Scuds, despite the publicity they attract, are not the most effective weapons in Hezbollah’s arsenal. While they carry a large warhead and the psychological effects of a missile landing in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem would be considerable, they are also cumbersome, slow to load, and difficult to hide. “Once they are installed, they are sitting ducks,” says Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University in Israel. But Hezbollah has reportedly also obtained Syrian versions of the Iranian Fateh-110 missile system, which is much more accurate and easier to deploy. With a range of more than 200 km, these missiles could reach central Israel and fulfill Nasrallah’s pledge to bomb Ben Gurion International Airport.
There may be other weapons Hezbollah has but of which Israel is not yet aware. During the 2006 war, Israeli tank crews suffered numerous casualties from sophisticated shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons, including, unexpectedly, state-of-the-art Kornet missiles, which are made in Russia and reached Hezbollah via Syria.
Hady Amr, director of the Brookings Doha Center, predicts that Israel’s next confrontation with Hezbollah will be more extensive than the last. “From all my conversations, and from my knowledge from senior Israeli sources, they are increasingly concerned about Hezbollah’s strength and feel that next time they want to do the job right,” he said, explaining that many Israeli politicians and military commanders believe the country did not achieve its objective of weakening Hezbollah the last time it fought the Islamist militia.
It’s also possible that a war between Israel and Hezbollah will expand to include all of Lebanon. “Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government,” Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in an interview with Maclean’s. “If Hezbollah is going to attack Israel, that’s an attack from Lebanon, and that has consequences on the type of response that Israel would be considering. In the past, Israel distinguished between Hezbollah as a terrorist military machine and the country of Lebanon. It’s very difficult to make that decision today.”
Such a war might even involve Syria. At least one Israeli politician, minister-without-portfolio Yossi Peled, said that in the event of another conflict on Israel’s northern border, which he described in January as a “matter of time,” Israel would hold “Syria and Lebanon alike responsible.”
Hezbollah’s most powerful sponsor, however, is Iran—whose weapons, money, and training give it significant influence over the Lebanese militia. And despite recent growling by all the potential belligerents, both Israel and Iran have good reasons to avoid triggering a war on Israel’s northern border just now.
Even with long-range missiles, Hezbollah is not an existential threat to Israel. But many Israelis believe a nuclear-armed Iran is such a threat, and that the country’s window to deal with it is closing. A war with Hezbollah would absorb Israel’s military resources and constrict its ability to launch strikes against Iran.
From the Iranian perspective, among its most effective deterrents against an Israeli air attack is an intact and well-armed Hezbollah that is ready and able to retaliate on Iran’s behalf. A war with Israel now would waste that deterrent.
But the fact that there are good reasons why a war shouldn’t take place doesn’t mean it won’t. Ehud Barak’s warning that conflict might flow from the absence of a formal peace was not an empty one. Hezbollah is rearming. Israel will not indefinitely tolerate its growing strength. And Syria—despite U.S. efforts to engage it—shows little sign of turning its back on either Iran or its proxies in Lebanon and Gaza. This could be a violent summer.
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