Lawfare Archive: Hezbollah, Lebanon, Israel, Iran

On Friday, March 6th, Laugh Fair and Georgetown Law are bringing together leading scholars,

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2,026. On February 28th, the United States and Israel launch coordinated strikes targeting Iran as part of a campaign to destabilize the regime and to nuclear and missile capabilities. At least 1,045 people have reportedly died in Iran since the strikes began, including the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Hamanid. These strikes are the latest chapter in the conflict between the U.S. and Israel with Iran.

For today's Archive, I chose an episode from October 2nd, 2024, in which Benjamin Wittis sat down with Ferris Moxad, Nathan Sachs, and Scott Anderson to unpack the Israeli strikes on the Lebanese Hezbollah that began in September of 2024. Iran's response by sending a missile barrage against Israel and the future of Iranian and Israel in the United States.

It's the Laugh Fair podcast I'm Benjamin Wittis, editor-in-chief of Laugh Fair, with Laugh Fair senior editor Scott Arnderson, Nathan Sachs of the Brookings Institution and Ferris Moxad of the Middle East Institute. These Israelis saw an opportunity to put to use all the plans and all the everything that

“put in place for 18 years, but also to address the key imperative which is to bring”

their population north back to their homes and back to the sense of security. And that is now the big question. How do they do that? With the simply degrading Hezbollah is not enough. We are talking Lebanon, Hezbollah Israel and Iran today, intense Israeli strikes against the

Lebanese militia, Iranian missiles against Israel and unexpected Israeli response. For us, I want to start with what's happened both two and in Lebanon the past week. And we last recorded the Pager operation it happened and Israel was starting to hit in a major way as Bala missile sites, but that set of attacks has really escalated over the last few days.

So how do you assess the scope and scale of Israeli operations in Lebanon and the current

“state of the Lebanese civilian population and Hezbollah itself?”

Yeah, lots to unpack there, so let me get right to it. I would say that up until about 10 days ago, the Lebanon Israel part of this conflict was largely to confine to a border war, yes, it had been flowed in a time Israeli air strikes in particular when as far north as Balebeck and even the Syrian Lebanese borders. But by and large, the majority of the tit for tat was still contained within, you know,

a 10 to 20 kilometers on around both sides of that border. That shifted and changed significantly 10 days ago with Israel taking the fight to his

Bala first with the attack on its various communication devices, the Pager's the first

day, the walkie talkies the second day and Hustle in Australia, the Secretary General and his last speech, you know, giving us, you know, a nugget, this interesting nugget that he actually received a direct message or an indirect message, I should say, from the Israeli

“is saying, do you want to reconsider or should we keep going?”

And then we all know that what the Israelis have been able to do since it's just unbelievable none of us here would probably have thought that they can land those kind of devastating blows on his Bala's military command, essentially decapitating the organization ending with Hustle in this roll up himself.

So it has been quite a start for Israel what I always like to emphasize is that Israel historically

has been pretty good in landing these devastating blows in the opening round of a long

This is a 12 round match between Israel and his Bala and Iran to redraw the balance of

“power not only just in Lebanon to my mind, this goes much beyond Lebanon as we see strikes”

expand into Syria and now as a result of the direct Iranian attack on Israel probably maybe even Israel maybe even Iran itself. So this is a broad war and the Iranians are known for having much more patience and follow through in persevere instances and this reminds many of many Lebanese of the 82 to 85 time period when Sharon went all the way, you know, started out with what was dubbed a limited

operation went all the way to Beirut, overthrew the balance of power, you know, but she or Jimayil was elected as president of Beirut, friendly, pro-Western president, only for the Syrians of the Iranians to come back with a counter campaign that by 85 saw Israel withdraw all the way to the border. So the emphasis being that we're in the early stages here.

And how when people say that the strikes have decapitated has Bala, decapitation can mean a lot of things, right?

It can mean you cut the head off and Charles the first is dead.

Or it can mean, you know, a lot more hydro-like situation. They've clearly taken out a lot of middle management as well, but has Bala's got a lot of missiles, it's got a lot of capability and so how should we understand how debilitating

“the Israeli strikes on his Bala have been, or do we just not know at this point?”

Yeah, that's precisely, it's a difficult question to answer. What we do know is that his Bala has been thrown off balance. I'll just point you to some anecdotal examples. I mean, we were waiting in monitoring his Bala channels, including in Al-Minar, the Al-Nora radio, those of who spend time watching these things, and it took him an awfully long time

to even issue a communicate about what happened in Australia. They have been to date unable to elect a successor to him, and so clearly they're having a problem communicating, which is not surprising, given the scope and nature of the attacks of the place, but yes, this is an organization that has built in redundancies. So for all these major positions, what we know, the Secretary General, the Deputy Secretary

General, that she had the Council, and some of the other key military posts within the organizations, they have built in replacement, sometimes even two or three layers deep. Now, that still doesn't mean that the organization didn't take a significant blow, that it isn't being knocked off balance. It just means that they will need time to recover, and to catch their breath before they

can maybe begin to effectively launch a counter-campaign, let alone carry through a major war with Israel, which it seems that we're very much on the other precipice.

