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What Would an Israel-Hezbollah War Look Like?

Conflicts & Crises

This analysis examines What Would an Israel-Hezbollah War Look Like? in historical and strategic context. It traces how the core developments unfolded, whi

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Video originally published on July 5, 2024.

This analysis examines What Would an Israel-Hezbollah War Look Like? in historical and strategic context. It traces how the core developments unfolded, which institutions and actors shaped outcomes, and what those decisions changed on the ground. Rather than repeating headline-level claims, it focuses on concrete mechanisms, constraints, and tradeoffs that explain the trajectory of events. The discussion moves from Key Developments through Strategic Implications to Risk and Uncertainty, then evaluates wider consequences. The goal is to clarify not only what happened, but why these developments still matter for current planning, risk assessment, and policy decisions.

Key Takeaways

  • This analysis examines What Would an Israel-Hezbollah War Look Like?
  • But now, Israel has begun to pivot its attention northward, where a threat far greater and more threatening than Gaza’s Hamas organization has made itself impossible to ignore.
  • And right now, it appears that Israel is spoiling for a fight—not just sometime far in the future, but on a timeline measured in weeks, or perhaps even days.
  • In the days immediately following the October 7th attacks by Hamas into Israel, the Israeli Defense Force, or IDF, very nearly launched a pre-emptive campaign across the country’s northern border.
  • The largest barrage of the day would involve over a hundred rockets launched all at once.

Key Developments

But now, Israel has begun to pivot its attention northward, where a threat far greater and more threatening than Gaza’s Hamas organization has made itself impossible to ignore. The militant terror organization Hezbollah now constitutes a looming threat across Israel’s northern border. Entrenched on sovereign Lebanese soil, deeply enmeshed into its host country’s political structure, and well-supported among the locals, Hezbollah is a much more dangerous beast than what Hamas ever was. They’ve got strong and unwavering support from Iran. They’ve got access to a wide network of allies and partner organizations across the Middle East. By all accounts, they’re the most heavily armed non-state actor, in the entire world. By all accounts, they’re the most heavily armed non-state actor, in the entire world. And right now, it appears that Israel is spoiling for a fight—not just sometime far in the future, but on a timeline measured in weeks, or perhaps even days. In today’s special episode of Warographics, we’re going to explore Israel’s pivot to new battle lines along its northern border. We’re going to look closely at the Hezbollah organization—what they are, what they do, and what they’re capable of. And we’re going to be precise about just what an Israel-Hezbollah War would look like, and why that war would promise devastation far worse than what the last nine months or so in Gaza have been. The prospect of war between Israel and Hezbollah is not a new one, and certainly not over the course of this ongoing conflict in Hamas. In the days immediately following the October 7th attacks by Hamas into Israel, the Israeli Defense Force, or IDF, very nearly launched a pre-emptive campaign across the country’s northern border. In the days after the attack, Israeli intelligence had assessed that Hezbollah fighters were massing on the border, potentially prepared to strike southward and add to the devastation and confusion that Hamas had already caused. Per a brief by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, quote: “The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) deployed fighter aircraft that awaited orders to strike targets in Lebanon. Israeli officials apparently notified the White House around 6:30 a.m. on October 11, 2023, that they were considering preventive strikes and requested U.S. officials, including President Joe Biden, pushed back.” Israel would hold itself back from launching that strike, and Hezbollah fighters never ended up attacking in large numbers, as Israeli intelligence had feared. But to say that the imminent violence was replaced by peace…well, unfortunately, that would be a lie. In the following months, Israel and Hezbollah began trading near-daily small-scale attacks, as Hezbollah paramilitary forces ran amok across Lebanese territory, and Israel used its aerial assets in what amounted to a deadly serious game of whack-a-mole. Hezbollah has made the destruction of Israel a cornerstone of its ideology since day one, and Israel has long since gotten used to the security threat Hezbollah presents, so for either side to start pouring personnel and resources into their border region, was a rather foreseeable outcome. To deal with long-range ballistic missiles, Israel has The Arrow, which has proven its capabilities in intercepting cruise missiles launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and has the capacity to deal with even nuclear-armed missiles traveling at many times the speed of sound. Then, there’s David’s Sling, a system optimized to protect medium-range missiles like the ones that Hezbollah prefers. Then, there’s the Patriot missile system, capable of intercepting not only missiles and rockets, but drones, at medium-to-short-range. And finally, there’s the Iron Dome, a system responsible for many thousands of short-range rocket interceptions over the course of the last decade or so. Coming soon, Israel will even field a laser-based air defense system called the Iron Beam, although that’s not yet operational. When it comes to Israel’s strengths at war, its abundance of resources is a very good place to start. Israel has an annual defense budget well over twenty billion US dollars, and it’s developed world-renowned capabilities in concert with the United States, the nations of Europe, and other global partners. It spends that money on cutting-edge technology, frequently taking advanced equipment like the US-made Patriot system, and upgrading it to an even higher standard. Israel’s military is very well-trained, it’s a highly respected institution inside the country, and it’s not at all focused on power projection overseas. Instead, it spends its time with the singular objective to protect Israel from a long list of known enemies, where Hezbollah features very, very prominently.

