Seth Frantzman tweeted the following
Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem has said that Israel “attacked the heart of Beirut to assassinate the Resistance group’s media chief, Mohammad Afif, and now must await a counter-response in the heart of Tel Aviv.” This is interesting, because Hezbollah already targeted Tel Aviv in the wake of the killing of Afif.
The statement is a reminder of how Hezbollah ran this war prior to Israel’s Operation Northern Arrows; Hezbollah would always say there was an equation. Basically “if Israel does X then we do Y.” One would have thought this changed with Israel’s operation, because Israel expanded the attacks so much.
One way to read Qassem’s comments is that Hezbollah is still operating within the “equation” of a managed conflict. This means Hezbollah does not see itself as on the ropes. In Israel reports say that Hezbollah has lost 80 percent of its arsenal and thousands of fighters.
If Hezbollah does not think it is on the ropes and that it can still “manage” this conflict, meaning it is keeping a decent amount of its powder dry for future rounds; then this should affect our understanding of Hezbollah’s current position and calculations.
It appears likely Hezbollah is prepared to hold out for a while and await a ceasefire that is brokered by Amal leader Berri and Lebanon. Hezbollah will make sure it’s not held accountable in the ceasefire document and it will create a convoluted process within that agreement so it can return to the border with Israel.
Hezbollah is playing for time and it is indicating that it still intends to manage this conflict with war. What that means is that it never transitioned to a total war footing. Iran didn’t want to sacrifice Hezbollah and therefire has tried to cut its losses and husband its resources.
It’s clear that Hezbollah hasn’t retreated much in southern Lebanon. It is still firing rockets from as close as 6 miles (10km) from the border with Israel. This is Battle of the Somme level of advances, meaning not that much (although .5% of the casualties)
Of course the terrorist organization whose name I couldn’t remember a few minutes ago is ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.). Their terrorist attacks on Syrian, Iraqi American and Russian targets have continued even after they lost control of the territory they briefly controlled in Iraq and Syria.
Excellent report by Seth Fanzman, However, I don’t think he understands that terrorist organization never disband or suspend their operations as long as the enemy they seek to destroy still exists. For example, the IRA failed to achieve its “maximum’ goal of a united Ireland under Irish Catholic rule. For the next 45 years they mainly kept a low profile, only occasionally conducting “operations,” Many thought they had ceased to be a significant factor in Irish affairs. But the outbreak of renewed tensions and violence between the Catholic and Proestant communities in Northern Ireland, the IRA quickly relocated their members to the North, recuited widely in the Catholic community in Northern Ireland, collected money from them and Irish-American sympathizers to purchase weapons. Their membership and power quickly rose to levels not seen in a hundred years.
One can see the same pattern in the activities of Al-Quaeda and its even more militant offshoot, (whose name escapes me because of my fading memory–please remind me-someone). In any event, both of these organizations and several other “militant” anti-American and anti-Irael organization have continued their terrorist organizations have continues, even though they have lost control of the territories they once controlled.
All this leads me to believe that Hezbollah wikll continue to exist and will continue its terroist oparations against Israel even if it loses control of every inch of Lebanese territory.