Lawfare Daily: Hezbollah, Lebanon, Israel, Iran

[Intro]

Firas Maksad: 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.

Benjamin Wittes: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittes, Editor in Chief of Lawfare, with Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson, Natan Sachs of the Brookings Institution, and Firas Maksad of the Middle East Institute.

Natan Sachs: The Israelis saw an opportunity to put to use all the plans and all the, everything they had 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 them with a sense of security. And that is now the big question, right? How do they do that? Because simply degrading Hezbollah is not enough.

Benjamin Wittes: We are talking Lebanon, Hezbollah, Israel, and Iran today. Intense Israeli strikes against the Lebanese militia, Iranian missiles against Israel, and an expected Israeli response.

[Main Podcast]

Firas, I want to start with what's happened both to and in Lebanon the past week. When we last recorded the pager operation had happened and Israel was starting to hit in a major way Hezbollah missile sites, but that set of attacks has really escalated over the last few days. So, you know, 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?

Firas Maksad: 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 confined to a border war. Yes, it ebbed and flowed in a time, Israeli airstrikes in particular, went as far north as Baalbek 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-kilometer zone around both sides of that border.

That shifted and changed significantly 10 days ago, with Israel taking the fight to Hezbollah first, with the attack on its various communication devices, the pagers the first day, the walkie talkies the second day. And Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General, in 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 Israelis saying, do you want to reconsider or shall we keep going? And then we all know that what the Israelis have been able to do since it's just, it's unbelievable. None of us here would probably have thought that they can land those kind of devastating blows on Hezbollah's military command, essentially decapitating the organization, ending with Hassan Nasrallah 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 war. This is a 12-round match between Israel and Hezbollah 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 and perseverance. And this reminds 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, Bashir Jamail was elected as president, a very friendly pro-Western president, only for the Syrians and 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.

Benjamin Wittes: And how, when people say that these strikes have decapitated Hezbollah, decapitation can mean a lot of things, right? It can mean you cut the head off and Charles I is dead. Or it can mean, you know, a more hydra-like situation. They've clearly taken out a lot of middle management as well, but Hezbollah'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 Hezbollah have been? Or do we just not know at this point?

Firas Maksad: Yeah, that's precisely it. It's a difficult question to answer. What we do know is that Hezbollah has been thrown off balance. I'll just point you to some anecdotal examples. I mean, we were waiting and monitoring Hezbollah channels, including Al-Manar, the Al-Nour radio, those of who spend time watching these things, and it took them an awfully long time to even issue a communiqué about what happened to Nasrallah. 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 that took place.

But yes, this is an organization that has built in redundancies. So for all these major positions, what we know, the secretary general, deputy secretary general, the jihadi council, and some of the other key military posts within the organizations, they have built-in replacements, 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 kind of carry through a major war with Israel, which it seems that we're very much on the precipice of.

Benjamin Wittes: And how should we understand the Lebanese domestic reaction? Hezbollah's appeal to ordinary Lebanese civilians seems, first of all, very sectarian and divided by a 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 Nasrallah and these attacks happen, you know, how should we understand Lebanese reactions? 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 in this regard.

Firas Maksad: You know, 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 and Lebanese politics, then you probably don't understand Lebanon and Lebanese politics. It's highly complex, and I'll just break it down in this way. I'll say there's a popular sentiment, talk about the popular level, and then we can talk about the political elite.

At a popular level, yes, I mean, this is a highly polarized polity. You know, the majority of the Shiite community sympathizes and feels very strongly about Nasrallah. He was probably the most iconic figure, certainly the most charismatic and most gifted rhetorically, in Iran's Arab axis. And so he leaves a huge void behind in the Lebanese political scene, particularly for the Shiite community, but not exclusively.

There are others who are obviously in the pro-Western camp. And do not appreciate the role that Iran plays in their country, the kind of dominance through Hezbollah that it has in the system. And they are very quietly gleeful that Hezbollah's or Nasrallah's removal from the scene now opens new opportunities and potentials for Lebanon, including possibly even being able to finally elect a president, end the political deadlock, form a cabinet after two plus years of having a caretaker government. And get the system going again, and reinstate much needed 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 done in the past through their financial and economic largesse? These political actors know that they're veterans.

