Michigan (USA), October 2 (The Conversation) Iran fired at least 180 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, 2024, amplifying tensions in the Middle East that are increasingly marked by “escalation after escalation,” as United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres put it.
Iran's attacks – which Israel largely deterred with its Iron Dome missile defense system, along with help from nearby US naval destroyers – followed Israel's assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of the Lebanese militant group Tehran-backed Hezbollah on September 27.
Hezbollah has been sending rockets into northern Israel since the start of the Gaza war, which began after Hamas and other militants invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, killing nearly 1,200 people. Hezbollah rocket attacks have displaced some 70,000 people from their homes in northern Israel. Amy Lieberman, politics and society editor at Conversation U.S., spoke with counterterrorism expert Javed Ali to better understand the complex history and dynamics that are fueling the increasingly intense conflict in the Middle East.
How much more dangerous has the Middle East become in recent weeks?
The Middle East is in a much more volatile situation than even a year ago. This conflict has spread far beyond the fighting primarily between Israel and Hamas. Now, Israel and Hezbollah have a conflict developing over the past year that appears more dangerous than the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
This involves the use of Israeli special operations units, which have operated clandestinely in Lebanon in small groups since November 2023. Additionally, Hezbollah has accused Israel of carrying out unconventional warfare operations, such as blowing up walkie-talkies. and pagers, and launched hundreds of air and missile strikes in Lebanon over the past few weeks.
The combination of these operations destroyed Hezbollah's weapons depots and military infrastructure and killed several senior leaders of the group, including Hassan Nasrallah. The human cost of these attacks is significant, as more than 1,000 people have been killed in the Lebanon. Among this total, it is unclear how many of those killed or wounded are actually Hezbollah fighters.
Israel and Hezbollah last had a direct war in 2006, which lasted 34 days and killed more than 1,500 Lebanese civilians and Hezbollah fighters. Since then, Israel and Hezbollah have been in a shadow war, but not with the same kind of intensity and daily pattern that we have seen after October. 7 landscape.
Now, the conflict has the potential to spread far beyond the region and even globally. What does Iran have to do with the conflict between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah?
Iran has said it fired the missiles at Israel in retaliation for attacks on Hezbollah, Hamas and the Iranian military.
A coalition of groups and organizations have now been labeled Iran's “Axis of Resistance.” Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini and top military commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have issued unifying guidance for all the different elements, be it Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Houthi rebels in Yemen or Hezbollah in Lebanon. , or Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria.Prior to October 7, 2023, all of these groups were ideologically opposed to Israel, to some extent. But they were also fighting their own conflicts and were not uniting to support Hamas. Now, everyone has become more active around the common goal of destroying Israel.
Iran and Hezbollah, in particular, have a deep relationship dating back to the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In 1982, Israel invaded southern Lebanon to thwart cross-border attacks that the Palestine Liberation Organization and other Palestinian groups were launching against Israel. The newly formed Iranian IRGC sent advisors and trainers to southern Lebanon to work with like-minded Lebanese Shiite militants already fighting in Lebanon's civil war. They wanted to fight the Israeli army and elements of the multinational force composed of American, French, and other Western troops that were originally sent as peacekeepers to end the fighting. How does Hezbollah's history help explain its current operations?
Relationships between these Iranian experts and Lebanese militants during Lebanon's 15-year civil war led to the formation of Hezbollah as a small underground group in 1982.
Over the next few years, Hezbollah launched a brutal campaign of terrorist attacks against American, French, and other Western interests in Lebanon. The group, then known as Islamic Jihad, first attacked the U.S. embassy in Beirut on April 18, 1983. That attack killed 52 Lebanese and U.S. embassy employees. However, at the time, US intelligence personnel and other security experts were unclear about who was responsible for the embassy attack. And given this lack of understanding and perception of Hezbollah as an emerging terrorist threat, the group aimed even higher in late 1983. Following the embassy attack, Hezbollah carried out the Marine Barracks bombing in October. in 1983, in which 241 US soldiers died. Before the 9/11 attacks, this was the largest act of international terrorism against the United States.
Hezbollah was also responsible for the kidnapping and murder of American citizens, including William Buckley, CIA station chief in Beirut. And it carried out airplane hijackings, including the infamous TWA 847 incident in 1985, in which a US Navy diver was killed.
