Lawfare Archive: Exploding Pagers and Air Strikes

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The deal seeks to weaken Iran and has blood's influence on Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to station troops and attack targets in Lebanon in response to Hezbollah's presence in the country, which observers fear could threaten the stability of the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran. For today's Archive, I choose an episode from September 24th, 2024, in which Benjamin Wittis, Scott R. Anderson, and Daniel Byman, discussed Israel's Eskulatory Actions in Lebanon that year, with a focus on Israel's exploding paper attack on Hezbollah figures deep in Lebanon. They considered the goals and capabilities of both parties, as well as concerns that the escalation could lead to larger conflict in the region.

"I'm Benjamin Wittis, and this is the Lawfare podcast with Lawfare Farm Policy Editor Dan Byman, and Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson." It was intending to put pressure on Israel, and more than anything threatened the potential to open up another front, as a way to deter them.

“Presumably, I think, in court nature and Iran, it was kind of an interesting relationship with both parties.”

And the United States, again, then comes in as a counterbalance to that. Today, we're talking Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Israel, exploding pages, missile strikes, and whether war is now inevitable. Dan, let's start with just an overview of the current situation. We are recording on Monday afternoon when there are a serious and sustained set of Israeli air strikes going on in southern Lebanon. Last week, we had exploding pages in Wachie talk is, as Donald Trump might say, "What's going on here?" So, this seems to be a significant escalation by Israel, designed more to weaken his balla than with Israel's traditional focus on deterring it.

So, Israel has killed senior his balla leaders. It has done repeated and massive strikes on his balla military positions. And, of course, it did this extensive operation against his balla pages and Wachie talkies and radios that really went after a lot of rank and file fighters. So, it's hitting his balla in very different multiple ways that is debilitating both the leadership and the rank and file. And, in the past, I, at least, would have said, many of these things are red lines. We see significant his balla escalations and response.

“But, I believe Israel's calculation is that by hitting his balla so hard from so many different angles, repeatedly, his balla is in a position where, even if it wants to do a massive escalation, doing so, it would effectively lose.”

And so, Israel is trying to stop his balla or at least weaken it gravely, believing that by hitting it hard, there actually won't be a major escalation. But, to me, at least, that's a very serious risk. The escalation appeared to start last week, but it's actually been going on for a while in that they, you know, hit quite senior has balla leadership. It's kind of escalation in a trickle. How would you describe when this period of escalation has started relative to the baseline of exchange of missiles and targeting across the international border on October 7th of last year?

And this is a sort of thing where in pass backs of forth, Israel has done significant strike size balla, but it has avoided usually going after the most senior leaders.

Again, this is a recent history. We want to go back farther, Israel has killed the most senior leaders of his balla. And so, I would date this to August, but at the time, I at least thought it was more spike in what had been a low level, it sustained back and forth, rather than the beginning of a new era. But looking back, I would say, we see this attack in August and we see this, you know, significant increase across the board in multiple ways in September.

“But this back and forth is, I think, all the listeners know, has been, has had ups and downs in the months since October 7th, but I think this is by far the most active period.”

And how should we understand, has balla's posture through this? They've always maintained a, you know, a kind of calibrated response to October.

They want to make it impossible to live in the north of Israel, but they haven't wanted a full scale war with Israel, which they don't think they can win. Other hand, they have been, you know, pretty relentless about not stopping. How should we understand their position here? So, his balla has since that to Persevenths been trying in its own view to show solidarity with Hamas.

“It's very hard to have a sustained massive operation against Israel, especially one that also involves a lot of dead Palestinian children with his balla sitting on the sidelines.”

But at the same time, it has tried in its own way to put limit time. So, we haven't seen massive barages deep into Israel. We haven't seen international terrorism against Israel. When in April, when Iran and Israel were having a back and forth, his balla largely stayed out of that back and forth, despite its exceptionally close relationship with Iran. So, it's been calibrating things in part because it might lose him military sense, but also Lebanon is a disaster area even putting aside the conflict of Israel. It has had this massive economic crisis since at least 2019, its currency has depreciated tremendously.

The government is basically not existent. And so, with the country spinning out of control, the lasting ordinary Lebanese want is a massive conflict with Israel, a limit conflict is bad enough.

So, his balla has been trying to find that line between showing solidarity with Israel being part of the great struggle of the day, yet not having things spill over against the group massively or into Lebanon, but this may be changing. The last few weeks show that that really hasn't been sustainable. What I would say is when I was in Israel and I was along the north, I was talking to Israeli military officials and asking, "Hey, how much can I travel around without having to worry?" And they said, "Oh, don't worry if you're in a civilian car. It's not going to be a problem."

Right? His balla is very much trying to target military targets. That is a logical area for them to change. As you said, to kind of go much more aggressively after a wider range of targets and less discriminate way along the north, but that discrimination that we're showing to be very much reflected their goal was they were trying to avoid things that might justify a broader conflict. And when they did have that tragic strike that killed all those Jews, children, I think it was accepted, I think, even by the most militant Israelis, that wasn't his balla's goal. They weren't saying, "Hey, let's kill a bunch of Jews, children, that they were trying to do a military strike."