I'm talking about the speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri, who like Hezbollah, you know, heads the other major Shiite party and holds the keys to electing a president, opening up Parliament in order to be able to do that. Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, Christian leader Samir Geagea, and obviously there's a void left behind in the Sunni community after the Hariri’s have exited the scene. So these players are going to be moving very cautiously. They understand how polarized 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.

Benjamin Wittes: 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?

Firas Maksad: Yeah, thank you for asking me that question and highlighting this important issue. You know, Lebanon likes to celebrate its ability to prove resilient. And it is a quite resilient society and state. It’s almost always teetered on the 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, and sensitive, is that these are primarily pro-Hezbollah who are internally displaced. And have very strong feelings right now about losing their strong horse in the system, losing their iconic leader, a once-in-a-generation kind of figure. And they are mostly having to seek shelter in areas that have no love lost for Nasrallah and Hezbollah. And so you can see how politically sensitive this is and how it 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 southern suburbs of Beirut are being, you know, pummeled and destroyed. And certainly we know that the Lebanese state does not have the wherewithal to be able to provide these people with a, 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, civilian. 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 blunting any of a possible Israeli incursion in the South. Their primary focus is just to keep a lid on these simmering domestic tensions that will only grow over time.

Benjamin Wittes: Yeah, so, Scott, when we talked last week, and we had only seen the very beginnings of this. And obviously Nasrallah and the leadership had not yet been targeted, we were trying to figure out, and struggling with the question of how to understand the pager operation. Was it, or, you know, use it or lose it kind of run out of time sort of thing? Was it the beginning of something? In retrospect, it seems pretty clear to me that it was 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 pager operation was an effort to disable a lot of middle management while the Air Force went after key leadership, including the top leadership.

Scott Anderson: 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 pager 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 mid-level of leadership and higher level leadership at Hezbollah 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 someone identifies a senior U.S. intelligence official by Axios, which actually has not rolled back or countermanded, I've seen. Although I haven't seen it confirmed in other places, saying that part of the reason Israel initiated the timing on the pager operation was because they were worried Hezbollah had discovered it and they were about to lose the capacity. So they did it as a use-or-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 pager operation then frankly follow up, 12 hours later with another sequence of attacks in the form of the walkie-talkie operations. Then air strikes begin. And then targeted ground operations, which is frankly, the area where you would probably want particularly mid-level leadership, most discombobulated doesn't come for almost a week later. A period where you've given people to reassemble.

I'm not a military tactician and I don't, I do not have any meaningful experience of 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 a lot of the conversations I had where many of us expected, when the pager operations went off. We thought 24, 48 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 use-or-lose effect where you say, okay, we have the pager operation. We better use this because we're going to use or 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. And then they say, well, at this point we've kind of sunk ourselves so deep into a series of attacks on Hezbollah, we might as well go for it. And then you see the initiation of a broader campaign, starting leadership, and now doing the ground campaign. Meaning the timing may have been driven as much by external events than deliberate strategic timing on the part of the Israelis.

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. Although they do appear to have ultimately come to terms with Israel's intent to put military pressure and increase on Hezbollah at this point.

But that kind of sequencing, that question, particularly because that initial pager operation was at least reportedly pursued without any advance notice to the Americans a meaningful advance 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, like, well, how much of this was kind of backed into by the Israelis and how much was driven into. But that sort of, you know, after the fact examination is something that 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.

Benjamin Wittes: Natan, how should we understand the Israeli strategic thinking here? Do we think they blundered into this, or was this the plan? Start with the pagers, take out the middle management, take out the leadership, take out the missiles. How do you understand it?