“And how should we understand the Lebanese domestic reaction?”

As follows, a appeal to ordinary Lebanese civilians seems, first of all, very sectarian and

divided by religious community, but secondly, also there does seem to be a much broader understanding that this is the only force in Lebanon that actually is capable of confronting the Israelis. And so when somebody like Nusrella and these attacks happen, you know, how should we understand Lebanese reaction? Should we just assume it is very divided or that there's some national rallying behind

Hezbollah? I honestly don't know how to interpret a lot of what I see on this regard. Yeah, and that's perfectly fine and normal, I think this is one of those situations that the saying applies, if you think you understand Lebanon's politics then you probably don't understand.

So, Lebanon's politics. It's highly complex, and I'll just break it down this way. I'll say, there's a popular sentiment, talk about the popular level, and then we can talk about the political elite, and a popular level, yes, I mean this is a highly polarized quality, you know, the majority of the Shia community sympathizes and feels very strongly

about Nusrella, we was probably the most iconic figure, certainly the most charismatic, and most gifted rhetorically in Iran's Arab access. And so he leaves a huge void behind the Lebanese political scene, particularly for the Shia community, but not exclusively. There are others who are obviously in the pro-Western camp, and did not do not appreciate

the role that Iran plays in their country, the kind of dominance to our his bullet that it has in the system, and they are very quietly gleeful, that his bullet or Nusrella's

possibly even being able to finally elect a president and the political deadlock, former

“cabinet, after two plus years of having a caretaker government, and get the system going”

again, and reinstate much new state authority, but that's not necessarily, that does not necessarily translate to the political elite, the political elite, while sensitive to the popular sentiment take their cues from the capitals of relevance around the world. They want to know what the thinking is in Washington, what the policy is, they want to know how far this Israeli campaign is going to go, what kind of Iranian comeback reaction can

be expected, are the Saudis and the other Gulf countries going to step in in a significant

way as they have been done in the past through their financial and economic large jets.

These political actors know that they are veterans, I'm talking about the speaker of parliament and be very good, like Isabella in the head such as the other major Shia party and holds

“the keys to electing a president, opening a parliament in order to be able to do that.”

Druids leader Wally Jumbleut, Christian leader Samir Jaja, and obviously there's a void left behind in the Sunni community after the head eighties have exit to the scene. So these players are going to be moving very cautiously. They understand how Polarite public opinion is in Lebanon right now, they understand that the region is teetering towards war, and they're going to be looking around to take their cues from

the capitals of influence in Lebanon. So before turning to other matters, I would be remiss if I did not ask you about the civilian population. It's completely unclear to me how many civilian casualties there have been in these strikes, but it is not unclear how many civilians have been displaced, which is that number seems to be enormous, and Lebanon was already host to an ungodly number of refugees from the

“Syrian conflict. What is the civilian impact situation looking like as this ground offensive starts?”

Yeah, thank you for asking me that question, and highlighting this important issue. Now Lebanon likes to celebrate its ability to prove resilient, and it is a quite resilient

society in the state. It's always teetered on a verge of being a failed state, but never really

crossed that threshold into a completely failed state somehow. It finds the way to keep moving on and to hold on. But this is a country that has the highest refugee rate per capita compared to the size of the population, and it's obviously has some 200 to 400,000 Palestinian refugees living in camps where state authority is minimal, then some 1.2 to 1.4 million Syrian refugees as a result of the uprising next door, and now about a million internally displaced Lebanese as

a result of this latest conflict. And what makes this particularly difficult is insensitive as these are primarily pro-Hizballa, who are internally displaced, and have very strong feelings right now about losing their strong horseyness system, losing their iconic leader, a once-in-a-generation kind of figure. And they are mostly having to seat shelter in areas that have no love loss for Nasserallah and Hizballa. And so you can see how politically sensitive this isn't how quickly

get out of control given the raw emotions involved. And the fact that these people might not be able to go back to their homes anytime soon because much of the sudden suburbs have been a rude or being, you know, permanent and destroyed. And certainly we know that the Lebanese state does not have the wear with all to be able to provide these people with a place to go. So the internal situation in Lebanon, about 1,600 casualties so far, we don't know how many

of them are civilians, but that's we can assume that a very high portion of that are in fact civilians. So this is all to say that this is this is a very volatile domestic situation. And the Lebanese army with its limited situation is the resources are probably not going to be devoting much of their efforts towards belonging. Any of us possible is rally encouraging this out. Their primary focus is just to keep people laid on these simmering domestic tensions

that will only grow over time. Yeah. So Scott, when we talked last week, and we had only seen the very beginnings of this. And obviously in Australia and the leadership had not yet been targeted, we were trying to figure out and struggling with the question of how to understand the page or operation. Was it a, you know, user to lose it kind of run out of time,

the opening salvo in this much larger operation. And I want to ask Natan to talk a little bit about what the Israeli strategic objectives appear to be. But before I do, I just want to figure out whether you and I are on the same page about this, that in retrospect, it's clear that the page or operation was an effort to disable a lot of middle management while the Air Force went after