But this happens, of course, when you're shooting rockets back and forth, you're going to miss. And if you shoot enough of them, you're going to miss a lot.

“And so the potential for escalation was always there, but I think the big shift is more on these really political side, where there's less and less toleration of a sense of risk when it comes to his balla.”

And there seems to be fairly broad support, at least, now the thing from it is really a point of using to be going reasonably well for what the government is doing. So what do we know about operation, beep, beep, beep, boom?

There's a lot of discussion about whether that's somehow they had penetrated the existing supply chain that was feeding his balla, these beepers and walkie talkies, which were also detonated in a similar operation the next day. Now the latest reporting I've read, although feel free to update me if I've missed something where we saw them, that suggests that no, in fact, these were kind of manufactured items that were then passed through an intermediate area and sold to his balla. So not quite the same as a manufacturing supply chain vulnerability capitalized opponents that are kind of simulating the supply chain and the original source of these things.

“The most interesting report on this came from Axios that I read about the logic behind the operation, which started months ago, has been in place for months.”

What Axios said is that this was an effort to essentially attach a potential kind of kill switch to the Hasballa Communications and Leadership Network.

So that if it got to the point where Israel had to launch a major military operation in the north, they would essentially kick off this operation, detonate these devices, and you would suddenly disrupt what had been the new method has balla had moved towards towards communicating, which is using these pages away from mobile devices that they understood have been hacked by these railways were monitored by these railways. But according to the Axios reporting, we know this now to be true. When this happened, there was no Israeli military operation immediately to follow.

Certainly not a ground campaigns, certainly like a not a major special forces operation, which frankly many of us on our internal office slack and in conversations as having others outside actually expect it because that seemed like such a logical follow on. The Axios reporting indicating specifically sourced it to a senior U.S. intelligence official said that in fact what happened is that the Israelis discovered that Hezbollah had gotten some sort of clue or begin to suspect that some of their devices had these explosives within them, at least in the pages.

And that became a user-loose situation. And that even as, wherever it was ended for the Biden administration, Amos Hawkestein, who is a special advisor actually for energy issues for the White House, but has become a major in a lockerer for the administration, particularly around this kind of issue set of the conflict in the north. In Israel, even as they were on the ground, meeting with senior Israeli officials, you have Galaant and Yanyahu and others sitting down and saying, "Well, what do we do with this user-loose situation? Do we pull the trigger?" And they decided to pull the trigger essentially.

“The situation that I think raises a lot of questions on the legal front and on the operational front.”

But that happened last Tuesday, East Coast time, as I recall, the next day we have Sawawakki Takki, a very similar Waki Takki operation happen. And we've heard a limited number of casualties, but including a handful of civilians and children, but there's also a number of military targets, I think mostly military targets, from most of the sources I've seen, and then a large number of wounded, which includes people across spectrum, as you would kind of expect, because these were explosive devices being carried around by people in the evening in urban areas in homes.

And so a wide range of injuries in a lot of different swaths of Lebanese society and to some sense, Syria as well.

And some of the people injured include Iran's ambassador to Lebanon, among a handful of other fairly high-profile people. And so what do we know about who the injured are?

I mean, on the one hand, we've heard reports that two children were killed, we've heard in Iranian ambassador had at least one and maybe two eyes destroyed.

On the other hand, Nassrallah himself described it as a grievous blow to his bolo, which implies that he normally says and kind of implies that from a military point of view it was effective. Do either of you have a sense of how effective/targeted it was or not?

“I think for the most part, it was exceptionally targeted, that these were devices handed out to his bolo primarily his bolo fighters, as far as I can tell, but also key officials.”

And it was very focused on individuals in the organization, the caveat is many of these people, of course, were using these devices almost by design outside a military environment, right? This sort of thing you might recall, so you have to know if you need a report to combat, for example. And when you bring something home, you know, your kid picks it up from time to time or it's in the wrong place and you know, you will have innocence harmed. So I think, you know, as these things go, it's not quite the same as bombing a purely military position where you are, sure that by definition, the people they're going to be fighters, but to me it's a fairly highly target.

Yes, Scott, you have some anxieties about it.

“Yeah, I'm somewhat more skeptical, mostly because of the the positive information, and as I've tried to think through how this operation would have been executed in the information we have, and I think that Israel most likely has available to it.”

Here's here's my thinking on the reason I get anxiety of this operation. The one thing we know is that these were inserted into a supply chain that is good reason to believe was going to his bola. Israel might have a lot of intelligence information that suggests this whole supply chain up to the end user to agree that would stick for several months predominantly focus with fighters in his bola. But I want to give actually we've actually seen a reporting or fidelity around that, you know, and his bola is a pretty big diverse organization, and I don't know exactly how they're sourcing and supply chains work, so his bola has a number of who are fighters who, particularly if you take the view that his bola and Israel are in an armed conflict with each other.

I mean, if they're fighters in an organized armed group, they would be potentially legitimate targets for military operation.