Natan Sachs: 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 suddenly in another Lebanese war. This is a very concerted, deliberate effort to degrade Hezbollah considerably and deal a real blow to what has been Israel's most formidable conventional force. And one that had humiliated Israel to a certain degree in 2000 and in the 18 years prior to that, and then at least drawed with Israel in 2006. And led, as Firas said very well, led by an extremely charismatic man and a very important figure in Middle East affairs, not only in Lebanese affairs.

And so for the Israelis, this has been the prime focus of 18 years of planning. And I'll just, as an aside, you know, the huge successes of Israeli intelligence, which above all else this is Israeli intelligence, in 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 Hezbollah. Enormous amount of effort, enormous amount of resources, taking advantage of all sorts of opportunities. There have been some reports that the Syrian Civil War opened opportunities.

I would not be surprised if there's also complementarity. If you're trying to infiltrate Iran and you infiltrate, infiltrating Hezbollah, you can also gain information from one on the other, of course. And all this was done at the expense of the weak foe, the backyard, which was Gaza. And so we're seeing two sides almost of the same coin. Enormous capacity and enormous effort faced north.

All that to say, so all this was prepared, and none of this is terribly surprising. And we've all been, I'm sure Firas has 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 in a moment as to why, I think on the Israeli side, it's been coming to a certain degree.

But then the timing, the starting with the pagers. This, I think, is quite likely had to do with what Scott was talking about. Meaning a tactical necessity to do it quickly, you start with that, 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 Mossad, others pressuring very much, to implement the plans that they knew about and were hopeful could succeed.

Firas Maksad: Yeah, I mean, I cannot agree more with Natan 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 is sort of this, this perception of where the threat comes from, which is Iran and Hezbollah, rather than, than Gaza

But I do want to add something, because Natan did also reference Nasrallah, and the role that Nasrallah played, and this is something maybe that risks my ability to actually go back and visit Lebanon. Listen, Nasrallah as iconic and as gifted as an orator as he was and as charismatic as he was, you know, a godlike 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 cost him the ultimate price, is his own life.

But the 2006 war, where he ordered the kidnapping, the cross border operation and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers only to have to, at some point, apologize first and foremost to his own constituency in the Shiite community, his own support base. And essentially say, had I known, you know, had I known that it would result in such a, a devastating war for you as a community and a support base and for Lebanon, you know, I would have not ordered that operation. And then maybe more even so this last war of the last 11 months-

Benjamin Wittes: Do it again.

Firas Maksad: this support front from Lebanon, which they thought that they can maintain and keep calibrated, as I referenced, kind of a border war. And not being dragged into a much broader war that maybe, arguably, I think, that some in Israel and Netanyahu in particular were 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, but we don't want it to become the primary front where, look where we are today, you know, a million plus people, mostly of his support base have been devastated and pushed out of their homes. Lebanon has become the primary front and Nasrallah is no longer with us. So just a quick aside here that as gifted as Nasrallah has been, and we keep referencing that perhaps less so when it comes to strategic thinking and planning.

Benjamin Wittes: 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 them, especially because Hezbollah did not redeploy as the UN resolution required. And so they were left with an ever strengthening Hezbollah on their border.

And you know, every time you talk to an Israeli, you know, military person, they say, you know, this is an unacceptable status quo and we're going 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 Nasrallah 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 thing, in this case literally kills you.

Firas Maksad: 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 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 attrition that was being forced upon him by the Iranians? And we might never know. We would have to wait and see.

Natan Sachs: 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 seems inevitable. When you look from abroad, it's very easy to neglect to see the way this war in the northern front seemed to Israelis. This was a yearlong war since October 8th, since Nasrallah 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 the Israeli public and political demand. And this was not a big place, tens of thousands of displaced people internally. They're spread out throughout the country, people know them, people have family and friends, and it's a very visible and salient political issue.

And so the demand that they'd be allowed to return home was really a political imperative was something that had to be addressed. There was no way around that. Netanyahu or 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 the Israeli perspective, you know, they had their own considerations on that, and they did not, they did not want Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, to have a veto over their northern front as well. So, de-linking the two fronts became a very important quest for them.