“key leadership, including the top leadership. That is possible. We do, I think we have a big”

open question as to exactly what the sequence of facts. I think there's two possibilities. One, this was a deliberate step by the Israeli government from the outset where they initiated the page or operation as an opening salvo, which is how we understand now, or at least it's been reported,

that was always the intent of this tool. We're going to use this to be able to disable this kind of

middle level of leadership and higher level leadership as part of a broader campaign. The problem with this narrative, I think, are two, or two reasons why I at least think it warrants engaging critically. One, we have reporting from some identifies as senior US intelligence official by Axios, which actually has not rolled back or counter-banded as seen, although I haven't seen a confirmed other places saying that part of the reason Israel initiated the time around the

page or operation was because they were worried as well. I had discovered it and they were about to

“lose the capacity. They did it as a user-lose operation. The second fact, the reason why I think”

there's reason to engage critically this narrative that this is all part of a strategic plan from

the outset, is that the sequencing is odd. It is odd to do the page or operation. Then, frankly,

follow up 12 hours later with another sequence of his hacks in the form of the walkie top operations, then air strikes begin, and then target a ground operations, which is, frankly, the area where you would probably want, particularly middle-level leadership, most discombobulated, doesn't come from a week later. A period where you'd give in people to reassemble. I am not a military technician, and I do not have any meaningful experience with these things

other than watching them and reading about them for a long time, but that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Certainly, it's contrary to all of the conversations. I had where many of us expected when the Pedro operations went off. We thought 2448 hours from now. That's where we're going to see

“major military operation. I think the alternative possibility is that we've seen a cascading”

user-lose effect where you say, "Okay, we have the Pedro operation. We better use this because we're going to use our Lose it." Then they see a window where they say, "Okay, it actually worked pretty well. Hezbollah is knocked on its feet. Let's go ahead and pull the walkie talkies because we're going to have Lose that capacity." Then they say, "Well, at this point we kind of sunk ourselves so deep into a series of attacks on Hezbollah. We might as well go for it." Then you see the

initiation of a broader campaign, starting a leadership, and now doing the ground campaign, meaning the timing may have been driven as much by external events than the liberal strategic timing on the part of these railways. I don't think we really know. It matters a little bit probably to the Biden administration who's been a little bit in the dark on some of this, and we

know has some reported reservations about parts of this, so they do appear to have ultimately

come to terms with Israeli's intent to put military pressure and increase on his ball at this point. That kind of sequencing that question, particularly because that initial Pedro operation was, at least, reportedly pursued without any advanced notice to Americans, an meaningful advanced notice. I think it was referred to having notified to the representative on the ground at the time. That is a sort of question to say, "Well, how much of this was kind of

backed into by these rallies and how much was driven into?" But that sort of, you know, after the fact examination, it's something that hit for historians at this point, I don't think we're going to know, and only people inside the government are really going to know the answer to that question. Nathan, how should we understand the Israeli strategic thinking here? Do we think they blundered into this, or was this the plan, start with the pages, take out the middle management,

take out the leadership, take out the missiles, how do you understand it? My suspicion is similar to Scott's, which is to say that the overall plan and the war plans have not just been in place for a while, they've been prepared for 18 years, right? So a lot of this has been very detailed, thought out in a very, very detailed way. And so on the one hand, this is not a blunder, they didn't find themselves something another Lebanese war. This is a very

concerted, deliberate effort to degrade as Bala considerably and deal a real blow to what has been Israel's most formidable conventional force and a one that had humility, it is what was termed degree in 2018, years prior to that. And then at least, it's drawn with Israel in 2006 and led, as for us, very well led by an extremely charismatic man and a very important figure in Middle East affairs, not only in Lebanese affairs. And so

you know, the huge successes of Israeli intelligence, which above all else, this is Israeli intelligence, the last 18 years, they of course contrast just dramatically with the horrendous failure a year ago, the catastrophic failure in Gaza. And that is clearly a product of the fact that the all eyes have been north and east towards Iran and towards Bala, enormous amount of effort, enormous amount of resources, taking advantage of all sorts of opportunities. There have been some reports that

this is a series of war opened opportunities. I would not be surprised if there's also complementary, if you're trying to infiltrate Iran and infiltrating as Bala, you can also gain information from one on the other, of course. And all this was done at the expense of the week foe, the backyard, which was Gaza. And so we're saying two sides, almost of the same coin, enormous capacity and enormous effort, face more. All that to say, so all this was prepared,

and none of this is terribly surprising. And we've all been, for us, it's got this question a

million times too. We've all been waiting is the war coming for now for months, right? And the