So lots of other people are members of his bola wouldn't be necessarily if they are people involved in his bola social service organizations or just partisan members of his bola as a pseudo political party, well as as a political party. Or involved in a lot of other activities that his bola might be well be involved and we know is involved in in big parts of southern Lebanon in particular, then they might not, they would not necessarily be lawful targets. You would need to know in advance, like who is actually using these patures. Now, if you don't have a lot of fidelity on the front end saying like here's this supply chain, we know this is like a military logistics supply chain to people get these our fighters, right?

And there's always going to be some risk that that's going to get worse over time that yeah, these guys will get these things, but the corruption is a thing, Lebanon, the economy sucks, maybe they're taking them and selling them to third parties, right? They get a new one and they give the old one to their kid or something like that, right? These things happen and so over time that fidelity is going to get weaker. In this case, it's a matter of a couple of months, I could see people having a high to reasonable degree of confidence that, you know, the initial person who received the distributed device probably would still have it.

Okay, they actually did before the detonation is worth noting, trigger the device essentially have it bepeasive sitting coming message. So presumably the person it was assigned to would pick it up and then it detonated, which I do think was an effort to try and reduce unnecessary civilian casualties at slash hit the target more effectively. But at a certain point, the only way to really know whether these devices are actually in the hand, if you don't have high fidelity information about how they're being distributed, would be to monitor their communications, and monitor how they're being used.

I don't think that's very likely that something Israel was able to do, because if they were, they probably had a lot more intelligence value out of that monitoring capacity, then they necessarily got out of detonating them, especially in a user lose situation, what this appears to have been. Especially because we know it sounds like his bullet caught onto the, under the phone situation, but not onto the walkie talkie, right? And so maybe that it's worth keeping one or the other. And they shifted to pages from mobile devices because they thought they were more secure, be harder for these Israelis to hack.

So if you don't have that ability to determine who's using the device and how, and if you lack that sort of fidelity at the front end of the supply chain, which I am skeptical, you can have a high degree of confidence that, that how these are being used, not impossible, you might, but on a little skeptical of that.

“Then you have to ask yourself, okay, there's going to be civilian harm out of this, maybe members of his ball, maybe people we don't like, but there's still not legitimate targets that are not supposed to be people who can target with us.”

That is okay in a military operation, you can have that, but you have to make effort to limit it, and it has to be justified by military necessity. If this were in military operation, that was designed to be undertaken at the beginning of a major military operation, the military necessity, the tactical and strategic advantages would be substantial. You could see a substantial degree of civilian harm, that was otherwise very hard to mitigate, be justified by saying, yes, this is going to kill a lot of civilians or a degree removed from his ball.

And that is tragic and unfortunate, but the plus side is we are going to be able to operate so much more effectively and get what we don't need to do on the ground much more effectively. And that military necessity element, the advantages can warrant a higher degree of civilian harm. The problem here is that this was by reporting a user-lews situation, and all of a sudden that degree of military and necessity, that strategic advantage really begins to go out the window.

“And I think this becomes, if you lack that high fidelity and you lack that ability to confirm how they're used, becomes a lot dicey or to justify in my mind.”

So I want to, I want to get to answer the action to that. It seems to me that one possibility is that this was a prelude to a major military operation. We're just seeing the major military operation now rather than three days ago.

Second possibility, it's a user-lews situation, but they figure number one, it'll compromise their comms and their ability to call people up when they do.

Or let's take scots and axioses reporting at face value. What if it has nothing to do with any of what we're seeing now?

It's just they realize that as ballas figured it out, they're on to them, all the pages are going to be thrown into a ditch in the back of alley and so they figure now or never.

How do you understand the pageur operation and the walkie-talkie operation relative to what's happening now?

“So I want to say Scott, I think Grace is really important points to consider at least that I need to consider.”

Let me say a few things, I've been in response to your question. So I think from Israel's point of view, there's been an ongoing military operation for 11 months and that question that they have is will his ballas escalate tomorrow. And that's a really difficult one to answer in a general sense, but I think there are some really big changes since October 7th and one of them is how Israel calculates risk. Which is I've no idea what the odds are that his balla was going to make a major escalation the day before the pageur operation, but let's put it at 2% so relatively low.

I think Israel might have said in a year ago, we can live with a 2% risk. I think after October 7th, they know we can't. And so that question of reducing his ballas capability by hoarding its command by hoarding its fighters to me is very much in the context of Israel's risk and how they see the ongoing operations. In addition, as you say then, there is a possibility that these kind of passive air strikes were very much tied with the beeper operation. I'm not sure about that.

“I mean, I expected this set of air strikes, I think Scott referred to our Slack channel.”

The pageur operation happened. I expected this set of air strikes that evening. I did a real time. And when they didn't happen, what I couldn't quite figure out was was it. Oh, we should probably, as long as we're hitting him, we should hit him again.

Right, you know, it's, you're not going to be punished for hitting him a second time if you know what I mean.