Strategic Implications

And right now, it appears that Israel is spoiling for a fight—not just sometime far in the future, but on a timeline measured in weeks, or perhaps even days. In today’s special episode of Warographics, we’re going to explore Israel’s pivot to new battle lines along its northern border. We’re going to look closely at the Hezbollah organization—what they are, what they do, and what they’re capable of. And we’re going to be precise about just what an Israel-Hezbollah War would look like, and why that war would promise devastation far worse than what the last nine months or so in Gaza have been. The Solemn Staredown. The prospect of war between Israel and Hezbollah is not a new one, and certainly not over the course of this ongoing conflict in Hamas. Before long, the two sides settled into a predictable and violent rhythm, with Hamas launching rockets and, sometimes, unmanned explosive drones against targets in northern Israel, and Israel engaging in a mix of retaliatory airstrikes, and pre-emptive ones, in return. From mid-October 2023 to mid-March 2024, northern Israel and southern Lebanon routinely saw between 150 and 250 individual violent incidents every single week, be they isolated shootouts, rocket attacks, or anything else. The 15 weeks that followed Hamas’ October 7th attack, saw upward of four thousand violent incidents involving Israel and Hezbollah, on that long stretch of territory. Those included the alleged use of phosphorous bombs and white phosphorous shelling by the IDF, and an incident in which an Israeli tank fired on a group of clearly identifiable journalists, killing a Reuters photographer named Issam Abdallah. So, too, did they include numerous attacks by both Hezbollah and Israel that killed or wounded civilians, and saw a shaky ceasefire quickly broken by Hezbollah. Innocents and non-combatants on both sides of the border were forced to respond, with well over fifty thousand Israelis and well over fifty thousand Lebanese fleeing the area by or before the first few months of this year. And starting in January of 2024, the low-grade conflict along Israel’s northern border began to escalate. The incident that really started the shift, came all the way back on January the eighth—when a man named Wissam Tawil was killed in an Israeli airstrike in his hometown of Khirbet Silem, about ten kilometers from the border with Israel. Wissam Tawil was by no means an innocent; he’d been a Hezbollah fighter for well over a decade by then. But he was also a high-ranking leader within the organization, one who played a central role in an elite branch of Hezbollah called Radwan. The unit’s members are commandoes, the Hezbollah version of special operators, and it’s they who have played a leading role in keeping up Hezbollah’s side of the violence against Israel. Its Radwan special forces are trained to carry out deep infiltration operations and assassinations, and they’ve been praised even by the Israeli forces they often battle against. Said one Israeli lieutenant colonel of their abilities, quoted in a 2011 report by the RAND Corporation, “when an Israeli SOF team encountered [Hezbollah SOF] on one occasion during a firefight, the Israeli team members thought at first that they had somehow become commingled with a separate detachment of Israeli SEALs.” On top of all that, Hezbollah has recently alleged that it’s got yet-unknown other tools in its arsenal, that would be revealed in the event of a full-scale conflict. That could, of course, be empty bluster, but there are a few sorts of weapon that Hezbollah could get relatively easily that could make a major difference. Those include things like Iranian-made Shahed drones, and more sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles that could allow Hezbollah to cause problems for Israeli fighter-bomber jets. And their small-scale equipment is no less impressive. Hezbollah is known to be in possession of advanced night-vision technology, with combat-ready units that have the proven ability to wage nighttime battles. It’s got the ability to use laser range-finders to designate targets, it can use advanced software to analyze the aircraft and heavy machinery it’s fighting against, and it’s known to have specialized equipment from laser cutters to stun guns to ultrasonic beacons that ward away dogs.