“threat has been heightened because I'll get to an moment as to why I think I'm here's really”

side. It's been coming to certainly great. But then the timing, the starting with the pages, this I think, it's quite likely I had to do with what Scott was talking about, meaning a tactical necessity to do it quickly. You start without, then you see that this happens. And then there's a lot of pressure, anyway, building for weeks now for months. And pressure in the northern command and within the military establishment, the Air Force, the Assad others

pressuring very much to implement the plans that they knew about, and we're hopeful, good succeed. Yeah, I mean, I cannot agree more with Natal on that clearly Israel has invested quite a bit in terms of intelligence assets and capabilities in the north since the 2006 war, preparing very

well for the coming next cycle in fighting, which is finally upon us here, much less so when it

comes to Gaza and clearly here instead of this perception of where the threat comes from, which is Iran and his Bala rather than Gaza. But I would do want to add something because Natal did also reference Mastrala in the role that Mastrala played and this is something maybe that risks my ability to actually go back and visit Lebanon. Mastrala as iconic and it's gifted as an orator as he he was and his charismatic as he was. You know, I've got like figure for many of his supporters,

“not just in Lebanon, but throughout the Middle East, I think at this point we have to look back”

and realize that he has fell into at least two strategic blunders that he's not gifted in terms of his strategic vision and thinking and the last one caused him the ultimate price, his his own life. Of the 2006 war, where he ordered the kidnapping, the cost-border operation, then kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, only to have to at some point apologize for some foremost his own constituency in the Shi'a community, his own support face, and essentially say,

had I known, you know, had I known that it would result in such a devastating war for you as a community and a support face and for Lebanon, out of not order that operation. And then maybe more even so this last war, if the last 111, do it again, this support front from Lebanon, which they thought that they can maintain and keep calibrated as I reference going to have a border war and not being dragged into a much broader war that maybe arguably I think

that someone is running out of particular where eager to have to settle scores. And every speech he gave he was reassuring his community that we know you're not ready for war, we know you don't want to be pushed out of your villages and have your homes destroyed yet again, this is not what we're up to, this is a second front and we don't want it to become the primary front where look where we are today, you know, million plus people, mostly of his support base,

have been devastated and pushed out of their homes, Lebanon has become the primary front and the struggle has no longer with us. So just a quick aside here that as gifted as an astralop has been and we keep referencing that perhaps less so when it comes to strategic thinking of planning.

“No, it's such an important point because I think, you know, when you look at this”

from an Israeli point of view, they have been as Natan says planning for this operation for 18

years. The settlement in 2006 was always completely unacceptable to you them, especially because

his bala did not redeploy as the UN resolution required. And so they were left with an ever strengthening his bala on their border. And, you know, every time you talk to him is really,

to have to deal with it at some point. And since October 7th, they've been saying this over and over and over again, it was only a question of when. And Nassralla didn't seem to understand that in a way that, you know, just had a kind of poke the bear until he kills you kind of kind of

“thing. And in this case, literally kills you. The only thing I would add here is that we,”

we don't fully know whether he was master of the house or not. The only exit or excuse that he, he would have had in retrospect is that he had an Iranian IRGC commander right there with him in the bunker who lost his life with him. And so the question for us intellectually is, did he have the capacity to end this war or was this a war of a tradition that was being forced upon him by the

Iranians. And we might never know, we would have to wait and see. So I think it's important to remember

that, you know, when wondering why this sort of war seemed inevitable, inevitable is too strong, but in retrospect, of course, everything seemed inevitable. When you look from abroad, it's very easy to neglect to see the way this war in the northern front seemed to his railways. This was a year-long war since October 8th since Nassralla decided to join with the second front. And with tens of thousands of Israelis displaced. Of course, on the Lebanese side as well, but I'm talking for a moment about

these really public and political demand. And this was not a big place, tens of thousands of displaced people internally, they're spreader out throughout the country, people know them, people of family, and friends, and it's a very visible and salient political issue. And so the demand that they be allowed to return home was really political imperative was something that had to be addressed. There was no way around that. Netanyahu were not Netanyahu, by the way. This would any leader would have

had to address it. Now, the way the American administration wanted that was via the ceasefire in Gaza. That was sort of the Holy Grail, the keystone that would allow everything else to be unlocked. But for these really perspective, you know, they had their own considerations on that, and they did not, they did not want Sinmar, the leader of Hamas and Gaza, to have Vito over their northern

“front as well. So deal linking the two fronts became a very important quest for them. The result”

is that when all this happened, the Page of Operation, you know, whatever the sequence was, but let's assume it was a tactical necessity. They were already chomping at the bit, not because

they wanted a second front or wanted another war, or, you know, if you go on, we used to be Twitter,

you'll get that impression from a lot of users. It's because there was a genuine political imperative here, and Nastrala did believe that he could have a limited front, and that may have come to fruition. There was a, or there was a serious diplomatic effort led by the White House to try and reach some kind of settlement that would allow it if there was a ceasefire in the Gaza strip. But short of that, these really saw an opportunity to put to use all the plans and all the

everything that put in place for 18 years, but also to address the key imperative, which is to bring their population north back to their homes, back to the sense of security. And that is now the big question, right? How do they do that? Because simply degrading his bowler is not enough. You need some kind of diplomatic settlement, but I just hastened to point out that diplomatic settlement is actually not enough. How do they reach to deal without addressing all these capacities

of his bowler? Not in Beirut and ever else, but especially along the border in the south, whether uncovering the last couple of days, or revealing last couple of days, that would be

