We’re approaching the one-year mark of Israel’s full-scale war against Hamas. The prolonged violence in the Gaza Strip has reached countless headlines as the IDF’s campaign to eradicate the embedded terrorists drags on. Far less attention has gone to the threat on Israel’s Northern border — Hezbollah, likely the most formidable terrorist organization on the planet, and the defacto ruling power in Lebanon’s mountainous South. While the brutal October 7th attacks and their tremendously controversial retaliation have devastated Israelis and Palestinians respectively, the steadily deteriorating situation with Hezbollah could spiral into a disaster far worse than the violence of the past year. With such high stakes, the lack of focus on Lebanon feels bizarre, despite endless reasons to discuss Gaza. Accordingly, I want to unpack why de-escalating is the only viable way to address this problem.
Let’s start with a summary of where Israel and Hezbollah stand today. Just one day after Hamas initiated the war on Israel’s Southern front, Hezbollah opened a second front from the Lebanese border. Thankfully, the resulting exchanges of sporadic bombardments have not matched the intensity of the fighting in Gaza, but over the months these clashes have grown in both duration and frequency. In recent months, they’ve included assassinations of several high-ranking Hezbollah leaders, as well as the remote detonation of thousands of pagers and radios used by their subordinates. This next point is difficult to give appropriate emphasis: if the two sides continue building toward war, a disastrous outcome is certain.
Both parties understand that the consequences of all-out war would be mutually atrocious. This assessment is far from mere speculation: Israel already went to war against Hezbollah in 2006 and failed to remove them from power. In the years following this victory, Hezbollah has become even more formidable. They’ve gotten so powerful that it’s almost counterproductive to think of them as just a terrorist organization. While the group is indeed defined by its brazen embrace of terrorism, Hezbollah is stronger and more organized than many proper governments. This is perhaps best demonstrated by debunking the assumption that a potential war in Lebanon would play out to the ongoing war in Gaza.
In contrast to Hezbollah, little differentiates Hamas from other organizations that entered headlines since the Global War On Terror began: the ranks of Hamas are filled by AK-wielding jihadists whose training barely teaches more than aimlessly spraying bullets in the vague direction of their target; their most advanced equipment consists of improvised short-range rockets and pickup trucks with mounted machine guns; their limited success killing enemy soldiers relies heavily on hidden explosives and suicide bombings. This paints a picture that could not be further from the militants to Israel’s North. Courtesy of Iran’s hosting and management, Hezbollah’s fighters enjoy professional training in government facilities. Additionally, years of combat within Syria have given them firsthand experience in battle. Not only has Hezbollah gained more knowledge and skill for effective fighting than any other nonstate actor, but they’re also more well equipped — they operate tanks, air defense systems, drones, anti-tank missiles, cruise missiles, and some of the largest Iranian ballistic missiles ever built.
The staggering scale of Hezbollah’s capabilities is no less alarming than their sophistication. For reference, when Hamas started the war last Fall, it possessed roughly 20,000 rockets and mortars. A stockpile of this size was sufficient to overwhelm Iron Dome and Israel’s other air defense systems on October 7th, and I’d like to highlight that the vast majority of these munitions are less potent than those in Hezbollah’s inventory. Hezbollah’s arsenal boasts a minimum of 130,000 rockets and missiles, all within range of Tel Aviv, where the population density is even higher than Gaza’s. Almost unbelievably, that figure is the most conservative and optimistic estimate available — the official number claimed by Iran is a full one million.
As though these are not already enough reasons to recognize the notion of war with Hezbollah as a horrendous idea, Hezbollah is positioned to sustain a prolonged war on a scale surpassing any other insurgency. They already have 45,000 troops, making them 50% larger than Hamas. However, such a war could serve as a rallying call for foreign jihadists across the Middle East, similar to how the failed Soviet occupation of Afghanistan drew in countless fighters from other countries. Precedent for this concern arose in a June NBC article, which reported an interest in supporting Hezbollah from militants in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Iran. Along with this immense source of manpower, the nature of Lebanon’s borders would enable Iran to endlessly deliver fresh supplies. Finally, Hezbollah benefits from substantial terrain advantages. They’ve prepared a complex of tunnels stretching hundreds of miles farther than those beneath the Gaza Strip, and base themselves in deep mountain ranges, which are widely considered the most difficult terrain for invading militaries to operate in.