Risk and Uncertainty

In the days immediately following the October 7th attacks by Hamas into Israel, the Israeli Defense Force, or IDF, very nearly launched a pre-emptive campaign across the country’s northern border. In the days after the attack, Israeli intelligence had assessed that Hezbollah fighters were massing on the border, potentially prepared to strike southward and add to the devastation and confusion that Hamas had already caused. Per a brief by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, quote: “The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) deployed fighter aircraft that awaited orders to strike targets in Lebanon. Israeli officials apparently notified the White House around 6:30 a.m. on October 11, 2023, that they were considering preventive strikes and requested U.S. support. Tawil was, before his death, regarded as one of the group’s best and brightest…and while he was the first high-level Hezbollah operative killed in the current round of violence, he wouldn’t be the last. In retaliation, Hezbollah would launch a direct attack on the headquarters of Israel’s Northern Command—the first time that they would attack such a valuable target, but as we’re quite sure you can guess by now, not the last. We highlight the death of Wissam Tawil, a brief and forgotten news clip from half a year ago, because his death was the first time that tensions between Israel and Hezbollah really exploded within the context of their ongoing fighting. Since then, a number of high-ranking Hezbollah officials have been killed, along with people like Saleh Arouri, a man who was killed just prior to Tawil, and who was, before his death, the leading emissary by Hamas sent to do business with the organization’s northern ally. So, too, have Hezbollah been willing to retaliate against more and more potent targets, and so too have they been willing to strike such targets pre-emptively, knowing that they’ll draw an Israeli military response by way of bullets and missiles. But it’s important to understand just how this conflict has spiraled upward in its intensity, because contrary to what international observers might have expected, it hasn’t been a strictly linear escalation. Instead, if the two sides are, let’s say, climbing a ladder toward conflict, then their escalation on that ladder has followed a predictable pattern. Tensions surge, then get drawn down, but when they’re drawn down, they don’t quite return all the way down to the level they were at previously. To stick with the ladder analogy for a moment, Hezbollah and Israel might suddenly ratchet up their hostilities and climb up, say, seven rungs on that ladder…and then, when they descend back down, they descend only five. Next time they escalate, they move up seven…and come back down five. Up seven, down five, until the base animosity between the two sides—the position they’re resting at, upon that ladder—is already high enough that when the next round of escalation comes, they’ll finally reach the point of no return that’s waiting for them at the top. Comprised of a military 170,000 active-duty troops strong, Israel’s actual strength today is closer to half a million troops, after the country has called up some three quarters of its reservists—although some among them have since returned home. Of those, the vast majority are members of the Israeli Ground Forces, which can bring to bear some 1,500-or-so main battle tanks, counting those currently kept in storage. Along with those tanks come thousands of stored and deployed armored personnel carriers and fighting vehicles, hundreds of super-heavy combat bulldozers, and over a thousand artillery pieces. In the air, Israel is highly formidable, with nearly two hundred F-16 fighter jets, sixty-six F-15 Eagles, and around forty fifth-generation F-35 stealth fighters, out of an anticipated seventy-five that will one day fill Israel’s arsenal. They bring dozens of attack helicopters, plus aerial reconnaissance, command-and-control, and refueling capabilities. On the sea, they boast no fewer than seven missile corvettes that can easily conduct operations against land-based forces, alongside submarines and coastal defense vessels that shouldn’t be quite so relevant in a conflict against Hezbollah. But if Hezbollah’s greatest strength is its hundred-thousand or more missiles, rockets, and drones, then the IDF’s greatest strength is precisely the weapon to counter such a capability. The skies over Israel are protected by a multi-layered interlocking missile-defense network, relying on several different types of interceptors to ensure that the nation’s population centers and military infrastructure are protected.