So we may as well do it all, they're weak, they're off balance. And we're taking the international condemnation and it was supposed to respond. So what I didn't know was that, how coordinated that was where they wait to see if the operation was successful. There are two more possibilities that want to raise both of which are disturbing, but in different ways. So one is, as we all know from the Gaza war, another significant shift in Israel's approach operations is that question of how it concerns proportionality.

And here I defer 100% bent to you, but especially a Scott on the question of how to think about what that means. But there, the Scott says you can kill civilian targets. If there is military necessity, but the question is, you know, what is the level military necessity and how many civilians can you kill? And Israel has dramatically raised those numbers in Gaza.

“So you know, whatever the numbers were a year ago, I would actually, if you want to go back.”

I remember in the '90s, in early 2000s, they were dramatically lower and then they were, the ratios were increased as the second and the photo went on. And then they were increased again after Hamasis's power. But I think we see another huge step change after activism. So that question of, you know, we're talking about how you weigh this balance from Israeli point of view is this like this is no brainer. Right? That you'll compare to some of the operations in Gaza. You know, yeah, we can get a lot of his bologhiders here for relatively few civilians.

Even, you know, let's take the worst assumptions from what Scott, the case, Scott is laying out. That a lot of these people are not with the military wing. There is a high risk of families or other people who should not be part of it. I think if you look at some of the Gaza targeting Israel, it's a yellow problem. Right? That's exactly what's dramatically more targeted than, say,

blowing up a compound with a lot of civilians in it because there are 10 or 7 senior Hamasis. Exactly, or even 9 in that senior, Raven Mid-level.

And the last thing I'll say, which is, you know, always trick with Israel is the question of how much domestic politics play into this.

Which is, you know, these operations are very popular. It is remarkable.

but it's no question of my mind. It's stunning. I would even say.

And it, the campaign against his bologhs, popular. And it's something that shows up the government. It shows up individual political leaders who can claim credit for it. And we've seen this government at times play politics with national security. And I don't want to immediately leap to that, but I also do think it's something that should be on the table.

“And Scott, how do you understand Nusrala's comments?”

Which seemed to concede that the operation was quite effective and had rocked has bologh back and him personally back on his heels a bit? I mean, I have no reason not to take it at total face of how you. But the fact that he's rocked by that doesn't itself alone mean that it's a great deal with the military operation. Yeah, you got to know what the collateral damage is and a bunch of other factors and what these really were thinking about this. Dan's point about proportionality is a real one. I mean, these railies, they just think about proportionality different.

And I think this was a point of like real academic debate before October 7th because it's been a,

it's been a trend in Israeli military operations for a better part of two decades really sense the second to find.

And I maybe before then I just wasn't, I was too young to follow stuff at that point. But, you know, from that point onward, you see in a shift first kind of looking at civilian infrastructure, dual use infrastructure is to say differently. You know, a greater willingness to target dual use infrastructure, particularly in the 2006 Lebanon more. That was a big sticking point of point of criticism for Israeli military operations there at the time. And it's been a persistent almost strategy. They're early international legal arguments to say that that's okay.

And these really are really good about them. They're informed about them and they advance them. International law, international humanitarian law, around this is a framework about how to think about these things. The can't, there's no way you can actually prescribe all of the act with the right answer is. It is a framework and a checklist about the things you're supposed to consider and weigh against each other.

“The one thing we can say with confidence is that I think a fairly high degree of confidence is that the standards use really to apply.”

Is unlike and and way more tolerant of civilian harm than American UK or other military as applied in as close to comparable military operations that we've seen. Like fighting ISIS and Iraq and Syria. It is not a perfect comparison. People raise that point. It's fair. Like Gaza is different in many ways more challenging. But how different is it to warrant a dramatic difference that is, you know, potential order of magnitude? That's the question. The biggest difference is that when we did muscle, we didn't do the ground operations.

And so, you know, the, the stuff that was most comparable to what the Israelis do was done by Iraqi army and, you know, and partner forces that don't necessarily follow our standards. And so we had, we had the air and we had some of the other more standoff positions, but we actually didn't do the, the storming of muscle. So, I want to focus in on what happens now. Dan, do you think that we are now, I mean, I guess we'll know over the next few days, but are we now plunged into the next Lebanon war or is there a,

“opportunity here for either Hezbollah or the Israelis to back off of something short of full-scale conflict between them?”

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Hey, stay ready for it. How do you feel about this? Great news, they have to deal with it. How do I describe it, Dan? The phenomenon has to be respected.

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“So, I want to be careful here because I think some of my assumptions on what would trigger it all.”

You know, Israel has hit his ball of very hard in multiple ways, and so far it is not triggered all at war. And that could be because his ballast still feels the rest to Lebanon as too high.

It could be simply because his ballast thinks it'll lose, that it just won't hit Israel hard, and it's helpful.

Be hit hard. I'm not sure, but so I think there's a real possibility that obviously his ballast is going to keep firing at Israel and continue the conflict, perhaps. You know, going slightly deeper into Israel, perhaps hitting wide a range of targets in the north, but whether it's will trigger all at war, I'm not sure. I've been worried about that possibility, and I don't know whether the odds are, you know, for people like me have been debating this question. Really, since October 7th of what are the odds of it all at war, and I put the odds at, you know, one in four, while some of my colleagues were closer to 50%.