“crucial. Because we do see, you know, in Australia, we back up October 7th, the lesson is really”

learned immediately. Was they, they cannot live with a threat like that right on their border. And they immediately all of them applied that north as well. Because Australia had been declaring, for years, making very clear he intends the next war to be fought in Palestine and the Galilee and Northern Israel. And preparing very actively for it, they had dug tunnels across border that were uncovered, hopefully all of them covered, but they had also prepared a lot else. And some of it is now being

exposed by the idea of along the southern border. And so Israelis took Australia as word and saw

his preparations and saw that his forces are more powerful than Hamas. And so therefore,

we were at a, you know, Coral that that did lead to some kind of conflict. The question is will it grow much more? And the attack today by the Iranians, of course, is a huge question in terms of esclatory dynamic. Will these Israelis respond and what happens there? That's going to be hugely important. So, Natan, what do we know about how successful the degradation has been? I mean, there were supposedly 150,000 missiles. As long as has Bala has a lot of missiles, it's a problem.

Do we know there have been a lot of things that have gone boom in Lebanon, not all of them have

ordinance department as opposed to in the human department? Well, the two, of course, are linked

“because having the ordinances is one thing, but you need to have the expertise to use it, not just”

to be able to literally prepare it and pull the trigger, but to be able to use it in an operational way that would avoid a strike when you try to use it, right? If you should one rocket, you're also exposing your position. So, you need to know what you're doing. And for that, the military command of his Bala is very important and a lot of that has been degraded. But directly to your question on munitions, we don't know exactly, or I don't know exactly what has been destroyed. We do know

that a lot has been targeted. And we've seen the intelligence infiltration of his Bala is also meant infiltration of a lot of the information as to where this is. So, the past year, the long months before, just the last three or four weeks, there's already been this war along the border and that

“included a lot of damage, of course, to his Bala capacity in the southern border, the red one”

force, the fence, red one force, and all of their installations, it has been very active there. It's not just been firing across the border. And a lot has been removed. How much I do not know, but I want to make an important point here. We know of over a hundred thousand rockets and that's extremely important. What Israel has been preoccupied with for many years now, and has called a campaign between the war sometimes, is an attempt to thwart the supply of his Bala Bala by Iran,

most of his Syria, not only, but also the manufacturer by his Bala itself of precise munitions. And this for these railies would have been and to certain degree is an unprecedented kind of threat, second only in priority to Iran's nuclear program. It really is a strategic threat that

Israel has never faced, which is to say that country about the size of New Jersey, like Israel,

“if you want to shut it down and you have hundreds or, and if you have especially thousands of precise”

munitions, that can also be fired together with many thousands of regular rockets, so as to overwhelm defense systems like iron dome. You can hit targets in a country about the size of New Jersey and very easily shut it down. It would be a kind of threat or at least deterrent that Israel is not faced in the past. And so this was a very, very central focus and as a very central focus now as well in this operation. I cannot report anything that we haven't seen

about how much has been degraded, but certainly that is a very central focus of these really attacks. They have some precise munitions despite all Israeli efforts, not a probably not a huge number because of those efforts. And I expect a lot of them have been targeted now. All right. So before we let you go, Natan, I want to ask about the Iranian strike today and the

assumed Israeli response to it. This is now the second time that Iran has launched a significant

barrage of missiles. As we are recording Thursday afternoon, it appears that damage from them has been minimal. It looks like one Palestinian was killed from either a missile or a missile debris and that there have been, you know, as we've seen before, a lot of explosions over Israel, but the missile defense appears to be quite effective. Conversely, Israel, too, a lot of people's surprised did not respond in a significant way last time. And I'm sure there will be calls on Israel

not to respond in a major way this time either, at least against Iran proper, how many times can Israel reasonably be asked to not respond to significant missile launches against it. If it does respond, what do we expect that to look like? They're good questions, and which is to say that we don't know at the moment. This was a dramatic attack. There was some for warning like on April 12th, last time 12th or 1314th, excuse me. That time about 300 projectiles,

the various kinds were shot and they were thwarted by Israel, but also by an international coalition led by the United States that included Arab armies defending Israel from an attack from Iran, a truly historic event, actually, when you think about it. This time it was different. There was some for warning, but it was much shorter. It seems to be over 100 ballistic missiles. They travel a lot faster than some of the other projectiles that were shot in April.

This caused a lot of alarm in Israel throughout Israel. The very loud explosions were audible

There was a line cross in April. It was the first time that we saw Iran attack Israel directly.

They would always hide behind Lebanese, vine, Palestinian, by Iraqis, but this time it was a

Iran shooting itself. Then it was very clearly a response to an Israeli attack that had killed an Iranian general. This time it's a response to an Israeli operation in an ongoing war in Lebanon. And so in some sense, from these Israelis, it seems like a very different kind of context.

“And I do expect an Israeli response certainly. What kind of response is a very good question?”