Outlook

But senior U.S. officials, including President Joe Biden, pushed back.” Israel would hold itself back from launching that strike, and Hezbollah fighters never ended up attacking in large numbers, as Israeli intelligence had feared. But to say that the imminent violence was replaced by peace…well, unfortunately, that would be a lie. In the following months, Israel and Hezbollah began trading near-daily small-scale attacks, as Hezbollah paramilitary forces ran amok across Lebanese territory, and Israel used its aerial assets in what amounted to a deadly serious game of whack-a-mole. Hezbollah has made the destruction of Israel a cornerstone of its ideology since day one, and Israel has long since gotten used to the security threat Hezbollah presents, so for either side to start pouring personnel and resources into their border region, was a rather foreseeable outcome. Before long, the two sides settled into a predictable and violent rhythm, with Hamas launching rockets and, sometimes, unmanned explosive drones against targets in northern Israel, and Israel engaging in a mix of retaliatory airstrikes, and pre-emptive ones, in return. Now, it appears that the two sides are finally on that precipice, waiting for the final instigation, perhaps from either party, that’ll push them into war. The last few months of fighting have seen a steady rise in intensity from both sides of the conflict. After a massive flare-up in tensions directly between Israel and the nation that props up the Hezbollah organization, Iran, the month of April saw Israel assassinate yet more elite Hezbollah personnel. Hezbollah would send drones deeper into Israel than it had done since October 7th, attacking two military bases near the city of Acre, and would launch other drone attacks that injured well over a dozen Israelis in that month alone. May was even worse; Hezbollah would kill multiple IDF soldiers and several civilians, and launch strikes on major Israeli military targets, while Israel would kill numerous civilians as well, and end the lives of several dozen Hezbollah fighters, including more commanders. And if April and May were worse than ever, then June would be worst of all. After wildfires caused by Hezbollah rockets would send dozens of Israeli solders and civilians to the hospital, an 11th-of-June strike by the IDF killed a man named Taleb Sami Abdullah. Per the IDF, quote, “Abdullah was one of Hezbollah’s most senior commanders in southern Lebanon”. To kill him, especially amidst a conflict that was already spiraling, was to kill the most senior Hezbollah member to have died over the course of the conflict thus far—more important than Wissam Tawil, and more important than any other Hezbollah leader that the organization had already responded with outrage for having lost. On June the twelfth, Hezbollah would launch more rockets against Israel than it had done on any day prior in the current conflict, including against two IDF headquarters, an air surveillance station, and a military factory that was targeted by a guided missile. But between corruption, underfunding, and poor defensive capabilities around the LAF’s own arsenal, it’s entirely feasible that the LAF’s anti-tank equipment, the American-made tanks and Humvees that are still in working order, the armored personnel carriers, the artillery pieces, and the weaponry that the LAF has at its disposal, could find its way into Hezbollah’s hands. In a grand view, it is absolutely vital to understand that Hezbollah is not a comparable force to Hamas in Gaza. They are better, far better, with an arsenal an order of magnitude more dangerous, fighting units an order of magnitude more formidable, on the sovereign territory of another nation where they operate with impunity, and where they enjoy broad support from much of the Lebanese public, particularly in southern Lebanon where Hezbollah is at its strongest. In any Israeli invasion, under any circumstances, they will be fighting on their home turf, in a battle that they’ve prepared for in the tens of thousands, fully understanding that they cannot win in a head-to-head war with Israel, but fully prepared to make Israel bleed for as long as is necessary to win. But now, it’s time that we talk about Israel, because even amidst the chaos and the horror of the war in Gaza, the Israeli military has thus far fought the sort of conflict where it’s hardly showed what its modern arsenal is capable of.

