Hezbollah vs. Israel: Why a New War is on the Horizon – Analysis

By Robert Inlakesh

Hezbollah fighters along the border. (Photo: video grab)

The Axis of Resistance as a whole has dramatically changed its tone and has understood what kind of war they are now facing.

Over the past week, an increase in US and Israeli reconnaissance aircraft has been noted over Lebanese territory. While Washington-based think tanks, the Western corporate media, in addition to Israeli and US politicians, claim that Hezbollah was defeated late last year, all indications point to the opposite.

Israel’s pager attacks, followed by the assassination of Hezbollah’s senior leadership back in September, dealt a major blow to the Lebanese group. In addition to this, security sources familiar with the matter informed the Palestine Chronicle that between 15-20 percent of the movement’s weapons were destroyed during the war that ensued.

What happened to Hezbollah late last year would have been thought to be impossible just months prior to it all unfolding. The organization’s middle command took major hits, it was clearly infiltrated in a major way by Mossad collaborators and agents. At the same time, the leaders of its Radwan special forces unit were also murdered.

Despite the major blows that were inflicted on Lebanese Hezbollah, perhaps the harshest being the assassination of its Secretary General, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, the organization still managed to fight back through October and November, defeating the Israeli military’s attempted ground invasion of south Lebanon.

In reaction to what happened, two polar opposite views emerged of what Hezbollah is today: Some claim that the organization is finished, while others allege that it is stronger now than ever.

I would argue that both views are incorrect, and in order to make sense of Hezbollah’s predicament today, we have to look at where they went wrong.

Speaking on a recent panel for the pro-Israeli think tank known as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), former Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Herzog, offered a stunning series of admissions.

Not only did he admit that the recent Israeli attack on Iran was planned back in November of 2024, when he was still in office, but that the reason why Israel managed to inflict so many blows on the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance was due to it fundamentally misreading Tel Aviv’s intentions.

Herzog stated that both Hezbollah and Iran “misread Israel totally”, adding that “they failed to understand that post October 7, Israel is a totally different country”. This view was one that I have been writing about since late 2023 and had been the subject of many of my op-eds on the topic.

Building on what the former Israeli ambassador said, it appeared that the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, fundamentally changed the face of what we call Israel. That day, Israel ceased to be a nation and instead embarked on a dangerous mission to redefine itself and expand its borders, while answering the Palestinian question through genocide and ethnic cleansing.

On that day, the decision was taken to follow through with the decades-long mission to reshape the region by pursuing regime change in the rest of the nations that opposed it in any way.

Perhaps the single biggest mistake that was made in the calculations of Hezbollah was to assume that their pressure operations along the Lebanese border with northern occupied Palestine could continue without a full-scale war at some stage.

When the head of Hezbollah’s military wing, Fouad Shukr, was assassinated in southern Beirut, and only hours later Hamas leader Ismail Hanniyeh was killed in Tehran, the response to this likely led to Israel’s decision to escalate in the way it did.

Although Hezbollah did conduct a calculated and small-scale response to the assassination, it failed to deliver any kind of devastating blow. Iran, on the other hand, held its fire until the assassination of Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, which triggered Operation True Promise 2.

Israel is treating the current war as regional and is pursuing regime change in Iran. Yet, the Axis of Resistance held the belief, until the offensive against Lebanon, that the war could be brought to a close without expanding it.

That miscalculation led to a range of tactical defeats, with the cherry on top being the fall of the Syrian government, thus bringing to power a puppet regime that has cracked down on all resistance to Israel.

What Comes Next?

Despite all of this, the Axis of Resistance as a whole has dramatically changed its tone and has understood what kind of war they are now facing. This has transformed the thinking and decision-making process for all those fighting Israel, especially Hezbollah.

Hezbollah did take hits, but still retained a vast arsenal with which it can fight Israel in the event of any new battle. It also possesses a ground force that numbers over 100,000 fighters. Although it did lose part of its precision missile arsenal, which is now difficult to replace due to the pro-US leadership in neighbouring Syria, realistically, these missiles are no longer as important as they once were.

Weapons, even by the admission of Israeli think tank analysts, are still managing to find their way over the Syria-Lebanon border. Yet, the more sophisticated munitions aren’t in large supply due to the evident restrictions. Although Syria’s new leadership in Damascus is indeed cracking down on the weapons smuggling, the Syrian State has disintegrated and the country is essentially a collection of gangsters, tribal forces and militias, none of which have total power in any area beyond stronger power bases for the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group in the major city centers.

The reason why the more sophisticated missile technology is no longer as integral to Hezbollah’s military strategy is that the war has fundamentally transformed. Before September of 2024, the group sought to achieve “deterrence” against Israel; thus, its arsenal of ballistic missiles was very important. Now, rockets and drones are the most important weapons, while its ground forces are its bread and butter.

Another major development with Hezbollah is the way in which it has continued to energise its popular base of support. We saw this most prominently at the funeral of Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Saffiedeen, when millions poured into the streets.

At the municipal elections, Hezbollah managed to inspire its base to vote and won in a landslide. Whereas it has been routinely holding local protests, large public funerals, and social events that draw in huge crowds. For some time, the Lebanese Party had neglected these kinds of actions on the streets, but in the advent of the war has been investing in building public support.

There are undoubtedly still collaborators and spies that Hezbollah has yet to deal with, but the Israelis did blow many of their intelligence cards with their assault on Lebanon late last year. These kinds of spy networks and the pager attack aren’t the product of a few months of work for agencies like the Mossad; these are projects that are decades in the making.

Hezbollah absorbed the blows and is now clearly rebuilding its power, waiting for the correct moment to strike. While Israeli and US politicians brag about defeating the Party, if they truly believe their own propaganda, they are likely to experience shock at the intensity with which the Lebanese group will fight in the next war. Similarly, Iran did not hold back this time and launched shocking strikes that exceeded anything that analysts anticipated.

The organization’s new Secretary General, Sheikh Naim Qassem, has adopted the slogan of “victory or martyrdom”, which is what the Palestinian resistance in Gaza holds up as their guide in the ongoing war. Although a shift in rhetoric does not mean everything, it is certainly notable that Hezbollah no longer views Israel as an opponent to be deterred, but as an entity that has to be totally defeated.

Israel likely understands this all well. In Iran’s missile and drone strikes earlier this month, they announced the targeting of various Israeli radar and monitoring positions in the north, likely impacting their ability to collect information and monitor incoming threats from Lebanese territory.

It is possible that the Israelis will seek to get ahead of any upcoming plans by Hezbollah to attack, which is why we could soon see a new offensive against Lebanon, which could occur through Syrian territory and into the Bekaa Valley if it does happen.

(The Palestine Chronicle)

– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.