Monday, 19 October 2009
Israel’s Secret War with Hezbollah and Iran
Two mysterious explosions in Southern Lebanon last week, led Israeli Ronen Bergman, author of “The Secret War with Iran: The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle Against the World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist Power,” to cite them and earlier ones as evidence of a “Secret War on Hezbollah,” in a Wall Street Journal commentary.
Bergman noted what Israel security services and the IDF may be doing:
The episode also led to heightened tensions on the Israel-Lebanon border. The specter of renewed fighting between Israel and Hezbollah looms as large today as it has at any time since the end of the Lebanon war in August 2006. Yet senior military officers in Israel’s Northern Command are confident that the embarrassing outcome of the last round will not be repeated.
“By all means, let the Hezbollah try,” one officer told me two weeks ago when I asked if he was concerned about the possibility of warfare. “The welcome party that we are preparing for them is one that they will remember for a very long time.” That sentiment is shared by many of his colleagues.
If the 2006 war underlined the military might of Hezbollah—a repeat, in a sense, of Hezbollah’s success in driving out the Israeli occupying forces from South Lebanon in May 2000—it also forced Israel to include Hezbollah in any assessment of possible responses to an Israeli attack against Iranian nuclear installations.
As part of its combat doctrine, which eschews reliance on reinforcements and resupply, Hezbollah has stockpiled its weapons throughout Lebanon, but particularly near the Israeli border. According to current Israeli intelligence estimates, Hezbollah has an arsenal of 40,000 rockets, including Iranian-made Zelzal, Fajr-3, Fajr-5, and 122 mm rockets (some of which have cluster warheads) and Syrian-made 302 mm rockets. Some of its rockets can reach greater Tel Aviv. Hezbollah also has a number of highly advanced weapons systems, including antiaircraft missiles that constitute a threat to Israeli combat aircraft.
via The Iconoclast – New English Review.
Do you like this story?
