Hezbollah is in a no-win military position

As Israel steps up its campaign against the terror group, it is becoming clearer that Nasrallah is a very poor judge of Israel.

Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah would be foolish to assume that Israel is bluffing by flagging a possible ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

As Israel steps up its campaign against the terror group, it is becoming clearer that Nasrallah is a very poor judge of Israel and its intentions. The terror leader’s miscalculations have not only greatly weakened his own militant group but have now put Hezbollah in a no-win military position from which there is no easy face-saving exit. Nasrallah’s Iranian masters will surely not be pleased.

In the space of one week Israel has inflicted more damage to Hezbollah than it has suffered for two decades. Nasrallah brought this Israeli assault on Hezbollah entirely on himself by refusing to end the daily bombardment of northern Israel until it was too late. He gambled that Israel would never launch the kind of ferocious, broadbased attack on Hezbollah that it is now pursuing in order to end those attacks on Israeli territory. He was wrong.

Hezbollah now admits that Israel’s ingenious targeted attack of exploding Hezbollah-issued pagers and walkie talkies incapacitated 1500 of its fighters and commanders, depleting its fighting strength and throwing its ability to communicate into chaos.

This was followed by the targeted assassination in Beirut of a key cabal of Hezbollah commanders. Then came Israel’s massive bombardment of around 2000 Hezbollah targets in recent days, seriously degrading the terror group’s sizeable arsenal of missiles and drones.

Now Israel’s military’s chief of staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, has hinted of a possible ground invasion, telling troops that Israel’s bombing campaign was ‘to prepare the ground for your possible entry.’

The fact that he has flagged such an invasion before it occurs in another form of psychological warfare against Nasrallah and his surviving commanders, leaving them guessing about Israel’s true intentions.

Israeli Chief of Staff Major General Herzi Halevi. Picture: Twitter

But Nasrallah would be underestimating Israel’s resolve if he doesn’t believe they will carry out the threat of an invasion. Israel has made it clear that its single intention in this conflict is to prevent Hezbollah firing upon its people in northern Israel, so that 60,000 Israelis displaced by Hezbollah’s aggression can return to their homes. If the air bombardment campaign does not make Hezbollah stop its attacks, then a ground invasion to clear Hezbollah from southern Lebanon appears all but inevitable.

Israel would rather not do this because it will cost lots of Israeli lives as well as those in Lebanon. But Israel sees this conflict with Hezbollah, as it does with Hamas in Gaza, as an existential threat, something which Nasrallah appears slow to realise.

Although the US and France are trying to cobble together a deal to pause the fighting in Lebanon, it seems unlikely that Israel would accept at a time when Hezbollah is damaged and on the defensive.

Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli air strike that targeted the southern Lebanese village of Khiam on September 25. Picture: AFP

By repeatedly underestimating Israel, Nasrallah has placed his terror group in an invidious position. Does he finally unleash Hezbollah’s much vaunted – but so far unseen – arsenal of long range missiles against Israel? To do so would only invite a retaliation from Israel of immense proportions against Hezbollah strongholds which could jeopardise the survival of the terror group as a viable entity and which would cause untold destruction across southern Lebanon.

But Nasrallah’s incompetence has left him with no easy way to back down without losing face. He has pledged that Hezbollah will continue to attack Israel until a ceasefire deal is concluded in Gaza. But this seems at least several months away, not least because Nasrallah’s brother in terror, Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, keeps shifting the goalposts in his demands.

Nasrallah’s miscalculations have placed Hezbollah in an impossible position where it is too dangerous to escalate the fight against Israel and too shameful to back down. If Israeli troops do cross the border into southern Lebanon, Nasrallah will only have himself to blame for causing the war that he did not want.