The result is that when all this happened, the pager 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, what 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 Nasrallah did believe that he could have a limited front and that may have come to fruition. There, there was a, or there, 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, the Israelis saw an opportunity to put to use all the plans and all the, everything they 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 them with a sense of security. And that is now the big question, right? How do they do that? Because simply degrading Hezbollah is not enough. You need some kind of diplomatic settlement.

But I just hasten to point out diplomatic settlement is actually not enough. Had they reached a deal without addressing all these capacities of Hezbollah. Not in Beirut and everywhere else, but especially along the border in the South, what they're uncovering the last couple of days, or revealing the last couple of days, that would be crucial. Because we do see, you know, Nasrallah, let me back up, October 7th, the lesson Israelis 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 Nasrallah had been declaring for years, making very clear he intends the next war to be fought in Palestine, in the Galilee, in northern Israel. And preparing very actively for it.

They had dug tunnels cross border that were uncovered, hopefully all of them uncovered but they had also prepared a lot else. And some of it is now being exposed by the IDF along the southern border. And so Israelis took Nasrallah at his word, and saw his preparations and saw that his forces are more powerful than Hamas. And so therefore we were at a, in a corral 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 escalatory dynamic. Will the Israelis respond and what happens there? That's going to be hugely important.

Benjamin Wittes: So, Natan, what do we know about how successful the degradation has been? I mean, there were supposedly 150,000 missiles. As long as Hezbollah has a lot of missiles, it's a problem. Do we, we know there have been a lot of things that have gone boom in Lebanon. Not all of them have been people. What do we know about how seriously degraded Hezbollah is in the equipment and ordinance department, as opposed to in the human department?

Natan Sachs: Well, the two, of course, are linked because having the ordinance 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 shoot one rocket, you're also exposing your position. And so, you need to know what you're doing. And for that, the military command of Hezbollah 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, what has been destroyed. We do know that a lot has been targeted, and we've seen the intelligence infiltration of Hezbollah has 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 Hezbollah capacity in the southern border, the Radwan force, the famous Radwan force, and all of their installations. Israel 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 100,000 rockets, and that's extremely important. But Israel has been preoccupied with, for many years now, and it's called the “campaign between the wars” sometimes, is an attempt to thwart the supply of Hezbollah by Iran, mostly by Syria, not only. But also the manufacture by Hezbollah itself of precise munitions. And this, for the Israelis, would have been, and to a 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 a 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 has 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 the Israeli 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.

Benjamin Wittes: 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 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, to a lot of people's surprise, 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?

Natan Sachs: They're good questions, and as, which is to say that we don't know at the moment. This was a dramatic attack. There was some forewarning, like on April 12th, last time, 12th, or 13th, 14th, excuse me. That time about 300 projectiles of 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. It was, there was some forewarning, but it was much shorter. It seems to be over a hundred 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, throughout Israel. The very loud explosions were audible above Jerusalem and above many other places. But it seems that there was not, no damage on the ground.

There was a line crossed in April. It was the first time that we saw Iran attack Israel directly. They would always hide behind Lebanese, behind Palestinians, behind Iraqis sometimes, but this time it was Iran shooting, itself. That 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 for the 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 a 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. It may be 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, this really cannot be overstated, I think. The mood has been extremely dour. Israel, 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 on the northern border. And so a very, very dour mood and given the enormous failure of October 7th, which is just unequivocal, that added to that. Now this success, it’s truly remarkable success, string of successes in the north and the killing of Nasrallah, 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 a sense of omnipotence or a 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 kind of an overzealous, not overzealous, but self-assured, overly self-assured stance. It's important to remember, you know, as Firas was saying, Hezbollah 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 the Israeli 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, a response will come, and it should come but the question is what and how. It's an open question, and I think it's a very risky moment.

Benjamin Wittes: Finally, before I let you go, I just want to ask you to flesh out the domestic Israeli politics of this. For a long time after October 7th, Prime Minister Netanyahu was called dead man walking. Then he appeared to be dead man, you know, still walking and not keeling 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 in him. What are the chances that this perceived victory over Hezbollah will be perceived that way rather than as an interim tactical advantage in a fashion that turns the political fortunes of Bibi and his coalition.