In April, there was a limited response. It was a high quality kind of response that aimed to prove capacity to the Iranians. So it was taking out of defense systems that in the context of conflict over Iran's nuclear program would be relevant. So it was kind of a demonstration of force,

but not aimed to cause enormous damage beyond that. And maybe more this time,

I don't know, it depends somewhat on the United States and others. I will say though that the mood is quite different. Israel since October 7th is really cannot be overstated, I think. The mood has been extremely dauer. Israel is not post-traumatic, but in the context of, in the midst of a complex trauma that was ongoing. In particular with the hostages, still there, 101 still unaccounted for. And the displaced people in the northern border.

And so a very, very dauer mood and given the enormous failure of October 7th, which is just

“unequivocal, that added to that. Now this success is truly remarkable, success string of successes”

in the north and the killing in the strata, such an image, it flips it a little bit. And there is a

danger, of course, that it can flip, that the pendulum can swing very quickly to some kind of euphoria or sense of omnipotence or lack of understanding of sort of wise, you know, using your force, especially when you have these kinds of capacities, I think it is smart to use them in some circumstances, especially when you're dealing with such a foe. But it is also very wise to understand where best to stop. And there is, of course, a danger in the public mood and in the political

echelon for, for kind of an overzealous, not overzealous, but self-assured, overly self-assured stance. It's important to remember, you know, as Fras was saying, "Hesbalah will come back, Iran will still be there. This is not the end of these foes. This is a major blow to them, and a very important one from these really perspective, but they are still there, and to achieve Israel's direct aims, including the return of its civilians' north, these realities need to be dealt with.

So, it response will come and it should come, but the question is what and how it's an open question,

“I think it's a very risky moment. Finally, before I let you go, I just want to ask you to flush out”

the domestic Israeli politics of this. For a long time, after October 7th, Prime Minister Netanyahu was called Deadman walking, then he appeared to be Deadman, you know, what's still walking, and not, not killing over and revealing himself as dead. It's like the chicken with his head cut off who keeps on, you know, has an energizer bunny. And him, what are the chances that this perceived victory over his bala will be perceived that way rather than as an interim

tactical advantage in a fashion that turns the political fortunes of BB and his coalition? So, it makes down to that. On the one hand, it is a very significant issue. This has been a major quote unquote victory. It's not a victory because nothing's over or even remotely so, but this is been a major victory in that sense in these really mindset and again a sense of potency and a sense of capacity, things that were so dramatically eroded on October 7th. And in that sense, of course,

Netanyahu benefits from that dramatically. But Netanyahu, his main strength, the fact that he's still Prime Minister and the fact that he has a significant chance to bring Prime Minister at least for another year, if not two years until the next election, is not so much because of rising poll numbers and they have risen some, he is still into water though, but rather from the weakness of his coalition in a punitive election. So, let me explain. If elections were held, this coalition

would probably lose, although it's not clear anymore. He could probably draw it today or might draw. But the threat of him losing and the threat of his partners losing makes them cling to their coalition. That's one of the reasons they cling to their coalition. And so, with been very apparent, it was apparent in Israel last week when I was speaking to everyone I could, is a very strong sense that Netanyahu is not going anywhere. And this partly has to do with him as political wizardry,

too and you asked me as he had a German walk and I said he logic would say is an extra minister

walking. But in 2019, I foolishly published an article saying the end is nigh for Netanyahu. That was 2019. And I was of course wrong. And that's partly because he's more right. It's just just not just on the word as a long time frame than you imagined. So, the tighter I suggested was

“nigh ish, but I think nigh ish you've expired. No, it's 2025. That's five years later. I was wrong.”

I was wrong both because he's smarter than I am and because he's much better at politics than I am. But also because I overestimated the power of shame and sort of it's not done kind of thing. He was being, he was going to be indicted, precedent would suggest he will either resign or before will be forced out by the more sensible people around him. And I was wrong. He was not forced out by any

sensible people around him. And that is true today too. After October 7th, it seemed apparent to everyone

that even modern people in the liquid will say, look, after this kind of colossal failure, I love him or hate him. It doesn't matter. He needs to step aside. He has no intention of doing so. He has no intention of doing so. He has been operating tirelessly against it. And he's had a major major success in the last week and it is not in Lebanon. It is in rejoining Gidon Sal, who had left his liquid party, Netanyahu's liquid party, joined the opposition, spoke vehemently against Netanyahu,

then served for a while in this emergency coalition about a year ago. And now has rejoined with an eye to supporting Netanyahu. Netanyahu has secured his base and may be able, therefore, to pass some legislation that he desperately needs to do this year. He has to pass it

a budget in particular by March to keep his coalition going. All this is, say, his coalition could

last another year, certainly, and it might last another two years until elections are due, which is just about two years from now. All right. So one actor we have not talked about yet is our own country and seems to me the U.S. is put in a rather difficult position here. This clearly is not the course that the United States wanted the Israelis to take. On the other hand, you can't as the administration come out against, you know, taking out has balla capabilities or leadership.