Now I met 50%. And I can still spin a case where his ballast feels a need to save face, but really tries to keep it limited in a way that is really okay. Except somewhat somewhat somewhat what we saw in April, when Iran did that massive salvo against Israel, but telegraphed it, otherwise tried to limit the damage of its own operations. Israel did respond, but did so in a very limited way, and both sides agreed to stand down at least temporarily. I could see something akin to that where both sides can claim some degree of victory, but Israel was repeatedly hitting his ballad.

At some point, his ballad will feel its any use or lose situation. And it's likely to feel that, okay, we're not going to be able to use these rocket systems with development so on, and also feel the need to respond for its own dignity. I mean, one thing that separates out the paid cooperation from the assassinations of senior leaders is the paid cooperation because it affected so many people is truly humiliating. It's an embarrassment to us by the security, it's an embarrassment to the overall organization, and embarrass organizations feel the need to save face.

So, as you can tell, I've reluctant to make a firm prediction, but I would say, you know, at the very least, the odds of not war have gone up significantly. And if the rationale for his ballad waiting and being limited may simply be due to its own weakness.

“I think part of Israel's possible calculation, if we want to put a strategic spin on this, is they've gone from believing that you deter by creating a very kind of rational set.”

Of fears on the other side, and uncertainty to you deter by just really making aggressive operations exceptionally difficult, not impossible, and you do that by taking out leaders capabilities, weapons, infrastructure and personnel. And that's the most effective way of stopping the other side. I would have been skeptical that because I think of his ballad as a very capable organization that could lose some capacity and still keep fighting, but Israel has been hitting his ballad exceptionally hard. And I think it'd be difficult at present, at least, for his ballad to mount significant major military operations because of the level of disruption they suffered.

What do you think Scott? I keep resisting the conclusion that Dan is hinting at here, which is, you know, basically that if you hit them hard, but not hard enough.

“To trigger a major war over and over and over again for several weeks at a time, it amounts to a kind of a devastating preemptive strike, but you've never had the, you know, Egyptian Air Force on the tarmac moment, right?”

And so you've kind of created the same outcome without the devastation, without the one devastating moment. Is that what's happening here, or is this just a pent-up? You know, there's still 150,000 missiles that they've got, and, you know, the same conditions that existed a year ago, which is that they have their own deterrence capacity exist today. And we're going to see it maybe this week or maybe next week. I mean, that's kind of the difficult question. I don't, I think Dan's answer is, is very well stated and I don't, I don't have a better one.

The only thing I would add to it, I think, is that there's kind of two factors on his ballad's part. That's a little different.

I think the podcast actually released like an hour or two after the Patriot tax news when public.

And he said very much what Dan just articulated like these really mindset, particularly among the leadership, but really pretty broadly among a lot of Israelis has really shifted much more to, we don't manage a status quo, we dominate and dictate a status quo. And that's a status quo. We have a lot lower tolerance for potential risk. And that is the mindset that has become more dominant in the post-October 7th world. You just don't have a tolerance for that sort of risk.

“And that the way you deter people is not just by keeping them on edge, you have to dominate the field. You have to be a lot more assertive and aggressive and dictate into conditions that you want to see.”

That is a perspective that has a synergy with a lot of instincts of whether it's reprisal and attribution, whether it's just kind of like a militant nationalism. A lot of other, there's a certain synergy there with like a lot of ideological perspectives of folks on other issues, particularly regarding the West Bank in the current government is really government. And that kind of all enters in there as well. But when you have that sort of mindset, it means you're no longer a status quo part of party. You're you're willing and actively trying to disrupt and change the status quo.

That's what's kind of different between Hamas and his wallet, Hamas revealed itself on October 7th to never very much not be a status quo party or at least elements of Hamas did.

Or at least there were willing to take a risk on the status quo, because the October 7th operation no one could have believed Hamas doing that would have done anything that different than what it did lead to, which is a pretty devastating military operations in. Gaza has bought, I'm not sure, isn't more of a status quo party for all the rhetoric and for all the the role that opposing and fighting Israel plays in the identity of it as a group. It is a entity that's building up a stronghold and has a lot of political significance and southern Lebanon and it stands to lose a lot with a major encounter with Israel.

On the one hand, that may make it less resistant to actually going into an all-out war. On the other hand, it also means that it may feel in need to re-establish deterrence. Insofar as Israel, we're as revealing as really itself to be much more willing to be in a status quo party and push to try and change things with these pretty aggressive strikes. And frankly, is doing this awful window where his balla after the initial strikes in August took a pretty muted response, a lot like the initial around your response, and then Israel appears to double down now with several waves of additional attacks.

I kind of feel like his ball is going to feel the need to respond substantially and significantly, but maybe just up to the point of re-establishing some sort of deterrence by hurting Israel enough to realize that there's a downside of being this provocative.