Hezbollah's Rise as a Formidable Threat

The largest barrage of the day would involve over a hundred rockets launched all at once. The following day, Hezbollah would attack another nine Israeli military sites with a mix of rockets and explosive drones. All the while, Israeli warplanes streaked overhead, while its vaunted series of interlocking air-defense systems dealt with the worst of the danger. And when it came time for Israel to decide what its response would be, the nation chose to respond not just with airstrikes, but with something far more foreboding. On Sunday, June 23, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to the airwaves across Israel in a long television interview. In that interview, he made the IDF’s posture clear: that the military’s ongoing campaign in Gaza is winding down, probably in advance of a transition to a long phase of lower-grade counterinsurgency operations. With potentially many thousands of troops freed up from combat duties against Hamas, those forces will rotate to Israel’s north, quote, “first and foremost, for defense”. But the nature of the ‘defense’ Netanyahu described, clarified Israel’s intentions further, when he emphasized Israel’s desire to see the tens of thousands of civilians currently displaced from northern Israel, able to return to their homes. That’s a step that is broadly understood to require Hezbollah to be pushed well northward, past the Litani River that runs some 29 kilometers, 18 miles, north of the Israeli border. That would push Hezbollah out of an area of Lebanon that the UN designated should be free from Hezbollah and other military personnel and assets not belonging to the Lebanese military proper…but what it would take for Israel to push Hezbollah north of the Litani, is nothing short of a full-scale invasion. And by all outward indicators, it appears that an invasion is precisely what Israel intends. In a visit to Beirut in recent weeks, an envoy from Israel’s closest ally and geopolitical guardian, the United States, laid the situation out starkly for Lebanese officials. That envoy, a policy leader named Amos Hochstein, provided a message that would almost certainly make its way to Hezbollah’s leaders: that Hezbollah should not be confident that the United States could stop a potential Israeli invasion of Lebanon, if Hezbollah’s continued attacks prompt a large-scale IDF response. Per the Biden administration, both sides appear to be miscalculating under the assumption that they can avoid all-out war, while still engaging in their current cycles of escalation—and, per the Biden administration, no amount of American pressure can definitively stop Israel from launching an invasion if that’s what Netanyahu decides. Yet the response that the US apparently got back from Hezbollah, via third-party channels, was no more encouraging. The group’s wide variety of equipment is built to optimize its main offensive weapon: a wide array of missiles, drones, and rockets. Hezbollah is believed to be in possession of sone 130,000 rockets and missiles, including several types of anti-tank, anti-ship, and surface-to-air guided missiles, and rockets with a range well over 100 kilometers. They possess a range of explosive kamikaze drones, and have certainly studied the examples of Russia, Ukraine, and Yemen’s Houthi rebels, each of which have shown how to pair suicide drones with other aerial-attack weapons. While the group doesn’t keep heavy ground machinery in Lebanon, they’re believed to have some 75 Soviet-era T-55 and T-72 tanks provided by, and stored in Syria, along with armored vehicles, a range of different artillery pieces, and perhaps even a few T-90 tanks. They’ve also got ample improvised fighting vehicles, basically a range of variations on the general concept of taking a pickup truck, and bolting a machine gun on top of it. Lacking piloted aircraft or sufficient numbers of advanced surface-to-air weapons, Hezbollah doesn’t have the means to prevent Israeli aircraft from taking those tanks out, so they’re not part of the low-grade conflict we’ve seen thus far, but they could have at least some limited effect in the event of a full-scale war. They’re equipped with ample numbers of anti-armor heavy missiles, built to take out tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, and they field specially trained anti-armor teams that specialize in ambush and camouflage. Israeli intelligence is the stuff of legend, with its domestic intelligence organization, the Shin Bet, and its foreign intelligence service, Mossad, earning an international reputation one part inspiring and one part terrifying—while its military intelligence service, Aman, is a lower-profile outfit that quietly stands beside the very best in the world when it comes to tactical wartime intelligence. And finally, there are Israel’s estimated several dozen nuclear warheads, kept in an arsenal that Israel has never acknowledged directly—and, we certainly hope, an arsenal that Israel wouldn’t consider using in anything but the very most dire of circumstances. And before we can really game out a war between these two sides, we’ve got to account for the other nations and non-state actors that would figure prominently on either side of a potential Israel-Hezbollah war. On the Israeli side, there is no ally more critical, nor any more indispensable, than the United States of America, where almost-reflexive support for the Israeli state is one of the few remaining commonalities between most political leaders in a deeply divided nation. Israel enjoys close to a limitless strategic partnership with the US, where even during the darkest moments of the Israel-Hamas War, the United States has continued to send nearly every weapons system that Israel could even think to ask for. It’s not yet clear either way, whether the US would consider scaling back its military support in the event of a Lebanon invasion, but if past decisions predict future behavior, then it’s certainly an unlikely outcome.

