What a week for anniversaries! Thursday we'll be celebrating the first year of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. It's Barack Obama's major foreign policy initiative, which ostensibly prevents Iran from a nuclear breakout, but in reality paves the way for the White House's realignment with the Islamic Republic. Who knows if the deal will survive Obama's term in office, but, as I'll detail more in a few days, the White House is doing everything it can to protect the deal.
In the meantime, this Tuesday I'm thinking about waking up in Beirut ten years ago when my friend Elie Fawaz called from his home in the mountains over the city to say that Hezbollah had ambushed an Israeli patrol, killing three IDF troops on the spot and taking hostage two others. Shortly after Fawaz and I agreed that trouble was coming, I heard the bombs that the Israeli air force was dropping on the airport only a few miles away. What the Lebanese call the July War, and Israelis call the Second Lebanon War, was underway, and it would last 34 days.
After a few days, I left Beirut, crossing over into Syria, then Jordan, and finally Israel, for the first time. My first night there, I bought a round of drinks in a bar owned by a couple of guys who would become friends, Avi Goldberger and Haggai Sternheim. I saw behind the bar they had a Lebanese brand of arak that I recognized because it was owned by a friend of Fawaz's late father.
"How'd you get it?" I asked them. They didn't know or forgot, and I ordered another round for everyone, explaining to my new acquaintances how I'd just left the country where some of their countrymen were now visiting.
I soon understood that a generation of Israeli men had also lived in Lebanon when they served in the army during the First Lebanon War (1982-2000). They liked the country, and talked about the food, the views, the mountains, the sea, and the beautiful women. They could have been describing Israel, and in a sense, of course, that wasn't too far off. They felt bad about having to go to war with this neighbor again, not least because Israelis had long held out hope of peace with Lebanon—just as some, though hardly all, Lebanese have wanted peace with Israel.
Nonetheless, now they were at war. Israelis asked me how I thought it was going, and I told them friends in Lebanon said Hezbollah was taking a beating. If Israel might not really be able to disarm Hezbollah, as then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised, the muqawama was bleeding badly. I am pretty sure no Israelis I met gave much credence to that assessment.
The Israelis were right to criticize their leadership, especially Olmert, defense minister Amir Peretz, and IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz, none of whom it seems were up for the task. And the military had spent so much time doing what was effectively police work in the West Bank and Gaza that it was ill prepared for a wider conflict like the one underway in Lebanon.
There was also the fact that the Israelis had peculiar ideas about Lebanon, especially that they'd sided with the wrong faction in the First Lebanon War. The popular belief was that Jerusalem never should have chosen the Maronites as allies but should have befriended the Shiites instead. And now look—they were at war with a Shiite population that their 18-year-long occupation had angered past the point of no return. But the occupation isn't what gave rise to Hezbollah, as research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies Tony Badran explained in The Weekly Standard. Iran had seeded the party of God many years before Israel invaded Lebanon.
That the Israeli government-appointed Winograd commission found serious fault with the conduct and management of the war further obscured the reality of the outcome. Yes, Hezbollah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah claimed a "divine victory," which was a cruel rhetorical gag played on the country he put in the crosshairs of the region's premier military. After all, "resistance" is not a military tactic, but is rather an ethical doctrine—albeit drawn from a very damaged ethics in this case. All resistance requires is that you stand your ground against what you perceive to be your oppressor. Winning means only that you resist, and death—i.e., martyrdom—only enhances the quality of resistance.
And indeed Hezbollah died in big numbers, dragging hundreds of their countrymen along with them. More than 1200 Lebanese, many of them Hezbollah fighters, were killed, while the country suffered billions of dollars worth of damage. In contrast, 121 IDF troops lost their lives alongside 44 Israeli civilians. No matter how badly Olmert may have bungled the war, Hezbollah lost.
A decade of relative quiet on the Israel-Lebanon border is evidence that neither Nasrallah nor his masters in Tehran have been eager to rush back into the breach. Nonetheless, analysts and strategists argue that hostilities will eventually resume. Last month, Willy Stern reported from Israel for TWS to describe what the next war might look like.
Some clues: Hezbollah has amassed not just rockets and missiles. Iran has supplied its favorite terrorist organization with other top-of-the-line weaponry. For military aficionados, these would include the latest guided, tank-piercing Russian-made "Kornet" missiles, SA-17 and SA-22 air defense systems, and even the "Yakhont" class surface-to-ship cruise missiles. Making matters worse for IDF planners, Hezbollah boasts a standing army of more than 10,000 soldiers—a figure that could add two or three times that amount of reservists in the event of a war with Israel. In short, since its last major conflict with Israel in 2006, Hezbollah has dramatically increased its combat capabilities and armory. The terrorist organization has leapt from the jayvee team to the major leagues across every fighting platform.
Haaretz has an interactive article detailing some of Hezbollah's capabilities, some of which have allegedly been enhanced, like its missile arsenal. The article contends that Hezbollah has 45,000 fighters, including reservists, it can call on, with 21,000 in regular service. Presumably, that assessment comes from Israeli intelligence services but it's not clear what it's based on, but it's likely off by tens of thousands. As I reported previously, a highly placed Lebanese source explained to independent Shia activist Lokman Slim that there are 3000-4000 fighters of various rank fighting at any one time in Syria, which the party describes as a virtually existential conflict against a fanatical Sunni enemy that will destroy the Shiites at home unless Hezbollah takes the fight to them. So why leave another 17,000-18,000 regular forces—and some 20,000 reservists—at home, where the Lebanese Armed Forces are covering the party's flank? The numbers are maybe half of what Haaretz suggests, or else Iran would not have tasked inferior forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to defend the Syrian regime.
Some analysts believe the war in Syria has contributed immensely to Hezbollah's capabilities. They contend that the experience it's gained there, as well as the knowledge it's picked up from fighting alongside the Russians, will make Hezbollah a more formidable adversary in the next conflict with Israel. I think that's improbable.
As a resistance force—i.e., terrorist group—Hezbollah's tactics consisted largely of firing rockets at Israeli towns, or kidnapping Israeli soldiers, and then hiding among its own civilian population. When Israel retaliated, Hezbollah peeked out from behind the country it uses as a human shield to petition the international community for mercy. The Syrian conflict changed Hezbollah's self-image. Now it sees itself as an expeditionary force, fighting its enemy across the wire.
At the same time, its war against Sunnis has lost Hezbollah the support of the Arab world. What knowledge of war has it gained in exchange for incurring blood debts with the region's Sunni Arab majority? The Israelis don't use Toyota trucks like Jabhat al-Nusra. They have helicopters, tanks, and planes. Hezbollah has gliders and tunnels, with which it intends to send fighters across the border to conquer Israeli towns. But Hezbollah couldn't hold territory in Syria without the help of Russian air power, so how is it going to hold territory in Israel, even if it manages to take Israeli civilians by surprise? Hezbollah may flatter itself that it's become, in the words of Haaretz, a mid-sized army, but let's say that Hezbollah really can call on 45,000 reservists. That is still less than half of the number of reservists Israel is capable of mobilizing within 24 hours. In short, the next conflict with Israel will be much worse for Hezbollah and Lebanon.
Of course, another possibility is that there's not going to be another Israel-Hezbollah war. Syria may turn out to be Hezbollah's grave.