Natan Sachs: So, a mixed answer to that. On the one hand, it is a very significant issue. So, this has been a major quote unquote victory. It's not a victory because nothing's over even remotely so, but this has been a major victory in that sense, in the Israeli mindset. And again, a sense of potency in 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 of being 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 underwater though, but rather from the weakness of his coalition in a putative election.

Let me explain. If elections were held, this coalition would probably lose. Although it's not clear anymore, he could probably draw today or he 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 what's been very apparent and 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, his political wizardry, but also, to be perfectly honest, a lack of shame. You know, shortly after October 7th, I think we spoke to, and you asked me, is he a dead man walking? I said, logic would say he's an ex-prime 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 smarter than me.

Benjamin Wittes: No, you were right!

Natan Sachs: Nigh. Yeah, the word is nigh.

Benjamin Wittes: It's just he was just on a slower time frame than you imagined.

Natan Sachs: So the title I suggested was nigh-ish. But I think nigh-ish expired, now it's 2025, that’s five years later. I was wrong and 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 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 moderate people in the Likud 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 Gideon Sa’ar, who had left his Likud party, Netanyahu's Likud 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.

And so 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 to say this 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.

Benjamin Wittes: All right. So, one actor we have not talked about yet is our own country. And it 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 Hezbollah 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 Nasrallah.

Scott Anderson: 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 Hezbollah along the northern front for fear of kicking off a kind of broader conflict. And it's worth noting that 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 de-link the North and the South is, is far lower. You know, implicit in the need to de-link the North and the South is skepticism of the idea that there is 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 and Israelis were operating from, is my suspicion.

Regardless we know that at least the time of the pager operation, it did not seem like the United States was on board with kicking that off. Again, very limited advance notice. Amos Hochstein, who has 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 NSC for Middle East issues have been kind of the point people on this with Amos focusing on the north. He was in Israel, supposedly got kind of noticed as it was happening, essentially.

Since then, the reporting we got, and we saw a Politico article this morning, said that essentially the White House people, Brett and Amos, were, have kind of been won over to some extent, to some limit degree, or at least had come to terms with Israel's determination to push, put more military pressure on Hezbollah. And had to some extent signed off on that, but had been still been urging some degree of restraint. They didn't want, well, they thought, they accepted that some military pressure might be advantageous. And the Politico article pointed to there being dissent on this point from within the military, the U.S. military and within the State Department.

Nonetheless, the White House appeared to have kind of conceded that point to the Israelis, but at least if they're going to go forward with it, but then do instead put pressure on them to say, but if you're going to do this do it in a limited way. We don't want to do, see a much broader operation, particularly a concerted or ground operation. I believe it was the same article also pointed out that the Israelis had said no, the only ground operation we're going to do is extremely limited, extremely 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 this sort of picture.

So long and short of it, I think the Americans are kind of stuck in a difficult position. The Israelis have decided they're going to do this. The Americans say, well, we can, we don't see outright opposing you publicly as being a very effective way to shape your policy moving forward if you've decided to do this. So essentially, they are saying, or at least how I would interpret it 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 are going about it.

I will say killing Hassan Nasrallah, probably not a sign that that's going super well from the American perspective, because it's hard to imagine something more escalatory than that. We'll see what 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 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 100 percent the Israelis 100 percent know what it's going to look like or what their objectives are. If they're just trying to eliminate on the border weapons stores, maybe that's something they can do in a 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, maybe elsewhere as well. So, it's a bit, a lot of open questions here.

My strong suspicion, and I don't think you have to read between the lines too much on President Biden's remarks on this and other administration's remarks on this, is that they, they're not very happy this is happening, even if they accept it and aren't willing to kind of publicly rebuke Israel over it. But they are intent on trying to keep it from escalating further. That's been their objective since October 8th is to kind of try and kind of prevent northern Israel into conflicts, just spiraling into broader regional conflict, which is a real possibility and that we are closer to now than we've been at any point in the last year.