Historical Context: Hezbollah's Origins and Evolution

Per the organization, Hezbollah may not want a war…but it’s confident that if a war does come, it can and will do substantial damage to Israel in the process. With all signs pointing to a potentially imminent war, it’s now time that we take a step back, and set the table for a potential conflict. To do that, we’ve got to focus in on two key areas: What do both Israel and Hezbollah have at their disposal in advance of a war, and what alliances and international partnerships will they leverage in order to enhance their chances of victory? First, we’ll focus in on the organizations themselves—and to do it, we’ll begin with Hezbollah. But before we do, we’d like to emphasize one absolutely critical point: As much as politicians, military organizations, and, at times, media take pains to downplay the capabilities of non-state paramilitaries, Hezbollah is the exception where that minimizing approach leads people to badly underestimate what is—by all expert accounts—a uniquely formidable paramilitary force. Getting precise insights on the group’s strength isn’t particularly easy to do, but they’re widely understood to be one of, if not the, most formidable non-state fighting force in the world. Estimates on their size are wide-ranging, but tend to cluster in on rough numbers around 20,000 full-time personnel, and between 20,000 and 30,000 reserve personnel. The group’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasdallah, insists that the group is far larger, claiming in 2021 that hit had some 100,000 fighters among its ranks and stating this year that those numbers have grown substantially in the intervening time. No matter their exact number, Hezbollah’s full-time soldiers are believed to be quite well-trained, both by Hezbollah leaders in training camps, and by a wide range of experienced military advisors dispatched from Iran’s unconventional-warfare organization, the Quds Force. Many Hezbollah fighters are experienced combat veterans, having picked up substantial experience fighting in Syria during that country’s civil war, and in smaller conflicts across the region. Their training infrastructure is well-developed, and allegedly modeled on Israel’s own military training facilities, including firing ranges, urban-warfare simulation zones, driving tracks, and more. Hezbollah’s snipers are said to be especially fearsome, and their elite operators, like the Radwan force we mentioned previously, are generally regarded as being highly competent in the realm of asymmetric or guerrilla warfare. The group’s reservists are thought to be somewhat less formidable, but they, too, have often been sent off to Syria in order to pick up combat experience. In an interview with Voice of America in 2016, one Hezbollah commander even described the war as a, quote, “dress rehearsal”, for the next war with Israel. Also during the Syrian Civil War, Hezbollah fighters are believed to have received large-scale training from Russian forces, and observed their intelligence-gathering and tactical decision-making in real time. From a defensive perspective, Hezbollah’s network of underground tunnels is far more expansive than anything Hamas has ever been able to achieve in Gaza, estimated to include hundreds of kilometers of tunnels distributed among dozens of local defensive networks. They reach far underground, some are wide enough to fit entire pickup trucks, and they are so numerous that the tunnel-clearing and blocking tactics that worked in Gaza, will almost certainly not be enough in Lebanon. And then we’ve got to factor in the Lebanese military—not because they’d fight beside Hezbollah, but because their equipment may end up in Hezbollah’s arsenal. It’s worth emphasizing that Hezbollah is believed to be substantially better at warfighting than the Lebanese Armed Forces or LAF. Hezbollah is better-trained, better-armed, has far more combat experience soldier-to-soldier, and shows much better combat discipline among its ground force. They’re much better at using small-unit tactics, fighting asymmetrically, and deeply instilling a combat culture of martyrdom that makes their troops far more willing to fight to the death. And while the Hezbollah organization and the LAF are quite often at odds with one another, it’s important to emphasize that the LAF is both a weak institution, and is subject to a Lebanese political system where Hezbollah exerts strong control. It is not particularly likely that the LAF would ever ally with Hezbollah to stand against Israel. Germany is Israel’s other greatest military backer, responsible for some thirty percent of its armaments supply in 2023, and while Canada, Japan, Spain, and other nations have stopped selling weapons to Israel since the start of the current war in Gaza, other nations, like Britain and Italy, continue to make their own contributions. On Hezbollah’s side, the situation is a bit more complicated, but no less important. Hezbollah’s main international backer is the nation of Iran, which viewed Hezbollah, for a long time, as a sort of vassal organization extending Iran’s mission across the Middle East. Now, while that’s still somewhat the case, Hezbollah has become far more of a strategic partner to Iran, working toward the same goals from different angles while continuing to accept Iranian military advisors and material support. Also on Hezbollah’s side are a far greater network of Iran-affiliated state and non-state actors, who have, at various times through their history, referred to their collective network as the Axis of Resistance. Other Axis members include Yemen’s Houthi rebels, Hamas in Gaza, the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, and a network of Iran-allied militias in Iraq and Syria. Just like Hezbollah is far more of a threat than Hamas, we must emphasize that a conflict between Hezbollah and Israel will not be like the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Hezbollah stronger than Israel?

