As Hezbollah escalates its attacks, Israel must strike back

Iran’s multi-front war against Israel escalated this week when Tehran’s main terrorist proxy rained missiles and drones on northern Israeli towns, killing one Israeli soldier, injuring others and sparking massive forest fires.

While President Biden is pushing Israel to surrender to Iran on all fronts, the north of Israel is burning and the rest of the country is in existential danger.

“Anyone who thinks they can harm us and we will stand by and do nothing is making a big mistake,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday.

“We are prepared for a very strong approach in the north.”

Israel must fight back and Americans should understand why.

A few hours after Hamas carried out the October 7 massacre, Iran activated Hezbollah to open a northern front against Israel.

Israel evacuated 100,000 people from communities along the Lebanese border because of legitimate fears that Hezbollah special forces might attempt a similar invasion.

An already small country the size of New Jersey has effectively been reduced in size as border towns are bombarded daily with rockets, missiles and drones that destroy buildings and occasionally cause casualties.

Several Israeli sources estimated earlier this year that Hezbollah’s arsenal includes 160,000 mortar shells with a range of up to ten kilometers, 65,000 short-range rockets with a range of up to 80 kilometers, and 10,000 medium- and long-range rockets with a range of 80 to over 200 kilometers.

The country also has thousands of armed drones, hundreds of thousands of precision weapons, anti-tank missiles, surface-to-air missiles and short-range ballistic missiles with a range of up to 300 kilometers or more.

Hezbollah poses a threat to all of Israel, not just to the cities near the Lebanese border.

This threat did not arise overnight.

Despite a UN Security Council resolution calling for the disarmament of Hezbollah south of the Litani River – about 30 kilometers north of the Israeli-Lebanese border – Iran has flooded its main terrorist proxy with weapons over the past 17 years.

During this period, U.S. taxpayers transferred billions of dollars to UN peacekeepers and the Lebanese army, ostensibly to intercept these weapons – one of the worst returns on investment in American history.

Given Hezbollah’s ability to bring death and destruction, and given that Iran is using this threat to deter Israel from taking military action against Tehran’s expanding nuclear program, Israeli leaders first considered a preemptive strike in Lebanon before moving against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The timing would have caught Hezbollah by surprise and given Israel the opportunity to kill more terrorists and destroy more weapons caches before its leadership had time to prepare.

But Biden reportedly withdrew Israel and told Jerusalem that he would support military action against Hamas, but not against Hezbollah.

As Israel’s campaign in Gaza progressed, Hezbollah gradually increased the scale and scope of its attacks in an attempt to drag Israel into two simultaneous, all-out wars – a scenario that would deplete Israel’s ammunition stocks, strain the Israeli economy, and cause unprecedented destruction in major population centers.

Israel adopted a tit-for-tat defense strategy, responding to every Hezbollah attack with an airstrike against a Hezbollah commander or base, and using bombastic rhetoric to threaten to reduce Lebanon to rubble if the group escalated its attacks.

However, Hezbollah was not deterred.

As Biden continues to provide Iran with billions of dollars to ease sanctions, and Hezbollah has to watch as the US withholds weapons from Israel to stop major military operations, Tehran now smells Jewish blood in the water.

Biden indicated last week that if Israel ends its military campaign against Hamas early, leaving an Iranian proxy intact, the White House would broker a ceasefire with Hezbollah, leaving a larger and more deadly Iranian proxy intact.

Iran is responding, as expected, with an escalation to force Israel to surrender.

With Tehran also on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons and equipping the Houthis in Yemen with their own missiles, it is no wonder that a former Israeli defense minister warned this week of an Iran-backed “holocaust” within two years.

Israel’s options are not enviable.

The status quo is unsustainable because it leaves northern Israel at the mercy of Iran and leads to a slow but steady escalation on all fronts.

Without security guarantees, the evacuated communities will not return to their homes – and such guarantees will not come from a sham ceasefire that helps Hezbollah grow even stronger.

A ground invasion to the Litani River without American supplies carries unknown risks, while an air campaign without a ground invasion may not prove entirely effective.

Israel must think outside the box and plan a counterattack that escalates into all-out war and quickly deescalates once limited objectives are achieved.

These goals are likely to include the creation of a buffer zone on the Lebanese side of the border to allow Israeli communities to return home while also halting rocket and drone attacks – an issue that would need to be addressed later in the event of a larger-scale war.

Americans would never capitulate to a terrorist threat like Hezbollah on their own border.

Biden should not demand this from Israel either.

Richard Goldberg, senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is a former National Security Council official and senior U.S. Senate official.