Benjamin Wittes: 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, rah-rah, you know, can't we tamp this down now. Whereas the Israelis obviously want a 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?

Scott Anderson: That's my suspicion. The fact that 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 restraint mechanisms. But this is a difference. I mean, that was in response to action Israel had itself, not that it had 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 further at that point could be persuaded upon them now. Particularly if Iran stops at this point, right? Like if this was a one-time barrage and then stops, pauses, even as Israeli operations continue in Lebanon, then Israel has to ask itself, like, to what extent do we want to open up another front? But I, you know, I think that's probably like the, I would put 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 or address. So, you know, the real question is what are the targets available? How broad a 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. I suspect 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 and see.

Benjamin Wittes: 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 Lawfare 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 force that is attacking you. Hezbollah has been attacking Israel since October 7th. Israel has been attacking back. There's no rule that says you're not allowed to escalate. And so, there's a series of questions with each 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?

Scott Anderson: I mean, there is an underlying question, which is to say, is, does Israel consider itself at war with Hezbollah? Is it in a non-international armed conflict with Hezbollah? 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 or imminent threat against them.

My suspicion Israel does consider itself at war with Hezbollah. 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 or 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 certainly see a basis to say these are, seem like in so far as you're targeting leadership and you're doing so in a proportional way, in a way advances-

Benjamin Wittes: And weapons.

Scott Anderson: And weapons, and fighting personnel, lawful targets. You know, as we discussed last time, I think there are legitimate questions to be raised about the pager operation and other operations depending on if you have more information about how they're being used to extent they're in civilian hands. But, those questions aside, foundationally, the basic, there isn't too big doubt that there is a military target at the root of at least a lot of these operations.

It's different for Iran. It's worth noting. I mean, here is a case where Iran really is launching a reprisal, an unlawful attack, because Israel hasn't attacked Iran directly. You do have the Ismail Haniyeh 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. Would Iran, could Iran make a self defense claim? Yeah, ironically, especially if it embraced the very broad conception of self-defense that Israel and 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 and the United States seem to accept 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 Hezbollah there, which are not part of Iran. Yes, Iranian officials have been injured and hurt in those attacks. Yes, there was attacks in Syria that targeted obviously the Iranian consulate way back in April or before the April attacks, a couple other targets. So, there's little threads you could pull on, but as a whole, if this really isn't a response to what Israel is doing to Hezbollah, Iran doesn't have a self defense claim, doesn't have any other international legal game for pursuing that.

Benjamin Wittes: 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.

Scott Anderson: Yes, in their rhetoric. I, we'll have to wait and see. Iran does file Article 51 letters, right? We, 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 pager operation. So I think there will be an effort to make a self defense claim. I don't think anyone's going to find it that colorable.

Benjamin Wittes: And what about Israel's response? Obviously, we don't know what it is, so this becomes hypothetical, but I assume Israel would have a reasonably cogent self-defense claim in responding to military architecture in Iran, assuming, again, that these were lawful targets in response to a barrage of 150 missiles or whatever it was.

Scott Anderson: 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, Israel, excuse me, is operating under the jus ad bellum kind of self-defense legal framework, then in theory, it should be taking steps only where they are linked to stopping an imminent attack, right? So they really legitimately think Iran has stopped doing things like this, then their argument for self-defense will be weaker, right? If these were the last 100 missiles Iran had, and there's no further risk to Israel, then actually it would be more of a reprisal to responding.

Realistically though, both because of the broad conception of self-defense Israel has historically 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 basis of self-defense actions, which is what you expect in an outside of the full armed conflict context. And it's going to start taking more proactive action.

A lot of what Israel has already done in the region looks like that. It's hard to figure out to segregate it because, again, of this broad conception of self defense. 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.

Benjamin Wittes: We are going to leave it there. Scott R. Anderson, Natan Sachs, Firas Maksad. Thank you all for joining us today.

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