See the full article for details on Is Hezbollah stronger than Israel?.

Is it possible to disarm Hezbollah?

See the full article for details on Is it possible to disarm.

What percent of Lebanese Christians support Israel?

See the full article for details on What percent of Lebanese Christians.

Has Israel defeated Hezbollah?

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Can the Lebanese Army disarm Hezbollah?

See the full article for details on Can the Lebanese Army disarm.

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  25. https://english.alarabiya.net/amp/News/middle-east/2024/06/03/lebanon-s-hezbollah-launches-squadron-of-drones-towards-israeli-military-quarters
  26. https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-israel-hezbollah-commander-killed-a404a607c3f96850d0dde1a5cc70c41b
  27. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-strike-lebanon-kills-four-including-senior-hezbollah-commander-2024-06-11/
  28. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/12/world/middleeast/hezbollah-rockets-israel-strike.html
  29. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hezbollah-says-it-attacked-9-israeli-military-sites-with-rockets-drones-2024-06-13/
  30. https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240613-%F0%9F%94%B4-live-israel-hamas-gaza-war-houthis-yemen-ceasefire
  31. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/13/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas
  32. https://www.axios.com/2024/06/25/us-warned-hezbollah-israel-escalation
  33. https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-news-06-23-2024-bcc6c48de5c463fd68b7249f5b15bf5c
  34. https://theconversation.com/how-drones-form-part-of-hezbollahs-deterrence-strategy-against-israel-232808
  35. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/06/how-hezbollah-holds-sway-over-lebanese-state/05-influence-over-military-and-security
  36. https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2024/01/05/gazas-vexing-tunnel-network-pales-beside-hezbollahs-land-of-tunnels/
  37. https://www.axios.com/2023/10/21/israel-military-capabilities-explained
  38. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-are-israels-iron-dome-arrow-missile-defences-2024-04-14/
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  45. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/12/israel-weapons-suppliers-countries/
  46. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/thousands-iran-backed-fighters-hezbollah-israel-rcna158465
  47. https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htada/20140319.aspx
  48. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/10960091/The-Iron-Dome-what-is-it-and-how-does-it-work.html
  49. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-wants-avoid-greater-war-along-lebanon-israel-border-envoy-says-2024-06-18/
  50. https://apnews.com/article/israel-offensive-lebanon-82d714dfca0d34fd44f565cf859818c0
  51. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-offensive-lebanon-could-increase-risk-broader-war-us-general-2024-06-23/
  52. https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/hezbollah-iranian-backed-group-war-israel-111379953#:~:text=%E2%80%9CIran's%20support%20has%20helped%20Hezbollah,Middle%20East%20Institute%20in%20London
  53. https://www.npr.org/2023/12/07/1217758650/what-s-it-like-to-live-in-southern-lebanon-where-israel-trades-fire-with-hezboll
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  55. https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/23/israel-defence-minister-flies-us-talks-gaza-lebanon-yoav-gallant
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  61. https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/can-lebanese-army-prevent-hezbollah-christian-conflict
  62. https://www.defensenews.com/global/mideast-africa/2024/05/01/lebanons-military-stagnates-amid-economic-turmoil-hezbollah-influence/
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  64. https://www.usip.org/publications/2024/04/hezbollah-israel-tensions-simmer-lebanons-domestic-crises-drag
Jackson Reed
About the Author

Jackson Reed

Jackson Reed creates and presents analysis focused on military doctrine, strategic competition, and conflict dynamics.

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