Thus, Hezbollah has a long history of regional and global terrorism. Within Lebanon, Hezbollah is a sort of parallel government to Lebanon. The Lebanese government has allowed Hezbollah to be a state within a state, but does not collaborate in military operations. Currently, the Lebanese army does not respond to Israel's attacks on Lebanon. This shows how dominant Hezbollah has become as a force.
How damaging are Israel's attacks on Hezbollah?
It is clear that Hezbollah has suffered fighter losses, but Hezbollah is a much larger group than Hamas and operates in a much larger physical territory throughout Lebanon. It has a much larger inventory of advanced weapons than Hamas ever had and a large combat force that includes between 40,000 and 50,000 regular forces organized in a conventional military structure. It also has between 150,000 and 200,000 rockets, drones and missiles of different ranges. It operates a dangerous global terrorist unit known as the External Security Organization that has attacked Israeli and Jewish interests in the 1990s in Argentina and Jewish tourists in 2012 in Bulgaria.
The Israeli military assesses that it has destroyed at least half of Hezbollah's existing weapons arsenal, based on the volume and intensity of its operations over the past few weeks. If true, this would present a serious challenge to Hezbollah's long-term operational capacity that took decades to acquire.
What security risks does this evolving conflict present for the United States? Looking at how Hezbollah demonstrated these capabilities over a 40-year period, and based now on how Israel has battered the militant group, it would not be a stretch to speculate that Hezbollah has ordered or is considering some kind of terrorist attack far away. in the region, similar to what the group did in Argentina in 1992 and 1994. It is unclear what such a plot would look like, how many people would be involved, and the possible target of any such attack.
Hezbollah leaders have said they blame Israel for the attacks against them. About a week before Nasrallah's death, he said that Israel's explosive pager and walkie-talkie operations in Lebanon were a "declaration of war" and that "the enemy had crossed all red lines."
Since then, Hezbollah has remained defiant, despite the significant losses the group has suffered at the hands of Israel in recent weeks. Questions also remain about how Hezbollah's leadership will hold the United States accountable for Israel's actions. And if so, would that mean a return to the kind of terrorism that Hezbollah inflicted on American interests in the region in the 1980s? As recent events have demonstrated, the world faces a dangerous and volatile security environment in the Middle East. (The conversation) AMS
Iran's attacks – which Israel largely deterred with its Iron Dome missile defense system, along with help from nearby US naval destroyers – followed Israel's assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of the Lebanese militant group Tehran-backed Hezbollah on September 27.
Hezbollah has been sending rockets into northern Israel since the start of the Gaza war, which began after Hamas and other militants invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, killing nearly 1,200 people. Hezbollah rocket attacks have displaced some 70,000 people from their homes in northern Israel. Amy Lieberman, politics and society editor at Conversation U.S., spoke with counterterrorism expert Javed Ali to better understand the complex history and dynamics that are fueling the increasingly intense conflict in the Middle East.
How much more dangerous has the Middle East become in recent weeks?
The Middle East is in a much more volatile situation than even a year ago. This conflict has spread far beyond the fighting primarily between Israel and Hamas. Now, Israel and Hezbollah have a conflict developing over the past year that appears more dangerous than the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
This involves the use of Israeli special operations units, which have operated clandestinely in Lebanon in small groups since November 2023. Additionally, Hezbollah has accused Israel of carrying out unconventional warfare operations, such as blowing up walkie-talkies. and pagers, and launched hundreds of air and missile strikes in Lebanon over the past few weeks.
The combination of these operations destroyed Hezbollah's weapons depots and military infrastructure and killed several senior leaders of the group, including Hassan Nasrallah. The human cost of these attacks is significant, as more than 1,000 people have been killed in the Lebanon. Among this total, it is unclear how many of those killed or wounded are actually Hezbollah fighters.
Israel and Hezbollah last had a direct war in 2006, which lasted 34 days and killed more than 1,500 Lebanese civilians and Hezbollah fighters. Since then, Israel and Hezbollah have been in a shadow war, but not with the same kind of intensity and daily pattern that we have seen after October. 7 landscape.
Now, the conflict has the potential to spread far beyond the region and even globally. What does Iran have to do with the conflict between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah?
Iran has said it fired the missiles at Israel in retaliation for attacks on Hezbollah, Hamas and the Iranian military.
