John Mearsheimer Is Not Too Happy About Israel’s Shock and Awe Campaign Against Hezbollah

October 1, 2024 admin Finance 0

All tricks and no trick sound before defeat
-Sun Tsu

Israel is now in the process of increasing its escalating measures against Hezbollah in hopes among other things of ending Hezbollah’s shelling of northern Israel, which, depending on who is responsible, has left between 60,000 and 100,000 settlers. The latest is Israel’s announcement, widely reported in the Western and Middle Eastern press, that it is carrying out a limited operation on the ground in southern Lebanon. Needless to say, an attack is an attack. Remember that Hezbollah launched its campaign in this area on October 8 in collaboration with Hamas and said it would end the strikes if Israel entered into a cease-fire agreement with Hamas.

Not only is this an extremely volatile situation, as Lambert likes to say, but analysts are also baffled by the skewed coverage and suppression of war-related events in much of Israel. For example, many analysts who see themselves as anti-globalist and therefore anti-Israel still view the pager blast as a scramble for Hezbollah’s military communications. Alastair Crooke, who regularly visits Hezbollah facilities (including rocket/missile silos) continues to insist that Hezbollah’s military access to its fiber optic network was in or even before 2006 and that it had controls that would see anywhere to enter. Pagers were used by members of the civilian army and were not used as military ones. He believes they remain safe even after the successful assassination of Nasrallah. He argued in an interview with Judge Napolitano that the attack was the result of a violation of the law (he saw that Netanyahu approved in the US the opportunity from the new intel) and emphasized that it is difficult to get adults to do things. such as never using cell phones (Note that members of the Iranian Republican Guard were also killed in the same meeting; the violation may have come from the Iranian side).

So depending on the increase of Israel’s victory in the Western press, yes, Hezbollah has lost a lot of its top leadership and it has been shown that it has also suffered from security breaches, which may mean at least that the internal discipline was not equal. . However, its network is allegedly complete and secure (whether it was used only as it should have been used is another matter) and Hezbollah is reported to have replaced all the leaders killed (Almost all those killed were more than 60, so having more pressure). , young men taking on senior roles may not be negative and may be better if they adapt quickly). However, the extent to which Israel was able to identify where key people were at the time is very worrying and Hezbollah needs to quickly understand how that happened to prevent its recurrence.

There is also a widespread, implicit assumption that the beheading of almost all of Hezbollah’s leadership would disrupt their effectiveness. So far, that doesn’t seem to have happened:

Note, that does not mean that Hezbollah will escalate quickly, say by extending the bulk of its strikes into Israel. The increase after the pager attack, estimated at 50 km, is reported to have increased the number of people bombed to two million. That does not mean that Hezbollah is targeting civilians, but that even with an attack on military equipment, civilians are likely to be in that area, and air defenses and intercepted rockets and missiles fall where they fall. The result of the increased firing range, however, is that more civilians will have to go into safe rooms or shelters when Hezbollah attacks. That won’t be good for the senses or the economy.

However, getting Hezbollah out of the border area is only one of Israel’s goals. Another is to make the US more deeply committed, ideally by sending more air support and troops (shame on that oil spill; I wonder how much of a deterrent it will be). The best scenario would be to get Iran to do something that could be presented as enough of an attack on Israel that the US would go after Iran fully.

Indeed, there has been much criticism in the Arab world that Iran has not stepped up to do something. One reason for not doing that directly and instead of supporting the allies is that more, a direct attack on Israel is exactly what Israel wants. The second is that the newly elected president Masoud Pezeshkian was challenged and led (as he is) by the West to believe that if he played well, Iran would get relief from sanctions. Pezeshkian is now making Putin-esque noises about how he was indeed duped and admitting he made a mistake.

But it is not clear that Iran would have had the freedom so far to come to grips with the killing of Hamas political leader and negotiator Ismail Haniyeh and the absence of Pezeshkian who had argued for holding the fire. In the second part of this Danny Haiphong show, he talks to Professor Mohammed Mirandi (who was also 1000 meters away from the big explosion that killed Nasrallah). Miranda points out that as long as the talks for a ceasefire, Iran was considered to make any kind of serious response. Even if everyone in the Resistance with a working brain cell knows that the talks are a big sham, Iran would not want to be in a position to be portrayed by the US and Israel as destroying a possible solution to the Gaza conflict.

Additional goods seem to be entering the area, even if the numbers are not large:

Before anyone argues that this brief overview does not give Israel credit for its great success, it is worth remembering that shock and surprise campaigns do not have a good history. Indeed, the start of both the 1982 and 2006 Israeli invasions of Lebanon were violent at first as major blows, where in the end, Israel lost both wars.

And if you want a more jaundiced view, John Mearsheimer had a conversation the other day with a reporter from the Spectator, who apparently expected Mearsheimer to confirm the reporter’s reading of Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah. Mearsheimer displays an impressive sang froid in quietly placating the Spectator’s speculation. This is such a good dialogue that I don’t want to spoil it by pointing out Mearsheimer’s key points. Undoubtedly his main point is that it does not look at all like Hezbollah has been defeated, and if that is true, Israel is facing a very long slog when it is not at all ready to fight a protracted war.

This discussion may also be useful to distribute to friends and colleagues who may be open to more honest analysis that contradicts Israel’s media cheerleading.




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