This was commissioned by a national newspaper but they decided not to use it, so I shall share it here.
Two weeks ago, the Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant told me that, despite the war against Hamas in Gaza, it was Hezbollah in Lebanon that posed the biggest threat to his country’s security.
I am a former British paratrooper turned defence specialist and, alongside my colleagues at the Henry Jackson Society think tank, I was on a fact-finding mission to learn more about the inner workings of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).
Gallant was emphatic on the need for Israel to infiltrate and undermine Hezbollah. How prophetic that conversation has now proved in the wake of this week’s remarkable attack on thousands of electronic devices carried by the terror group’s militants.
In a spectacular show of ingenuity, Israel’s security forces have demonstrated how devastatingly they can penetrate the networks of their enemies, and that no-one in Hezbollah is safe. Perhaps more chilling still for the group’s commanders, it also proves how compromised their organisation is, for the intelligence to find and sabotage these devices can only have come from within.
The shock and disquiet surely reverberating through the terror group are, of course, exactly what Israel intended.
The first question now is: how will the terrorists respond?
Hezbollah has vowed to continue ‘operations to support Gaza, its people, and its resistance’. So we can expect an increase in rocket attacks in northern Israel. Since October last year, Hezbollah has fired nearly 10,000 such rockets - provoking a tough response, not least the Israeli air strike on Lebanon two weeks ago that killed two Hezbollah fighters and a militant from an allied group.
Should the terror group back up its bluster by once again escalating rocket attacks, a similarly aggressive response will ensue.
For all its muscle-flexing, meanwhile, Hezbollah’s sponsor Iran does not have the ability to respond directly. It has been humiliated on the international stage by Israel several times this year - never more so than by the assassination in Tehran of Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh in July.
Tehran’s domestic capabilities are weak. In April, the mullahs launched a barrage of 500 drones and missiles at Israel only to find all but one shot down by a coalition of Israeli defences supported by Western and regional allies. This inability to strike at Israel directly is the reason they have developed a network of proxies around the Middle East in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, and their allies in Gaza and the West Bank.
Even so, Iran cannot be underestimated, and if nothing else it knows how to play a political game as much as a military one.
My suspicion is that the Iranians will make a more indirect attempt to escalate, by pushing arms into the West Bank to further destabilise the region.
This, in turn, will force Israel to react, drawing more international condemnation, as happened last week when an Israeli sniper killed a UN worker it believed to be a terrorist. Or when the IDF shot an American-Turkish activist two weeks ago, during a protest against Israeli settlements.
The second question is what will Israel do next?
With thousands of Hezbollah fighters injured and Lebanese hospitals overflowing, it is a good moment for Israel to press its advantage home. Indeed, military intelligence shows that troops of the IDF’s 98th Division are already making their way to northern Israel - where over 60,000 citizens have been displaced from their homes by Hezbollah attacks and currently languish in hotels and makeshift accommodation.
Israel’s mission, should it invade southern Lebanon, would be to drive back the terrorist organisation some six miles over the Litani river, putting Hezbollah’s arsenal of 130,000 rockets out of range of Israeli settlements.
The defeat of this odious organisation will benefit not just Israel but the West, for it finances other terror groups around the world, and is a key vector for the smuggling of drugs, weapons and people into Europe.
The more they are weakened, the better it is for us all.
Good analysis. Israel does not want the final battle right now but is prepared to fight it if necessary. The manner in which it is responding is giving Iran and Hezbollah every chance to climb down and end the battle for now by retreating. The United States has not only failed to play a constructive role, it has greatly harmed efforts to prevent full scale war with its misguided "diplomacy". If we are fortunate, the Mullahs will blink and Israel will have time to prepare to defeat the Mullahs and their proxies in the absence of American assistance.
Another excellent analysis. Last two comments, 100% agree with. Such odious evil has to be defeated and Israel does this for us all.