A bigger bad guy: Hezbollah threatens Israel from the north

On Saturday morning, the Israel Defense Forces’ X account displayed a now-familiar message. Rockets launched by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon had landed in northern Israel without causing casualties. IDF forces “attacked the sources of the fire with artillery, along with additional attacks to remove the threat,” the post stated.

While the IDF has fought to eliminate Hamas in Gaza to Israel’s south, Iran-backed militants with the terror group Hezbollah have antagonized Israel from across its northern border. Last weekend, the fighting escalated on the northern front when a missile attack killed 12 Israeli children at a soccer field in the territory known as the Golan Heights. Israel responded by killing a top Hezbollah leader in Beirut.

Although Israel and Hezbollah have fought each other since the latter’s founding in 1982, recent months have witnessed a level of violence between the two unseen since the Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006.

iStock.com/Dimitrios Karamitros

Will Hezbollah and Israel go to war? It’s a very real possibility, according to Andie Parry, a Middle East expert with the Institute for the Study of War. Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack in southern Israel, which killed roughly 1,200 people, constituted a sort of “9/11 moment” for Israel, Parry told WORLD. Israeli leaders realized they could not afford to allow a militant presence in Gaza that could launch another attack of that scale.

One day after the Hamas attack, Hezbollah launched a barrage of rockets at military targets in northern Israel. Hamas has said it did not give Hezbollah advance notice of the Oct. 7 attack, but Hamas has representatives in Lebanon that coordinate activities with Hezbollah. Israeli leaders in Tel Aviv appear to be looking for ways to either eliminate or at least greatly reduce the threat that Hezbollah poses in the North, Parry said. Hezbollah’s recent attacks on civilians underscore that need.

Iran has surrounded Israel with a “ring of fire,” according to William Inboden, a WORLD Opinions contributor and Middle East policy expert. Iranian proxy groups operate in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and Gaza. And with the prospect of less assistance from the Biden administration, Israel will likely begin taking more aggressive and proactive steps to fight those proxy groups, Inboden said.

How would Hezbollah fare in a war against Israel? “Hezbollah is Iran's biggest asset in the region,” Parry said. It has the strongest and most experienced fighting force out of all the groups that comprise what Iran calls its Axis of Resistance. Hezbollah routinely uses its military know-how to train fighters from the other groups within the alliance. On a deeper level, Hezbollah has more ideological and sectarian similarities with Iran than other proxy groups. Iran’s government and Hezbollah belong to the minority Shiite branch of Islam, Parry explained, while Hamas adheres to the majority Sunni beliefs.

Would a war with Hezbollah mean a war with Iran? Iran usually pursues its vision for the region through its proxy forces, Parry said. It would likely provide supplies to Hezbollah in the event of a ground war with Israel but might hesitate to deploy its troops in the conflict. Some Iranian-backed militias in Iraq have signaled they would send troops to the front lines in Lebanon if war broke out. Iran could begin launching more direct attacks against Israel should the region heat up enough, Parry noted. But when Iran launched a barrage of missiles at Israel back in April, 99 percent of them never reached their targets due to U.S. and Israeli missile defenses.

Would a war with Hezbollah mean a war with all of Lebanon? Hezbollah serves as a de facto government in many areas of southern Lebanon and parts of Beirut, Parry said. But the Lebanese government and its military still run other parts of the country. Lebanon’s government is “low-functioning,” in Parry’s words, and operates on a confessional system. In that system, members of different religious sects control different regions and posts within the government. As such, the country’s leadership often devolves into a gridlock of opposed interests. Even though it doesn’t govern the whole country, Hezbollah has helped set up other militias in Lebanon, like the Lebanese Resistance, that don’t serve under its banner.

Dig deeper: Read William Inboden’s column in WORLD Opinions about the situation Israel finds itself in, with diminishing prospects for continuing U.S. aid.