The IDF attacks against Hezbollah have so far been met with hesitant responses, considering the terrorist group’s bellicose statements throughout the war, according to which if Israel dared to strike Lebanon, it would suffer seven-fold attacks. Hezbollah’s general silence has so far been broken only by an embarrassing speech that was delivered by Hassan Nasrallah’s interim successor Naim Qassem, who looked fatigued and couldn’t stop wiping the sweat from his brow, probably because the air conditioning was out in his bunker.
צפו ב-סרטון מיוחד מתוך הנאום של ׳נעים קאסם׳
דייי נעים! זה לא נעים לנו בבקשה אל תבכה?מצורף פסקול נחמד תגבירו סאונד. pic.twitter.com/RobZPvryrn
— מה חדש. What’s new❓ (@Gloz111) September 30, 2024
A little over a year ago, as the IDF was preparing for the possibility of a security escalation in Lebanon, the scenarios anticipated thousands of missiles and rockets that would be launched at Israel every day, damaging significant components of its infrastructure. According to one such scenario, Hezbollah was capable of firing 6,000 rockets in a few days.
I recall a recent clash between two senior officials of the electric company over how many days Israelis would spend in the dark during a war with Hezbollah. Both were certain the country would be without electricity, but the one who predicted two weeks was chided by his colleague who said only three days.
Lebanon is Israel’s PTSD. So many IDF soldiers lost their lives there since 1982, in two wars, one lasting 18 years, the other only 34 days, but both yielding no long-term relief for the residents of upper Galilee. This is why even as I’m writing this report about Hezbollah effectively out of the picture, I’m tempted to add stuff like, “God willing.”
And lo and behold, over the past two weeks, Israel has crossed all the red lines, as Hezbollah and its Iranian puppet masters have declared, long before the elimination of Nasrallah, and according to the IDF scenarios, Hezbollah should have responded ferociously, putting Israel in its place, so to speak.
Instead, it’s been the South Lebanon equivalence of crickets. They began with about 30 rockets a day, and that has dwindled to 15 and then 10, with two long-range cruise missiles that were downed by the IDF, and long stretches of quiet.
There’s a theory, which has been advanced by at least one Hezbollah cleric who spoke to Al Arabiya, that Hezbollah is sitting on a menacing stock of accurate, long-range missiles – which it doesn’t own. They belong to Iran, and Iran is refusing to give its permission to use them.
It appears that those two IAF fierce attacks on the Houthis in Yemen – 1800 kilometers from Israel, made an impression in Tehran – 1300 kilometers from Israel. The IAF doesn’t need to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, most of which are protected under thick bedrock; all it has to do is bomb Iran’s oil fields to bring the Islamic State to its knees. Just to make this point, one of the targets chosen for the attack in Yemen was a major refinery, with an enormous fiery mushroom filling up the sky as a result.
Iran is declaring left and right and every day how, someday, Israel will be punished for its “crimes.” But for the time being, Tehran is letting Hezbollah bleed.
That’s what Hezbollah is doing these days: sweating and bleeding.
