Do you remember the so-called "second Lebanon war" of 2006? Back then, Israel decided to "restore order" in the border areas, where pro-Iranian Hezbollah used to dominate. But as a result, the IDF's military operation called "Sakhar Holem" (= “Just Reward”) ended with an Israeli retreat that made it back down, pressed, among others, by the UN Security Council.
Both sides’ losses turned significant: in a little over 30 days of skirmishes, several hundred people were killed and hundreds wounded. Notably, the Israeli army, which until then knew no defeats against its Arab neighbors in the wars of the 1940s and 1970s, was forced to retreat without achieving the goal of its invasion, i.e. the "cleansing" of southern Lebanon from Hezbollah formations. This was a clear sign that Israel's former undoubted military hegemony had come to an end. While in previous wars Israel literally tattered the armies of Egypt, Syria and other large neighbor states, in the early 21st century it found itself no more able to cope with the armed organization named Hezbollah.
One more thing is essential here. The 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon was a purely local affair, with the rest of the world watching it from the sidelines. But the present-day one at the border between Israel and Lebanon is a different pair of shoes, threatening to escalate into a global crisis. Many players have appeared around "with a handful of their own cards." Those feature political groups from the United States and Britain eager to play trump cards ahead of the American presidential elections; an official NATO representative office about to open in the Jordanian capital of Amman, which signals the Western military bloc’s growing interest to project power in the Middle East –- so far politically; the appearance of missiles with Yemen’s Houthis capable of hitting Israeli territory from 2,000 km away (by the way, new weapons have helped them drive US Navy ships away from their shores along with remnants of the British fleet, which is something one could never imagine before); the Arab League’s silence, which will not last forever once the "Arab street" gets engaged; and the ongoing Gaza Strip massacre as a likely second front of the Lebanese-Israeli war, and fighting two wars is a lot more costly…
And here we have a disaster-fraught catharsis. The Israeli security services, having missed the HAMAS attack on October 7, 2023 (maybe even deliberately?) have switched to the tactics of individual terror against the hostile leaders of countries and organizations. We are not pointing fingers at anyone for the plane crash death of Iranian President Raisi, let’s only note that it has been on a par with other "liquidations": the assassination of HAMAS political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran; the Israeli missile attack on the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, which killed several high-ranking Iranian military advisers who helped the Syrians; and, finally, the recent bombing of Beirut that claimed the lives of many Hezbollah executives led by Hassan Nasrallah.
Why on earth did Israel decide that beheading the enemy leadership would bring peace to Israel? It didn't work. Moreover, it is for the first time in history that Israel has found itself amid uncertainty and insecurity, and Iran havs twice demonstrated this by delivering remote strikes on October 1 and earlier in April 2024, sending a wave of drones in what is known as Operation True Promise. Well, yes, people in the East are partial to words of flowery…
A lot has been written about the latest October raid, so we are not going to reiterate the details and instead offer our dear readers several theses and arguments that, in our opinion, are vital to consider given this forward-rocketing environment. The texture will be constantly changing and refining, while the fundamental things will keep underlying the ongoing events.
So, below you find certain moments we’d like to highlight.
Above we have noticed that today’s Israel no longer wins its wars as easily as it did decades ago. And the qualitative superiority of its army over enemy ones cannot guarantee its victory anymore. Those days are over now. Besides, the Israeli army is no longer the same as it was in the 1940s or 60s, when its bosses were guys who went through World War II, including the cohort of most experienced Soviet Jewish officers who moved to Israel after its creation in 1947.
Just a reminder: the UN General Assembly session of November 29, 1947 adopted a plan for the partition of British Palestine with two states to be created — Palestine and Israel. The Jewish state itself was proclaimed later, in May 1948. This is about the UN’s "parenthood" towards Israel. But a few days ago, most participants in the UN General Assembly session defiantly left the meeting room to ignore the speech by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
And now, amid its growing conflict with Iran, Israel has become internationally isolates, which has never happened before. Its carpet bombing of the Gaza Strip, where over 40,000 (!) civilians have already been killed, as the most conservative estimates suggest, while the number of wounded is not released at all, caused a flurry of protests even in the United States, whose public had historically stood with Tel Aviv en masse. Resentment to Israeli policy has intensified and is further growing.
International support or its absence is now becoming truly vital, but Tel Aviv has already started locking horns with the UN, which implies its leadership’s major emotional stress entailing controversial decisions. There is a video featuring Netanyahu's hands shake as he reads out his address to the nation. Undermined morale may seriously damage the enemy, and this is what Iran has achieved.
On we go. The Americans allegedly asked Tel Aviv not to attack Lebanon. A month before US election, they are not quite enthusiastic about interfering in a war likely to kill their sailors and pilots. Fears of getting new coffins at the Arlington Cemetery in Washington, where all the war victims are buried, are particularly brough about by the fact that both Iran and its Houthi allies have weaponry capable of deep-sixing even aircraft carriers. Previously, no one possessed such a potential deadly to the American fleet, but now anti-ship missiles have appeared on the shores of the Middle East to help coastal countries control local waters. And this is also a brand new configuration of military capabilities of parties engaged in the Middle East conflict.
The chief of staff of Iran’s Armed Forces said his country had inflicted painful strikes on two Israeli Air Force bases and Mossad headquarters, reportedly destroying several dozen US F-35 aircraft, the most cutting-edge element of Israeli arsenals. Videos have also appeared on the Internet depicting a rocket hit a building in the capital, and the voice-over claims that is the headquarters of an Israeli special service.
Apparently, the damage was really serious, since the IDF command promptly urged citizens not to take pictures and videos or report places where Iranian missiles fall and hit. Most likely, the army loathes to publicly fix the presence of "gaping holes" in the Israeli Iron Dome air defense system. And yet, local propaganda claims that the Iranian strike was hardly "effective," causing little damage to Israel's military potential.
There is another important element in this story to play a certain role in further developments around the Arab-Israeli conflict. If anyone is sure that destruction of the Hezbollah leadership will make Israeli lives easier, he shouldn’t be. The late martyrs will be replaced by “young guns”, for whom there are no more restrictions as regards fighting Israel. Even Nasrallah preferred certain agreements since 2006 over an all-out war, but the new movement leaders will hardly have reverence for political decisions. And this marks a fundamental change in the combative mood and the abovementioned "morale". Earlier, the Israelis were sure they could reliably defeat any Arab military force, calling the failure 2006 a local fiasco, but now things have changed, and Israel seems to have spawned a fierce enemy with its own hands, a stone's throw from its border.
The 20th-century-esque war methodology has been overturned by new realities in the Middle East. And the Americans seem to have already learned this, but Netanyahu is still about to get a flash of insight. How did the COVID-19 epidemic quotation run? "Things will never be the same again." And here you are: in 1991, a mere couple of Saddam Hussein’s missiles had reached Israel without causing any harm, but on October 1, 2024, observers lost count of how many hundreds of strikes were inflicted on Israeli’s most sensitive military structure facilities.
Now, the most important question is how Israel is going to respond without enjoying unconditional support from the collective West? Or will it use the nuclear weapons it has?
Let’s put an ellipsis here…
In any case, the "moment of truth" is looming for world politics all tied up in Middle Eastern affairs. Did someone say "World War III"?
…A famous phrase from the Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears movie comes to mind in this respect: "The evening ceases to be languid…"
