Mick Hartley

Kyle Orton in Fathom – 2024 is not 2006. This time Israel is beating Hezbollah:

Four days into the 2006 war, Israel’s air force had hit everything on its target list, and yet the Hezbollah rockets continued to rain down on Israel for the remainder of the month-long engagement because Jerusalem’s intelligence on the launch sites was so scanty. This was of a piece with the broader findings of the post-war investigation that criticised the government’s ‘severe failure’ in planning. That accusation cannot be levelled against Israel this time.

Israel has used the nearly two decades since the last war with Hezbollah wisely, gaining a far better understanding of the group and planning accordingly. Since October 2023, Israel has destroyed tens of thousands of Hezbollah missile launch sites and eliminated vast quantities of the terrorists’ weapons stockpiles, often in individual raids with hundreds of designated targets. The now-famous Mossad operation to blow up the pagers used by Hezbollah jihadists on 17 September, and then their radios the next day, was made possible by Israel’s extensive infiltration of the group—and the broader IRGC Network. The same progress in the spy-war has been used by Israel to devastate the Hezbollah command structure before any ground operations began. […]

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), present in Lebanon since 1978, was given the mandate after 2006 of ‘taking steps towards the establishment between the Blue Line [the Israel-Lebanon border] and the Litani river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the Government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL deployed in this area.’ UNIFIL has failed at this, and appears to have done so willingly.

There are tunnels a stone’s throw from UNIFIL bases that the ‘peacekeepers’ must have watched Hezbollah construct, and kept quiet about. This complicity with Hezbollah running roughshod over Resolution 1701 perhaps explains the somewhat hysterical reaction of UNIFIL in trying to thwart Israel’s effort to enforce 1701. No doubt some UNIFIL troops, especially the Irish contingent, sincerely believe the anti-Israel narratives and regard themselves as bravely protecting Lebanese civilians by offering themselves as human shields for Hezbollah. But the rational among them have an equal stake in preventing Israel getting a look at what has gone on under UNIFIL’s watch in southern Lebanon for the last eighteen years.

Meanwhile, the United States has contrived an approach to Lebanon that might politely be called incoherent. The U.S. is reportedly trying to capitalise on the weakness of Hezbollah after Israel mauled the group to install a president in Beirut—a post vacant for two years—who is not Suleiman Frangieh, the candidate insisted upon by Nasrallah. A focus on rearranging the faces in the Lebanese government, such as it is, is strange, though it does conform to the long-term U.S. policy based on a fantastical theory of how Hezbollah’s hold on all actual power in Lebanon can be loosened. But the U.S. is combining this focus with a call for a ceasefire, which would alleviate the pressure on Hezbollah, removing any incentive for Hezbollah to make even cosmetic concessions. Shortening Israel’s window for action in Lebanon seems like the only potential tangible outcome of this American diplomacy.

In a rational world, the U.S. would focus on ensuring Israel had the material and the time to deal with the Islamic Revolution’s outposts in Gaza and Lebanon: these are threats to American security and interests, too, and a friend is offering to solve the problem without the U.S. risking a single life. It can be added that Israel is bringing belated justice for many Americans—a significant number of the terrorist operatives Israel has eliminated over the past year have had American blood on their hands. But America has always seemed to struggle with such calculations. The late Bernard Lewis used to quote a Turkish General, who said to him in the 1950s, as Turkey was brought into NATO: ‘The real problem with having the Americans as your allies is you never know when they will turn around and stab themselves in the back.’

A conclusion that matches Jonathan Spyer's analysis.