“We go through the complete dislocation of the existing status quo, which I think his balla might actually kind of be okay with, or at least not anxious to disrupt given the potential downsides for it.”

And a big part of that factor, it's worth noting, is the risk of American military involvement as well.

The fact that you have an aircraft carrier parked in the Gulf of Oman currently, we know another aircraft carrier in two destroyers are headed to the region, although on a regular schedule, they're supposed to sub-out with the current one, but who knows exactly. Like there's a over-hanging threat of both Iranian and US involvement entering into the conflict that takes in a lot of unpredictable directions. And I just don't know how his ball is approaching that. And you're a much closer student of his ball than I am, and I'd be curious about your thoughts about it.

It's tolerance and departure from the status quo, but I'm just, it's actions have been much more small, so you conservative than I would have expected of the last several years, honestly, and I'm just not sure it's as anxious to have this confrontation that it's been preparing for as people kind of assume it is from the outside. No, and I too largely see it as more conservative than most people do. If we want to go back to 2006, which was the last major Israel, as well as the conflict before all this, this was an operation that from his ball is point of view, wasn't meant to happen in terms of sparking it all out war.

They did this cross-port operation, they kidnapped the Israeli soldiers or their bodies effectively. But in so doing, they think that's an operation that will largely spark some Israeli air strikes and limit attacks not in all out war.

“And that actually was, I think, well, found it because that's how Israel had responded to some more operations in the past.”

What had shifted was politics in Israel. And his ball that didn't realize that the dramatic change isn't after the war in Australia. It's rather very candidly said, "If I had known this was going to unleash an all-out war, we wouldn't have done this." To me, actually, it's both remarkable statement of a mistake but in a way that shows a very competent political leader. He didn't feel the need to greatly lie to his own people. He could admit that he screwed up.

And from there, again, I and others were very nervous that we'd see war happen again. It didn't. Right? And so this conflict continues at a very low level, compared to previous years for 18 years.

So not something his ballad did and something we now believe that his ballad was not aware of. And so I do see it as relatively cautious and again, especially because of the grim situation in Lebanon itself.

That it always cared about Lebanese equities. The one caveat to all this though is I would have told you before I could receive them.

That Hamas had a lot of equities in Gaza. And would have been reluctant to do an operation like that for seventh because it would trigger exactly the sort of response that Israel gave the other devastation of Gaza. And to me, it's hard for me to say to, and Israeli, you know, look, I was wrong about October 7th. But this time I'm right. Right? So I think the risk calculation in the way that perspective in Israel has changed even if the facts themselves have not dramatically changed.

“So that's my read about the group, but I think as your question implies, got the perception of this is probably more important than the reality.”

Well, but there is some degree of the known reality and it is what that while Hezbollah is further from major population centers than Gaza is. It's not that far from some of them and it does have a very large collection of missiles and a better train fighting force than Hamas has.

So now let's fast forward a few days to a world that we hope does not arrive where this thing goes all out.

What is Hezbollah in its current state capable of delivering in the way of an all out war that it was not back in 2006? So there are a couple things, but with caveats. So Zbalah has a truly massive rocket and missile arsenal and it has some precision systems within them. The scale this is enough where it could probably overwhelm Israel's air defenses. So Israel's air defenses are far better than the war in 2006, but Zbalah simply through numbers could go through it. And the range is greater, so even more of Israel or really all of Israel would be at risk of rocket attacks.

“So you could have massive attacks on a scale that wasn't true in 2006 and 2006 was pretty bad from Israeli point of view.”

So could be significant worse. The fighters are very skilled, but they are very skilled in 2006. And so you have a lot of come experience this time game from Syria. And the badge for his Bala would be largely defensive for it to take out some of the systems, especially the short range systems. The belief is Israel would have to do some ground operations in Lebanon.

And his Bala would be its home turf. It's prepared for this. We've seen how many tunnels can be hidden by Hamas and Gaza. The assumption is his Bala, which did this in 2006, would be doing this as well. But the caveat is Israel in 2006 was, some of my blindsided from my intelligence point of view about his Bala's military capabilities. He hadn't trained properly for operations in Lebanon.

It was surprised that there were his Bala tunnels almost on the border with Israel. The belief is, this time they will not be surprised. They have been preparing for this since 2006. It's one of those things where a lot of his Bala's advantages in 2006 came from. Both in this really lack of preparedness, but also almost in this really contempt for his Bala.

Which in a way was stunning given that frankly, his Bala had expelled Israel from Lebanon only six years earlier. Yes, if any fighting force in the region had earned the idea for respect, it was his Bala. And to me, it would be as if the US wanted to Vietnam in 1978 and said, "Wow, who knew these people would fight us, right? Who knew this could happen?" But nevertheless, they did.

“And so I think there's a lot of uncertainty because a lot of depends on both what his Bala has learned and what Iran has learned.”

And part of what Israel has done through these attacks is very much disrupt his Bala commanding control. So I think we'd see very skilled pockets of his Bala fighting because their skilled determined fighters are very brave. I don't know as much questioning about that. But how much they could coordinate their operations is to be a question mark. But I think a lot of what they would be doing here, which is rocket attacks and order attacks and defensive ground operations,

doesn't require that much coordination.