Several factors could make avoiding war with Hezbollah extraordinarily challenging, but if Israel gets pulled in, expect a nightmare to ensue. This would not be a fight where one side is so outmatched that they beg for a ceasefire after a few days — it would be a war that historians compare to Vietnam, both regarding the brutality of the fighting and the hopelessness of success.
This brings us to why the prospect of war is no less chilling for Hezbollah. The first and most obvious reason is that this would be suicidal for many within the organization — quite literally, only aspiring martyrs would willingly fight the IDF. Israel’s military is one of the most experienced and well equipped in history: their air force is one of the most effective to ever see combat, and would face zero competition for Lebanon’s airspace; their intelligence agencies are virtually unmatched in sophistication and organization, which is crucial for identifying targets and quickly putting them on the receiving end of an artillery shell, guided bomb, or drone-strike.
Further, the Israelis would be free from the most prominent obstacle of their current military campaign: international scrutiny. This has already been demonstrated by the IDF’s current tactics against Hezbollah, such as their discretion with White Phosphorus. In 2009, the incendiary substance was deemed too controversial for continued use in Gaza. However, Human Rights Watch found that the IDF continues to use White Phosphorus in populated areas on their Northern frontline.
This is because inherent conditions of a war with Hezbollah would greatly reduce pressure for Israel to show restraint: while Palestine’s history conduces a narrative of oppression and anti-colonial resistance, this framing could not apply to Lebanon — no protesters will ever lament the denial of Lebanese statehood or the displacement of Lebanese families. Additionally, Hezbollah would struggle to recreate Hamas’ leveraging of civilian casualties for sympathy because, fortunately, local residents would have far less trouble evacuating than those in Gaza. Consequently, the international community would be far less reluctant to support an Israeli war effort.
This leads to the second reason why war is unappealing for Hezbollah: Israel is a close ally of the world’s most powerful governments. Despite shifts in support from populations across the West, the US, France, and the UK all dedicated aircraft and warships to protect Israel from Iranian missiles last April. These alliances have been reinforced by a decades-long history of mutual arms sales, such as the import of cutting-edge American fighter jets or the export of Israeli Trophy systems, which are used on European tanks to shoot down incoming projectiles. Our ties to Israel are largely built on a reality with no sign of changing in the years to come: we share their enemies. Iran, Syria, and jihadist organizations are not known for friendly views toward Western countries. Because of these relationships, it’s effectively guaranteed that the West would step in to some degree if Israel’s adversaries seemed on the verge of reshaping the Middle East’s power dynamics. By extension, as dangerous as they are, Hezbollah’s proclaimed dream to wipe Israel off the map is impossible — the closest outcome that they could get from a full-scale war is simply surviving (after maximizing their enemy’s suffering).
To summarize Hezbollah’s perspective, they would need to fight a nation with some of the world’s most advanced weaponry, refined tactics, and motivated populations, while that nation enjoys unflinching support from the strongest possible allies. In effect, there is little to gain other than short-term destruction.
Can this war be avoided?
Many experts predict that this war is inevitable, despite not being in the interests of either party. I don’t know whether they’re right, but I hope not. Among waves of headlines about atrocities and instability worsening in the Middle East, I’ve picked up on a faint but persistent reason for optimism. Even when diplomacy fails, neither side has demonstrated a desire for full-scale war. The events of July showed a mutual preference to keep the situation broadly contained: Hezbollah killed 12 children with a rocket launched at the Golan Heights, but refrained from further increasing the death toll with additional hits; Israel subsequently assassinated the Senior Commander responsible (Fuad Shukr) with a bold airstrike in the capital city of Beirut, but held back from bombing other targets. Either of these attacks could have been pointed to as precedent for greater escalation, but they weren’t.
De-escalating will be far easier said than done. Israel’s government has been taken over by the most hawkish coalition in the country’s history. Hezbollah’s rocket attacks have prompted the evacuation of an estimated 80,000 Israelis, who’ve now spent nearly a year in hotels (paid for with taxes). The Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies will spin any concessions from Tel Aviv as a victory. In spite of these challenges, de-escalation is an absolute necessity. It wouldn’t be the first miraculous prevention of war. The US and USSR avoided a nuclear exchange for half a century. The ceasefire on the Korean Peninsula has held for 70 years. Sometimes, cooler heads prevail. Let’s hope that both parties will be rational enough to hold back from killing more of their neighbors.
Alex Lee ‘25 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at alex.b.lee@wustl.edu.