Israel’s recent airstrikes in Lebanon destroyed about half of the missiles and rockets that Hezbollah had accumulated over more than three decades, dealing a blow to the militia’s capabilities, according to senior Israeli and American officials.
But the group’s arsenal remains formidable, with tens of thousands of projectiles across the country, and large barrages could overwhelm Israel’s “Iron Dome” anti-projectile defense system, the officials said.
Hezbollah scattered its weapons across Lebanon — the country is “peppered” with them, one Israeli official said — and has been using them since last October to fire mainly into northern Israel.
Israel had been making strikes in southern Lebanon, forcing tens of thousands of Lebanese to flee. But Israeli leaders decided around Sept. 17 to destroy as much of the arsenal as possible, so that the 60,000 or so Israelis who had fled northern Israel because of the persistent fire could return, two Israeli officials said. The Israeli Air Force began devastating strikes the next week.
Hezbollah, with help from Iran, took three decades to build up most of its stockpile, estimated to be anywhere from 120,000 to 200,000 projectiles. After the initial attacks, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, asked Iran and Syria to replenish the arsenal, the Israeli officials and an American official said. That contributed to Israel’s decision to try to kill Mr. Nasrallah.
Since Mr. Nasrallah’s killing last Friday, Lebanese officials have heeded Israel’s demands to turn away Iranian planes trying to fly into Beirut, complicating Hezbollah’s effort to get additional arms quickly, American officials say.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military said it had killed the Hezbollah commander in charge of arms transfers from Iran to Lebanon, Muhammad Jaafar Qasir, in an airstrike in Beirut.
U.S. officials say Hezbollah’s attacks on northern Israel, which began the day after Hamas carried out its devastating Oct. 7 assault in southern Israel, were an answer to Israel’s war in Gaza. They said that Hezbollah might have stopped if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, had agreed to a cease-fire.
But the United States, Qatar and Egypt have failed to get a Gaza cease-fire agreement in place after many rounds of diplomacy this year.
On Monday, Israel began ground operations in Lebanon. Officials said Israeli troops plan to destroy Hezbollah missile caches and launch vehicles.
The two Israeli officials say they intend to continue targeting Hezbollah’s arsenal and killing the group’s commanders while they have momentum. White House officials have said they hope the ground incursion is limited, and President Biden’s has made calls for a cease-fire from both sides. Hundreds of Lebanese civilians have been killed in Israeli strikes, and one million have been displaced.
“We are determined to return our residents in the north to their homes safely,” Mr. Netanyahu said on Tuesday.
Despite the sizable arsenal of missiles and rockets that Hezbollah still maintains, its fighters have not fired a huge number into central Israel.
American officials say one reason is that a series of Israeli attacks, culminating last Friday in the airstrike that killed Mr. Nasrallah outside Beirut, have severely damaged the group’s command-and-control structure, leaving few senior people to give orders to lower-level fighters.
The group could also be waiting for a signal from Iranian officials, who had helped build up the arsenal as a deterrent against any possible Israeli assault on Iran, officials say. If Hezbollah uses up most of the rest of its arsenal and is not able to replenish it, that deterrent disappears.
And Hezbollah might prefer for Iran itself to retaliate, with its much more potent arsenal. In April, Iran fired more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel in retaliation for a deadly attack on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria. Israel, the United States and partner nations in the region shot down almost all of those.
On Tuesday night in the Middle East, the Iranian military fired ballistic missiles at Israel. Air raid sirens sounded across the country, and residents saw defensive interceptor missiles flying through the skies. American officials had warned earlier that day that Iran was planning to retaliate for Mr. Nasrallah’s killing with a missile strike on Israel.
Some Israeli and American officials also said they thought Israel had successfully established deterrence with Iran through a strike that Israel carried out after that April barrage from Iran. In the follow-up assault, Israel damaged one or more S-300 antiaircraft batteries that the Iranian military had placed around the ancient city of Isfahan, American officials said.
Such a strike, coupled with the Israeli assassination in July of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, while he was in Tehran for a state funeral, showed that Israel could attack in the heart of Iran — and possibly kill Iranian leaders.
Some American officials stress that the top ranks of Hezbollah have been crippled by the sudden Israeli campaign. Its leadership has been decimated, not just by the killing of Mr. Nasrallah, but also by the pager explosions and other attacks that killed and injured top and midlevel leaders over the last three weeks.
The entire special operations command of Hezbollah, known as the Radwan Force, was wiped out in the Sept. 20 airstrike that killed Ibrahim Aqeel, who was effectively Hezbollah’s chief of military operations, in a southern suburb of Beirut, American officials say.
On Monday, Naim Qassem, the acting leader of Hezbollah after Mr. Nasrallah’s death, said contingency plans had been in place to ensure alternate commanders could step up if anything happened to the group’s leaders.
The heaviest recent wave of Israeli airstrikes hit 1,300 targets on Sept. 23, including sites with long-range cruise missiles, heavy rockets and drones, said Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman.
Still, American officials say it is an open question if Israel’s operations can be turned into a strategic gain. How long Israel remains in southern Lebanon, how deeply Iran engages in counterattacks, what Hezbollah does to respond and what political forces seize influence in Beirut will all be a factor in the long-term outcome.
Israel carried out a violent and failed occupation of Lebanon from 1982 to 2000, one that gave birth to Hezbollah.
Some American officials view the situation, particularly over the long term, with skepticism. They do not believe a military campaign in Lebanon can set back Hezbollah for long.
The group has a tunnel infrastructure that is impossible to destroy absent a long-term presence in the country, which Israeli officials say they are reluctant to reoccupy. The tunnels are dug deep into the rock under southern Lebanon and are difficult to hit with airstrikes. Parts of the network are big enough for large military equipment to move through.
These more pessimistic American officials say that even if Mr. Nasrallah was a singular and charismatic leader, the midlevel and even senior military commanders will be more easily replaced.
While Mr. Nasrallah appeared to have become wary about ordering big attacks on Israel after the widespread destruction in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, a new leader might not have the same sense of caution.
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