Obviously, from military point of view, coordination is always better.

But you know, fire your rockets indefinitely till you hit stuff or get blown up is not the most complex military order. And I think that would be a lot of it. So Scott, one of the frustrating things about the northern front from Israeli point of view is that two Israelis, this has nothing to do with Gaza.

And so there's no reason from their point of view why they should still have a battle on going with this very capable force.

Obviously, from his Bala's perspective, the two battles are deeply connected to one another. And in fact, willingness to engage this fight is a major source of legitimacy for his Bala around the region. So I have a pretty good sense of what the minimal Israeli demands to disdiascalate the situation is.

“Basically, ceasefire in Gaza and then will things will calm down or is it more to it than that?”

That's a good question. I don't really have a firm sense of that either. I mean, we know the military operations essentially started with Israeli military operations in Gaza. I think we're ultimately short-aft shortly afterwards as I recall. So you know, there wasn't, I don't think it was resprising to anyone. But there wasn't sort of any knowledge about that October 7th gave Israel any sort of right to military response.

And then they've kind of escalated, but you know, again, I do not see what his Bala's actions thus far have being as being a foundational game changer to the overall picture.

I'm pretending to put pressure on Israel and more than anything threatened the potential to open up another front as a way to kind of deter them.

“Presumably, I think in coordination with Iran, who's got kind of interest in relationship with both parties.”

And then the United States again then comes in as a counterbalance to that, right? And so the whole idea is is kind of like nested of deterrence effects. What would the demands be for like a complete cessation of hostilities?

Certainly it would be at a minimum if he's firing Gaza, but probably not even then. You haven't had a real cessation of hostilities but in his Bala in his real in decades.

Because there's a foundational disagreement about Israel's existence, you know, control the parts of occupied Palestinian territory. It's really Israel's existence foundationally, right? I love variety of other disputes. So that's not the goal. The goal can't be like a complete cessation of hostilities. I meant to return to status quo ante before October 7th, which is to say relatively peaceful northern border in which both south Lebanese and northern Israelis can live their lives. You know, that all depends on what his Bala's threshold is. And that is, I think Dan's caveat, you know, about how conservative are they is a good one, you know.

If I, my guess is, although I would defer to Dan, Dan other folks who follow them while this a little more closely, like, you know, my guess is that you can get a lot more to status quo ante. If you just accept the low grade hostilities along the border and in deal with fairly reciprocal proportional responses. And then that's just going to be an ongoing low grade of hostilities. And it's going to be focused on military targets like it was a few months ago. It will be one that there will be civilian harm on both sides of the border, which is tragic and unavoidable, but I don't think either either party's going to walk back from that possibility.

And that can happen even if Gaza continues to there's a major spike in Gaza hostilities. You'll see some sort of spike of hostilities of activities by his Bala because they have to because they've made this rhetorical commitment. But my sense is that the situation with his Bala across northern border, while the displacements were really difficult was not three months ago, foundationally unsustainable. And if you were willing to go back to that status quo, then you would that would probably be the direction we'd drift and that would be the equilibrium.

Once both parties got whatever, you know, retribution slash deterrence restoration, they need to get out from this latest flare up. The real question is I don't think that's where these really want to go. Now, like I don't I think they've decided and all the recent actions suggest that they are not comfortable with that status quo and they need to feel need to debilitate his Bala substantially, and then the real question is what is his Bala tolerance for that I suppose. And that's a big open question. I just don't know.

That brings me down to what I think the Israeli's minimum requirement is which is implementation of the 2006 ceasefire agreement and redeployment of his Bala north of the Latani and thereby enabling Israelis in the north to go home.

“Because your impression that the Israelis are not going to receive to low grade cross border operations until something like that happens or at least that's what they think they're doing.”

I believe that's what Israel thinks is doing that. It does have a, you know, I will say conception of what the situation should look like and that is his Bala forces push significantly farther from the Israeli border.

It also reduces some of the effectiveness of short-range systems depending on where his Bala ends up being. And his Bala is a lot of short-range systems. So that's not, that's not a small gain.

“So I do see those as some of the broader Israeli objectives. The one caveat I'd raise is that this question when we think about a broader war.”

I've criticized Israel as have many other people for not really having an end-game in Gaza. And it's much harder in Lebanon than it is in Gaza. Because even if his Bala suffers significant casualties and conflict, it's not going anywhere. Israel will at least, I can't imagine, it's not going up. You can't imagine it's going to be a very difficult country. You can't imagine that his Bala can simply retreat farther south and then regroup and as such control, it's casualties to some degree, so you can weaken his Bala in a war.

But you're not going to displace the way Israel is hoping to displace Hamas in Gaza.

