which the Lebanese group even admitted were significant, it appears as if Israel gassed itself out too soon and used too many of its cards early. Additionally, the attempted ground incursion by the Israeli army into southern Lebanon has been marred by failures since the very beginning and so far the IDF has failed to take any significant ground.
As Israeli and American officials gloated over their tactical victories in Lebanon, which defied most analysis, they also began to fall into the trap of their own propaganda and believe their own exaggerations. Then, on October 1, Iran launched its long-awaited retaliatory strikes against Israeli military bases using some 180 ballistic missiles, completely changing the game and handing the strategic initiative back to its regional alliance by scoring a tactical victory itself.
Benjamin Netanyahu was so emboldened after ordering his assassination of Hezbollah’s secretary general, right off the back of delivering an address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), that he published a video vowing to aid Iranian dissidents to overthrow their government in Tehran.
What also must be noted is that during Netanyahu’s speech that night, he held up two visions for West Asia: “the dream” and “the nightmare.” His dream was the exact same vision that he set forth in his address to the UN General Assembly one year prior, to establish a normalization deal between Tel Aviv and Riyadh in order to make the India-Middle East-Europe trade corridor come true.
This new land route was the reason behind US President Joe Biden’s insistence on making a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal happen as a top regional policy agenda. That same September, at the G-20 summit hosted in New Delhi, the American president announced the trade corridor as “a really big deal.”
The strategic fault in the thinking of the Israeli war effort, which is in reality led out of Washington, is their belief that they can return to a pre-October 7 world through an insane show of force. It is their belief that they can essentially bully the entire region into submission by making an example out of Hezbollah, Hamas and even Iran. It also appears to be the ambition of Benjamin Netanyahu to achieve a victory over the regional Islamic resistance, comparable to Israel’s triumph over secular Arab nationalism during the June 1967 war.
Israel is now dealing with the consequences of the war it initiated against Lebanon, as Hezbollah appears to have quickly recovered, replaced its senior leadership, and continues to deal a series of carefully planned blows against it day by day. At the same time, the Israelis are vowing to strike the Islamic Republic of Iran, despite such an attack being likely to trigger an unwinnable standoff.
Even in Israel’s various war games it has failed to prove an ability to fight on multiple fronts and the largest study carried out on the potential outcomes of a war with Hezbollah, involving over 100 senior officials and military figures, concluded that the best outcome would be a quick stalemate.
As it stands, the US is either delusional or willing to bet on its opposition bowing down first, while risking the strategic defeat of Israel if all plans go sideways. We are not yet at the stage of an all-out war, but we could very well reach this in the coming weeks and months. US refusal to accept defeat earlier on, clinging to “the dream” of returning to a pre-Gaza war reality, is the reason for the mess we see today.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author