Hezbollah escalates the war in Lebanon, launches rocket attacks in Haifa

Since the Hezbollah raid on an Israeli outpost on the Lebanese border and kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, and the follow on Israeli raids into Lebanon attacking Hezbollah targets and road, bridge and air infrastructure, several events increased the prospect for a wider war in the Middle East.

Hezbollah has launched a series of missile strikes (over 100 as of 2:33 Eastern Time) against the northern Israeli border towns, and, for the first time, successfully hit the city of Haifa with Katusha rockets. The size of Hezbollah’s missile arsenal is estimated between 10,000 to 13,000 rockets. Over 90 have been wounded and 2 killed on the attacks on the northern towns, excluding the strike on Haifa. Hezbollah threatened to strike Haifa if Beirut was struck, which the Israeli Defense Forces have not yet done.

“I was at a lunch with the Israeli Ambassador to the US when he announced that a Hezbollah rocket hit Haifa – the gasp from the crowd was an audible recognition of the major escalation that the attack represents, in part because it wasn’t clear beforehand whether the rockets had sufficient range. I would draw a parallel to the 1914 Sarajevo shooting of Archduke Ferdinand, which ultimately led to World War I,” said the Counterterrorism Blog’s Andrew Cochran, in a post earlier today.

Earlier today, Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev claimed Hezbollah wants to move the two captured Israeli soldiers from Lebanon to Iran. The IDF, as part of Operation Just Reward, has struck at the Beirut-Damascus road, as well as Lebanese military airfields and the Beirut airport, very likely in an attempt to prevent the transfer of the captured soldiers to a location outside of Lebanon. Due to the intensity of the fighting, the United States government is working out contingency plans to evacuate U.S. citizens from Lebanon. and the U.S. Navy had a ship that was docked in Haifa put to sea just prior to the Haifa rocket attacks.

Israel is left with no other option than to destroy Hezbollah and remove their presence from the Lebanon frontier. Hezbollah has no intention of keeping the peace on the border, and the Lebanese government is far too weak to handle Hezbollah and secure the south on its own. The Israeli government has indicated Operation Just Reward should be viewed in the time frame of months, not days, indicating the IDF plans to pursue Hezbollah. The operations are already being described as the most intense in Israel’s history of fighting in Lebanon.

Iran and Syria may very well enter this conflict. Hezbollah is the proxy of the Iranian and Syrian governments. The destruction of Hezbollah will be a massive loss of face for Iran and Syria, who have invested enormous amounts of time and resources to secure Hezbollah’s position in Lebanon, as well as the international terror network.

Terror attacks against world wide U.S. and Israeli interests may very well take place if Israel presses the hunt for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran would very likely push Iraqi Shiite Moqtada al-Sadr to destabilize the situation in Iraq, for starters.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

Tags: hezbollah, Israel, lebanon