Israel could soon find itself locked into a multi-front war against Hezbollah and Hamas, a scenario experts say the Israelis may need additional time to prepare for after already fighting a grueling conflict that has so far lasted 10 months.
Israel killed a top Hezbollah commander in an airstrike in Lebanon on Tuesday, which was followed hours later by a fatal strike in Iran against the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, for which Israel has not taken credit but prompted promises of revenge from Iran regardless. Former U.S. officials and defense experts who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation said that while Israel is the chief military superpower in the Middle East, it urgently needs to restock its defensive and offensive systems to be totally prepared for another war.
“Israel does not have an infinite amount of interceptors, bombs, munitions. The military feels taxed, they’re feeling strained,” Gabriel Noronha, executive director at Polaris National Security and former State Department official, told the DCNF. “When I talk to Israeli officials, there’s a desire for them to have a little bit more time before they go to war… they want more time to replenish their stockpiles. They don’t feel quite ready for it today.”
Hezbollah, operating just north of Israel in Lebanon, has far greater manpower and access to weaponry than Hamas does or any of Iran’s other terror networks. While Hamas only receives roughly $120 million from Iran and $120 million from Qatar a year, Hezbollah receives over $700 million from Iran annually and makes additional hundreds of millions of dollars from illegal activities.
Hezbollah is estimated to possess somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 operatives, including its elite Radwan fighting force. It also has access to over 150,000 rocket, missile, drone and mortar variants.
Israel is ranked as one of the world’s top military powers, having access to high-level military equipment and weapons, as well as a host of ground, aerial and sea assets, according to the Global Firepower Index. It maintains approximately 170,000 active personnel and 465,000 reserve personnel.
Hezbollah has become increasingly hostile along Israel’s northern border, prompting Israeli officials to warn in recent weeks of a dramatic and escalatory response should attacks continue. Iran and Israel directly engaged in conflict with each other in a rare confrontation in April, which required U.S. and Western defensive intervention.
It isn’t immediately clear how Hezbollah or Iran intend to respond to the strikes in Beirut and Tehran on Tuesday, although Iranian Supreme leader Ali Khamenei is reportedly ordering a strike directly inside Israel, Iranian officials told The New York Times.
“It wouldn’t be the first time Israel has fought a war on multiple fronts, so that’s not the issue. The issue is the fact that Israel has been fighting a 10-month war … so the army needs a refractory period,” David Daoud, senior fellow on Middle Eastern affairs at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the DCNF. “You need to restock weapons and you need to harden critical infrastructure.”
While war could ultimately arise, it’s possible Hamas Gaza head Yahya Sinwar and Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah will intervene to cool down temperatures and ward off a full-scale confrontation, Shoshana Bryen, senior director at the Jewish Policy Center, told the DCNF
“There are two possibilities – one is that, yes, things get hotter. The other is that Yahya Sinwar and Hassan Nasrallah want to stay alive” and will therefore avoid a serious confrontation with Israel, Bryen told the DCNF. “If they don’t [avoid confrontation], then yes, there will come a point at which Israel will be stretched. No one knows the full extent of Israel’s capabilities, and so at some point, it will want to be able to call on its allies.”
Sinwar, elected as Hamas’ Gaza head in 2017, was a key player in establishing the terror organization decades ago, The New York Times reported. Like Sinwar, Nasrallah has decades-long ties to Hezbollah, becoming the group’s head in 1992, NPR reported.
The U.S. would come to Israel’s defenses in the event of a large-scale attack or invasion, which could factor into Iran and Hezbollah’s calculus, experts told the DCNF. The combined U.S. and Israeli effort could be enough to deter Hezbollah or Iran from striking Israel too harshly, although the Biden administration’s approach to foreign policy — which has been criticized for being too appeasing of Iran — may make Tehran believe it can get away with war, Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, told the DCNF.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin reiterated Wednesday that the U.S. would be there to defend Israel should Iran attack the country in the way it did in April, according to The Times of Israel. On the Hezbollah issue, however, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman C.Q. Brown previously told reporters in June that the U.S. would have limited ability to intervene, given the environment on the ground in the region.
“The Islamic Republic does not want to get involved in a direct conflict with the United States. If there’s a direct conflict between the U.S. and the Iranian regime, it could be a regime-ending situation. And they know it,” Brodsky told the DCNF. “My concern is that the Biden administration appears crippled by fear of escalation, and if you’re constantly giving off that impression to an adversary, that makes the U.S. and its allies more vulnerable.”
U.S. officials have spent months working to lower the temperature in the Middle East, urging Israel to show restraint in going after its enemies while also maintaining a commitment to the country’s defenses. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a trip to Singapore on Wednesday that the U.S. was not warned in advance or involved in the strike against Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Reuters reported.
The focus, Blinken said, remains on achieving a ceasefire in Gaza, which the U.S. hopes would extend to the broader region.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s office and the Israeli Defense Forces did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
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