In the media battle Hizbullah is waging against Israel, the Shiite movement recently broadcast a video about a mega-tunnel called Imad 4 in which heavy trucks could be seen speeding on a long underground road towing ballistic missiles and then erecting launch positions.
The message to Israel was clear: “Do not be tempted to attack us or preempt our weapons and positions. We are so well protected that your air force would not even scratch our forces, whereas we would hit Israeli territory with our precision-guided missiles that will cause destruction and havoc. We can strike every single square meter inside Israel.”
This message could be interpreted as a Hizbullah signal to Israel that it has no intentions to widen the confrontation and transform it into a regional war. Hassan Nasrallah stated in his last speech that his organization would pursue the limited war of attrition it has been conducting against Israel since October 8, 2023, expanding it to areas left untouched in the past ten months, such as Akko, Nahariya, Safed, Tiberias, and other localities in the north of Israel that were not evacuated until now.
Nasrallah added that Hizbullah would respond to the killing of Hizbullah military commander Fouad Shukr in a highly sensitive facility without provoking an Israeli retaliation that would trigger a full-fledged confrontation between the two.
Hizbullah has accompanied the tunnel video with a recording of one of his agents in the south who sent a mocking message warning Israelis that Hizbullah fighters might pop from attack tunnels dug under Israeli territory.
Since the beginning of the war, Iranian-backed Hizbullah has been boasting about its successes left unchallenged by Israel: Nasrallah mentioned with pride the incursion of a spy drone called hudud (the hoopoe), which took pictures of sensitive targets in the northern part of Israel on several occasions. Nasrallah also mentioned the fact that because of his military confrontation with Israel, more than 240,000 citizens (where did he get this number?) had to evacuate their homes on the border with Lebanon, an event never equaled since the war of 1948. Nasrallah boasted that he had imposed on Israel a security zone inside Israel just like the one that used to exist inside Lebanon. He also hinted that an eventual repeat of the October 7 attack waged by Hamas might be an option to be carried out by the elite Radwan forces on this northern front. Finally, the Hizbullah secretary-general promised more surprises to come on the battlefield in equipment and weaponry if Israel insisted on widening the scope of the confrontation.
There is no doubt that these themes mentioned by Nasrallah are part of the psychological warfare conducted against Israel and are meant to instill doubt in the minds of Israelis about the capability of the IDF to defend Israel and defeat its enemies.
The Reality Facing Nasrallah
The reality is very different: almost 600 Hizbullah combatants, including senior commanders, have been killed in action and thousands wounded;
Hizbullah has seen the destruction of nearly 8,000 houses in the south of Lebanon and the flight of 120,000 civilians to Tyre, Sidon, and Beirut. Claiming that Hizbullah has forced the creation of a security zone in Israel is ignoring the fact that a similar security zone has been created in South Lebanon.
The Lebanese government has voted for a compensation of 97 billion Lebanese pounds, the equivalent of one million dollars, to be distributed among all the evacuees!
Hizbullah war strategy, called the “strategy of support for Hamas,” has not stopped Israel from invading Gaza, controlling the Philadelphi axis and the Netsarim axis, destroying Hamas’s infrastructure, and eliminating most of its chiefs and leaders.
Israel has proven beyond any doubt its intelligence superiority and its ability to eliminate most of the field commanders of Hizbullah. Nasrallah himself admitted that Fouad Shukr’s elimination was a hard blow to his organization.
Hizbullah has tried to change the rules of engagement, but it was Israel that changed those rules by targeting Hizbullah’s commanders and installations deep inside Lebanon by flying unhindered over Lebanon’s airspace.
Thousands of rockets have been fired at Israel, as well as hundreds of drones. Judging by the results, these attacks have not changed or influenced the decision-makers in Israel.
Hizbullah understands that Israel has not yet used its full force against the organization, and in such an event, Lebanon as a state will suffer devastation.
It is evident that in Lebanon’s present layout of forces, the possibility of reaching a deal with Hizbullah is very slim. According to Nasrallah, accepting the conditions of the ceasefire set by Hamas will automatically stop Hizbullah’s shelling of Israel. In other words, accepting the defeat facing Hamas will stop the shelling, but it will not prevent a war with Hizbullah, nor will Hizbullah withdraw its forces north of the Litani River. This suggests that a major military confrontation with Hizbullah may be the only way to reinstate Israeli deterrence and allow the 80,000 Israelis currently refugees in Israel to return securely to their homes as stipulated in the UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of 2006.