So I do think these much more limit goals are possible. And I actually do think they're possible through, you know, Israel's current types of campaign and diplomacy, but it does require the Hamas ceasefire. It's very difficult to get politically for his Bala to stop firing when there's still a lot of significant firing in Gaza. Now I do think his Bala would take, you know, anything that could be called a ceasefire and say, Sure, it's a ceasefire even if the next day he's still had more shooting, but you do need that declaration on both Israeli and the Hamas side and as we know we're not particularly close to that.

All right, so Scott, if you mentioned that we, that is to say the United States have an aircraft carrier in a parking lot nearby.

“What are we doing there and how likely is it that we're going to get dragged into the system?”

So that's the real question and it's a little, I don't think the Biden administration has been crystal clear about where exactly its line is recently, you know, we saw shortly after October 7th, the deployment of aircraft carrier and other major assets to the region. More approximately than the Gulf Holdman or the current aircraft carrier station, although again, that may it may yet relocate to the region specifically discussed in reference to this kind of northern this northern campaign this northern northern front.

The idea being that this is a spot where because of his Bala's major military capacity, because of an addition, you know, there always possibility of some degree of greater Iranian involvement.

The real escalation between major conflict that has real regional ramifications and major ramifications on the kind of like national security, national identity, national military capabilities level for Israel would be. If Gaza operation went seriously south, the impact on Israelis would be on Israel as a state will be somewhat limited Israelis could be really hurt. Maybe you would see in even another horrible October, something like attack that's horrible, it's psychologically damaging, but Israel itself its national security capabilities wouldn't be substantially affected or changed by it.

That's very different from a major war with his Bala. We're going to lose a lot of Israeli military capabilities. You're going to have a major population displacement potentially major civilian casualties. I mean, it's a much more real, what we think of as like a major war that could be what that's one outcome potentially from Israel on a much more likely one than Gaza. So the idea was the US military presence is there to suggest that this is something that might happen to prevent that from happening. It's this kind of general deterrent effect.

I don't think we have a really clear sense of that where the actual line is the Biden administration would draw for actually doing that. I think Iranian involvement very clearly would be one, although what that response that would incur, I suspect it would be somewhat limited and there would be an effort to be proportional to the Iranians to say, hey, we're going to slap you back a few times don't slap your hand from getting too close to cookie jar. Don't think about it. I don't think anybody's anxious to kind of go to war with Tehran over it.

“Is there a lower threshold that would you would get involved?”

For the Americans, my instinct is no, certainly not now because Israeli actions are the escalatory steps here. And so it becomes a bigger, particularly frankly, in the lead up to the election, a bigger risk for the Biden administration. There's risks on both sides of not supporting Israel strong enough, but also of being too willing to engage in military operations. I think that this point at least, you know, in the initial phase of some exchange of my guesses, the domestic politics, the strategic politics, everything kind of leans in favor of less not getting involved too quickly or too hastily.

But if the war proceeds, if there are major civilian ramifications, rather major ramifications for Israelis, maybe or even on the Lebanese side, although that would be a much more dramatic involvement, maybe you see the American step in to try and tip things one way or the other. The American intelligence support and other sorts of support for Israeli military operations. I don't think you would see that for the sort of anticipatory action. We're seeing these Israelis pursue now, because I think there's questions as to how acceptable or legal that is.

That's that's, you know, at that point in theory, you need to go to your congressional authorization. There are ways sometimes administrations kind of we sort around it. It'd be a little hard in this case, I think, but a 60 to 90 days is a good runway for a conflict like this. And so I don't think there's a real realistic risk of us being an armed conflict that escalates to a what is called a war for constitutional purposes, which is kind of the top end constitutional what the president can do that has never actually been reached.

And so within that spectrum, Mr. President Biden could do just about whatever he needs to. The real question is just like legal matter is what when does he think it's actually worth it.

But you think the bottom line is has balla Israel's problem Iran are a problem.

“I think that we might guess in the short to medium term, you know, depending on that as the conflict progresses, you could see that calculus changing, but I think in the short to medium term, yeah, that's probably right.”

Again, the Americans will do certain things to help the Israelis, but I don't think they're going to get directly involved. I agree with that. I think it is always in the minds of American military that the one time we thought has balla has balla kicked our ass. I would say that I certainly agree with Scott, the question is that actively short of war will probably be pre-extensive.

So they'll certainly be intelligent sharing, they'll also be a lot of providing weapons and munitions.

And the U.S. presence that is designed to intimidate Iran will implicitly be also trying to intimidate his balla.

“And I think there will also be worries so quickly that his balla and Iran will see the United States involved in if the United States thinks it's drawing a bright line between directly bombing and supporting Israel's bombing.”

And from the point of view of U.S. ever series that line might not be so bright. And so whether they feel that they can legitimately expand the conflict or otherwise the rest of the United States grows substantially in ways that U.S. pirates don't anticipate. I think that's the least something that people should be very concerned about. We are going to leave it there, Dan, Bimon, Scott, our Anderson. Thank you both so much for joining us today.

Always a pleasure. Thanks, Bob. The law fair podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. You can get ad free versions of this and other law fair podcasts by becoming a material supporter of law fair using our website. Lawfaremedia.org/support.

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