A coalition of groups and organizations have now been labeled Iran's “Axis of Resistance.” Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini and top military commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have issued unifying guidance for all the different elements, be it Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Houthi rebels in Yemen or Hezbollah in Lebanon. , or Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria.Prior to October 7, 2023, all of these groups were ideologically opposed to Israel, to some extent. But they were also fighting their own conflicts and were not uniting to support Hamas. Now, everyone has become more active around the common goal of destroying Israel.
Iran and Hezbollah, in particular, have a deep relationship dating back to the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In 1982, Israel invaded southern Lebanon to thwart cross-border attacks that the Palestine Liberation Organization and other Palestinian groups were launching against Israel. The newly formed Iranian IRGC sent advisors and trainers to southern Lebanon to work with like-minded Lebanese Shiite militants already fighting in Lebanon's civil war. They wanted to fight the Israeli army and elements of the multinational force composed of American, French, and other Western troops that were originally sent as peacekeepers to end the fighting. How does Hezbollah's history help explain its current operations?
Relationships between these Iranian experts and Lebanese militants during Lebanon's 15-year civil war led to the formation of Hezbollah as a small underground group in 1982.
Over the next few years, Hezbollah launched a brutal campaign of terrorist attacks against American, French, and other Western interests in Lebanon. The group, then known as Islamic Jihad, first attacked the U.S. embassy in Beirut on April 18, 1983. That attack killed 52 Lebanese and U.S. embassy employees. However, at the time, US intelligence personnel and other security experts were unclear about who was responsible for the embassy attack. And given this lack of understanding and perception of Hezbollah as an emerging terrorist threat, the group aimed even higher in late 1983. Following the embassy attack, Hezbollah carried out the Marine Barracks bombing in October. in 1983, in which 241 US soldiers died. Before the 9/11 attacks, this was the largest act of international terrorism against the United States.
Hezbollah was also responsible for the kidnapping and murder of American citizens, including William Buckley, CIA station chief in Beirut. And it carried out airplane hijackings, including the infamous TWA 847 incident in 1985, in which a US Navy diver was killed.
Thus, Hezbollah has a long history of regional and global terrorism. Within Lebanon, Hezbollah is a sort of parallel government to Lebanon. The Lebanese government has allowed Hezbollah to be a state within a state, but does not collaborate in military operations. Currently, the Lebanese army does not respond to Israel's attacks on Lebanon. This shows how dominant Hezbollah has become as a force.
How damaging are Israel's attacks on Hezbollah?
It is clear that Hezbollah has suffered fighter losses, but Hezbollah is a much larger group than Hamas and operates in a much larger physical territory throughout Lebanon. It has a much larger inventory of advanced weapons than Hamas ever had and a large combat force that includes between 40,000 and 50,000 regular forces organized in a conventional military structure. It also has between 150,000 and 200,000 rockets, drones and missiles of different ranges. It operates a dangerous global terrorist unit known as the External Security Organization that has attacked Israeli and Jewish interests in the 1990s in Argentina and Jewish tourists in 2012 in Bulgaria.
The Israeli military assesses that it has destroyed at least half of Hezbollah's existing weapons arsenal, based on the volume and intensity of its operations over the past few weeks. If true, this would present a serious challenge to Hezbollah's long-term operational capacity that took decades to acquire.
What security risks does this evolving conflict present for the United States? Looking at how Hezbollah demonstrated these capabilities over a 40-year period, and based now on how Israel has battered the militant group, it would not be a stretch to speculate that Hezbollah has ordered or is considering some kind of terrorist attack far away. in the region, similar to what the group did in Argentina in 1992 and 1994. It is unclear what such a plot would look like, how many people would be involved, and the possible target of any such attack.
Hezbollah leaders have said they blame Israel for the attacks against them. About a week before Nasrallah's death, he said that Israel's explosive pager and walkie-talkie operations in Lebanon were a "declaration of war" and that "the enemy had crossed all red lines."
Since then, Hezbollah has remained defiant, despite the significant losses the group has suffered at the hands of Israel in recent weeks. Questions also remain about how Hezbollah's leadership will hold the United States accountable for Israel's actions. And if so, would that mean a return to the kind of terrorism that Hezbollah inflicted on American interests in the region in the 1980s? As recent events have demonstrated, the world faces a dangerous and volatile security environment in the Middle East. (The conversation) AMS