So what do we know about the administration's reaction to this beyond what they've said publicly, which is that, you know, there's a measure of justice in the killing of Ms. Ralla. So the reporting we have is that the administration has been over the last several weeks to months opposed to efforts to kind of escalate or bring more military pressure on has balla along the northern front for fear of kicking off a kind of broader conflict. That's worth noting

that if if you buy into the idea of a ceasefire being possible in the near term in Gaza, which has been a U.S. objective, then the need to delink the north and the south is far lower. You know, implicit in the need to delink the north and the south is skepticism of the idea

“that there isn't any near term ceasefire possibility in Gaza. And I think that might”

just be a different set of kind of political assumptions or aspirations that the Americans Israel is we're operating from, as my suspicion. Regardless, we know that at least the time of the Patriot operation, it did not seem like the United States was on board with kicking that off. Again, very limited events notice. I'm most hawkstein who's been kind of the main administration envoy to the north on the northern front, even though he's technically his purview is technically

like energy issues he and Brett McGurk who's the senior director at the NSE, firmly least issues have been kind of the point people on this with Amos focusing on the north. He was in his reals, supposedly got kind of noticed what as it was happening essentially. Since then, the reporting we got and we saw what it go to go this morning said that essentially the White House people of Brett and Amos were have kind of been one over to some extent to some limit degree or at least

had come to turn for Israel's determination to push, put more military pressure on his balla and had to some extent sign off on that. But have been still in urging some degree of restraint. They didn't want the while they thought they accepted that some military pressure might be advantageous and the political article pointed to there being descent on this point from within the military with the US military and within the State Department. I've done the

last White House appear to have kind of concede at that point to these reals, at least if they're going to go forward with it, but then to instead pressure on them to say, but if you're going to do this doing a limited way, we don't want to do CA much broader operation, particularly conservative

“ground operation. I believe it was the same article also pointed out that these really said said,”

no, the only ground operation we're going to do is extremely limited, extremely tent time bound. We've seen Israeli officials say something similar today, but there were American concerns over even that, how realistic an expectation that was for Israeli ground operations as part of the sort of picture. So a lot of sort of is I think the Americans are kind of stuck in a difficult position.

see outright opposing you publicly as being a very effective way to shape or policy moving forward

if you decided to do this. So essentially they are saying, I at least how I would interpret to say is like, we want to keep a voice in the room and keep engaging with you on this. So we're not going to raise a public objection to it, but we want to shape and try and influence how you're going about it. I will say killing Hassan Nasrallah, probably not a sign that that's going super well for the American perspective because it's hard to imagine something we're escalatorious

than that. We'll see with this ground operation looks like so far it seems like limited at least in terms of the projections that the IDF is sending in terms of, you know, communicating to Lebanese

“villages, hey civilians, you should get out of these areas to the extent you can. The the initial”

point is that it's limited-ish, but we don't really know. I mean, exactly what it's going to

look like and it's not clear. I don't know if something is really 100% know what it's going to look like or what their objectives are. If they're just trying to eliminate on the border weapon stores, maybe that's something you do in limited operation, but that's not the real threat to Israel. The real threat is that there are much more substantial weapons storage with longer range throughout the south of Lebanon, and maybe elsewhere as well. So it's a bit a lot of open questions here.

My strong suspicion and I don't need to give the read between the lines too much on President Biden's remarks on this. Another administration remarks on this is that they're not very happy that this is happening, even if they accept it and aren't willing to kind of publicly

review this really over it, but they are intent on trying to keep it from escalating further

that has been their objective since October 8th. It's to kind of kind of prevent northern Israel into conflicts, just spiraling into a broader regional conflict, which is a real possibility and that we're closer to now than we've been at any point in the last year. Yeah, so just this is an area where the Iranian attacks really highlight the divergence between Israeli and American interests. The U.S. instinct is to look at something like this and say,

air defense works, Ra Ra, you know, can't we tap this down now, whereas the Israelis obviously want to sort of deterrent approach to Iranian direct missile strikes. Do you agree with me that there is just very limited prospect of the U.S. persuading Israel not to respond in a serious way to what happened today? That's my suspicion. In April, you did not see a direct and immediate

“Israeli response, I think, is indicative that it's not a zero percent chance of possibility,”

maybe there are other strength mechanisms, but this is a difference. I mean, that was in response to action Israel had itself not that pursued. That was in response to another sort of like series of exchanges. The dynamics aren't totally different. They're not totally similar. It's possible. You could see some sort of similar, whatever persuaded Israel not to go for at that point, could be persuaded upon them now, particularly for on stops at this point. If this was a one-time

barrage, and then stops, pauses, even as it really operations continue in Lebanon, then Israel has to ask itself to what extent do we want to open up another front? But I think that's probably like the, I would put a higher money on Israel pursuing some sort of response. The question is what is the response look like? Is it, you know, deteriorating of some sort of military capability hit on some sort of nuclear facility in Iran that Israel has identified, although, you know,

most people expect a lot of what Iran is doing is in secret facilities that may not be easy to hit or target or respond to an address. So, you know, the real question is what are the targets available? How broad is sort of an action? Is Israel interested in pursuing? I may be slightly more optimistic that that's a possibility, but so far, the United States and Israel have said outright, like Iran's going to pay a toll for this. That's exactly the United States feels like it needs

