IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said the army is preparing for a possible ground offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon, telling soldiers: “Your boots will enter enemy territory. You can hear the planes above us, we are attacking non-stop all day. We are preparing the ground for your possible entry into Lebanon and continuously striking Hezbollah,” Halevi told members of the 7th Armored Brigade during a drill simulating a ground offensive in Lebanon. “Hezbollah has expanded the radius of its attacks today. It will receive a very strong response by the end of the day,” he promised, referring to the terrorist group’s missile launch toward central Israel this morning. “We will not stop today. We will continue to attack and strike wherever necessary. Our goal is clear: to return the residents of the north to safety and for that, we are preparing the ground offensive,” Halevi continued. The senior officer then added: “Your military boots will enter enemy territory, into villages that Hezbollah has fortified as large military bases, with underground infrastructure, staging points and launch pads positioned to attack Israeli civilians.” Finally, he concluded: “When you enter those places and confront Hezbollah fighters, you will show them what it means to face a professional, highly trained and experienced force. You will come in with much more strength and preparation than they do. You will go in, you will annihilate the enemy and destroy their infrastructure. This is what will allow us to bring the residents of the north back to safety.”
Hezbollah and Iran at the Crossroads
The situation escalated after sirens sounded in Tel Aviv and Gush Dan around 6:30 this morning. Minutes later, sirens were also activated in the Sharon area, including Netanya, where a siren sounded for the first time since the war began, and in Haifa and the Krayot (a group of four small towns and two neighborhoods in Haifa). At least five launches were identified over Zikhron Ya’akov during the morning, with one rocket landing near Bat Shlomo. Sirens were also heard in the north, with a rocket hitting Tzfat. First responders were called to the scene. Hezbollah later claimed responsibility for the operation, announcing that “a Qader 1-type ballistic missile was launched against the Mossad headquarters, responsible for the explosions of pagers and the killing of senior officials of the organization.” Now that the Israelis are preparing for the ground operation, what can Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah, do? But above all, what decisions will Iran make? We asked strategic analyst Virgilio Lo Presti: “Israel has an army set up to engage in short, high-intensity wars. It is likely that it is now using this peculiarity. If carried through to the end, a war of this type will deplete Hezbollah of much of its resources. But if Hezbollah loses its missile capacity, it will lose the very reason why – through rivers of money – Iran built it. Hezbollah was imagined as an advanced deterrent force against the Jewish state: if Israel were to attack Tehran, Hezbollah would be ready to attack Tel Aviv from a few kilometers away; for a country without an air force, like Iran, Hezbollah is a tool that allows for irreplaceable strategic depth. If Nasrallah decides that Hezbollah cannot “back out” of the conflict with Israel, it is very likely that this will mean the destruction of a large part of its arsenal and therefore the loss of the strategic depth that Iran has worked so hard to build over the last 20 years. Either Hezbollah steps back and maintains its function of “remote defense” of Iran or it continues the conflict but ceases to be a shield for the Ayatollah regime. The salary of a Hezbollah militant is about 1,300 dollars a month, a dizzying sum in today’s disaster-stricken Lebanon. This money comes from Iran, so it will be those who hold the purse strings who will decide between the two choices. The decision will probably be made in Tehran, not in Beirut.
Finally, as we write, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a short video statement in Hebrew on the campaign in Lebanon. “I cannot describe in detail everything we are doing, but I can tell you one thing: We are determined to bring our residents in the north home safely. We are dealing blows to Hezbollah that it never imagined. We are doing it with force and with trickery. I promise you one thing: we will not stop until they come home,” Netanyahu said.
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