“to establish some sort of deterrent response to this. So, I think there'll be something. Will it be”

on Iran versus maybe other proxies versus other regional presences? I don't really know that's something we're going to have to wait to see. I think Israel will feel the necessity of establishing the principle that if Iran strikes Israel directly Israel hits Iran in response and that, you know, you can do only so much with proxies, but one of the things you cannot do is use them as a shield with which to protect yourself when your sovereign forces from your sovereign territory attack

Israel. And I think they will, the Israelis will be very keen to establish that, you know, to the extent they didn't refrain from doing it last time. All right. We would not be law fair if we did not talk about the law of all this, but the law of all of it seems to me to be relatively simple. That is to say you're allowed to attack a attack of force that is attacking you. Hezbollah has been attacking Israel since October 7th. Israel has been attacking back. There's

individual strike, whether the collateral damage was appropriate to the strike, but there's no doubt

that military, there was military gain associated with them. So, do you anticipate that Israel

“has any serious problem with respect to its operations so far in Lebanon?”

I mean, there is an underlying question which is to say, does Israel consider itself at war with his Ebola? Is it in an international armed conflict with his Ebola versus is this acting outside of the context of an armed conflict in which case it should be in theory anchoring a lot of its actions to self-defense, like in a direct response to an anticipated threat. Remind threat against them. My suspicion is real. Does consider yourself at war with his Ebola? I don't know if it's fully

made that legal determination public. I don't believe it actually has, but I think that's more

less how it has operated certainly in Syria and other places for the last several years, honestly,

at this point. So, if you accept that framework, I think there are people who had raised doubts about it, but if you accept that framework, then setting aside the very serious and real question as to whether these are necessary and proportional actions. Yeah, you could necessarily see a basis to say, these are seem like if, as far as you're targeting leadership and you're doing so in a proportional way, in a way, advances in the military necessity and weapons and fighting

“personnel, lawful targets. As we discussed last time, I think there are legitimate questions”

be raised about the Pedro operation, other operations, depending on how, if you have more information about how they're being used to accent there in civilian hands. But those questions

aside foundationally, the basic, they're in too big depth. There is a military target at a root

of at least a lot of these operations. It's different for Iran. That's worth noting. I mean, here is a case where Iran really is launching a reprisal and unlawful attack because Israel has an attack around directly. You do have the Israel honey attack, you know, a few months ago, but even in that case, like that's a pretty minor use of force that didn't actually target any Iranians, could Iran make a self-defense claim. Yeah, ironically, especially if

it embraced the very broad conception of self-defense that Israel in the United States have kind of advocated for historically a lot of countries reject that. They say it has to be a higher threshold. But if Iran relied on that sort of standard, and certainly Israel in the United States seem to set to what, yeah, it could make a self-defense claim. But this is months later, it's obviously in reaction to attacks on Lebanon and Beirut and his ball of there, which are not part of Iran,

yes, Iranian officials have been injured and heard those attacks. Yes, there was attacks in Syria that targeted obviously the Iranian consulate way back in April or before they pull attacks a couple other targets. So there's little threads you could pull on. But as a whole, if this really isn't in response to what Israel's doing to his ball of Iran doesn't have a self-defense claim, doesn't have any other international legal gain for pursuing that. Yeah, and Iran actually

hasn't made a self-defense claim. Iran talks in the language of revenge. You know, when they say we're going to respond, they don't frame it as a self-defense matter. They frame it as a reprisal.

“Yes, in the rhetoric. What do we see? Iran does file article for two on letters, right?”

They've done so for other operations in the past, and I suspect they're going to end up framing some sort of defense self-defense action around this probably tied to the fact that some of its personnel were killed in some actions, including in the Patriot operation. So I think there will be an effort to make this self-defense claim. I don't think anyone's going to find it that colorable. And what about Israel's response? Obviously, we don't know what it is. So it this becomes

hypothetical. But I assume Israel would have a reasonably cogent self-defense claim in responding to military architecture in Iran, assuming, again, these were lawful targets in response to a barrage of 150 missiles or whatever it was. Yes, I mean, it's important to bear in mind, again, the logic of the system. If Israel and Iran do not consider themselves at war currently, and Iran as Israel, excuse me, is operating under the U.S. had Belom kind of self-defense framework,

then in theory, it should be taking steps only where they are linked to stopping it in an attack, right? So they really legitimately think Iran has stopped doing things like this, then there are argument for self-defense will be weaker, right? If these were the last 100 missiles Iran had, there's no further risk to Israel, then actually would be more for a priceless responding. Realistically, though, both because of the broad conception of self-defense Israel has just

directly relied on along with other states like the United States, and because Iran very clearly is trying to signal, we will do this again, potentially, then Israel has a much stronger case of some sort of self-defense basis. And there is the possibility that it considers itself at war with Iran, and that it's not going to simply start acting in the sort of response to self-defense on the base of self-defense actions, which what you expect in an outside of the armed full armed conflict

context, and it's going to start taking more proactive actions. A lot of what Israel has already

of this broad conception of self-defense. But, you know, so the difference may not be that great

“in practice, but it's important legal distinction. I think a lot of lawyers will be kind of”

parsing a bit there. We are going to leave it there. Scott R. Anderson, Tonsax, Theros Muxud. Thank you

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