Hezbollah's conduct in recent months shows it has changed its policy and an attempt to alter the rules of the game that have been in place since the 2006 Second Lebanon War, a former senior IDF intelligence officer tells Israel Hayom, adding that this suggests the Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has received a green light from Iran to shift gears from force buildup to a war-preparedness posture.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
The officer, Col (res.) Ronen Cohen has been following Hezbollah for the past 40 years. He notes that "it doesn't mean that war will break out tomorrow morning, but the northern border could gradually become a fighting theater that is very similar to what the Security Zone in Southern Lebanon was before the IDF withdrew in 2000." According to Ronen, such a reality "could start from events, such as what has recently unfolded on the northern border – the pitching of tents, the firing of anti-tank missiles, and the infiltration into the Israeli heartland to place a bomb on a major road – and it could then intensify."
Cohen, who is concerned over recent developments, says that decision-makers should pay attention to his sounding of the alarm, as someone who has gotten to know the Shiite terrorist organization since the 1980s, when it was still in its infancy.
According to Cohen, the biggest problem facing the IDF in the event of a flare-up with Hezbollah is not the thousands of rockets it could fire but the "infiltration of the Radwan [elite] forces into Israel and occupying areas until hostilities end, with the IDF struggling to reclaim them before the ceasefire clock strikes." He warns that if Hezbollah fighters remain there, this would "pose a serious strategic predicament for Israel."
Video: Hezbollah filming IDF chief Halevi touring the northern border
Unlike most of the IDF top brass, Cohen's days in uniform include the period when the IDF was still deployed in southern Lebanon, where clashes with Hezbollah terrorists in the Security Zone were a daily occurrence. Over time, in his various roles in the military, Cohen got to know the terrorist organization's modus operandi. As a senior officer in the IDF Intelligence Directorate Military Research Division, he knows how to pick up the various nuances in Hezbollah's speeches, having served as the head of the analysis department for the organization and the deputy commander of the Research Division.
Cohen, who has continued to follow the organization even after his discharge, believes that its recent shift in behavior reflects a realization on the part of the Iranian regime that it is closer than ever to achieving nuclear capabilities and that the US has not been using its leverage to stop its progress.
"Iran sees Hezbollah as its forward operating base against Israel, and has quickly learned the most important lesson of the Second Lebanon War – namely, that it must not let Hezbollah expend its arsenal on tactical matters but rather save it for the day when Iran becomes nuclear," he warns.
Thus, he adds, the policy Iran has subscribed to seeks to avoid an escalation along the border with Israel so that there is no "deterioration into a war, so that the weapon systems get saved for the Day of Judgment."
For some 17 years since the Second Lebanon War, the security establishment has held the view that the blows inflicted on Lebanon during the conflict created a strong deterrent effect on Nasrallah that has remained seared into his memory. But Cohen believes that it is just convenient for Israel to portray Nasrallah's lack of interest in a conflagration as deterrence, saying that in reality, the deterrence on the organization is – to a much larger extent – a product of Iran's wrath following that war.
"After the Second Lebanon War, Iran was outraged and Nasrallah got a spanking because he triggered the war; they almost 'fired' him," Cohen says.
"After the war, the Iranian money was prioritized toward rebuilding Hezbollah, and only then to rebuilding Lebanon. This is the reason that even when we take forceful measures, it doesn't respond. Hezbollah is deterred much more from Iran than from us," he notes, adding that this has gradually changed as Iran has gotten more confident and turned into a nuclear-threshold state, to the point that it appears to have given Hezbollah a green light to prepare for war.
According to Cohen, Iran used to keep "Nasrallah on a tight leash," but now that they have loosened the grip and have likely instructed him to prepare for war "this is a transition from force buildup to actual preparations for war; the Iranians are now on the cusp of being nuclear and are telling him that he should prepare for war, even if this takes him six months or a year."
Cohen says that "slowly but surely, we could creep into a situation where we have an attrition war on the northern border, much like we had during the years of the Security Zone. This will allow Hezbollah a much easier path to enter a war." He cautions that "this won't happen now, but it's a matter of time; I can't recall such a complex picture in recent years involving so many multiple theaters: Golan Heights, Hamas, Gaza, and Judea and Samaria." He adds that alongside the changes in the military dimension, Nasrallah is working on establishing a justifiable narrative for what is happening on the northern border for domestic Lebanese and intra-Arab consumption, portraying it as a battle to reclaim land usurped by Israel in its founding.
Cohen claims that "Nasrallah wants to change the reality on the border and is preparing for the implementation of the next phase in the organization's charter: reclaiming the land Israel took in 1948." He adds, "It's hardly a coincidence that he has been mentioning the border in his recent speeches."
Israel's enemies are keeping a watchful eye on what is unfolding domestically, but "even if the protests end and things calm down in Israel, the strategic change Hezbollah has been pursuing with Iran transcends this; the internal Israeli protests [over the judicial reform] may have been a catalyst but they are just the icing on the cake."
As for the nature of the next war against Hezbollah, Cohen says, "Ostensibly, the threats of sending the Radwan Force to capture Israeli territory are just complimentary to the missile fire, but this is not the case." He explains: "Let's think about how the next war ends; since the end of the big-war era in the 1980s, we have become used to flare-ups without victors. The most recent conflagrations in Gaza ended thanks to Egyptian mediation when Israel is begging Hamas to accept several terms. When we wanted to reach a decisive victory in the Second Lebanon War, we couldn't. But there is a big difference between finishing off a war with your troops on enemy territory and ending it the other way around. There has never been a situation in which a guerrilla group managed to conquer Israeli territory, definitely not that of a Western power like Israel.
"You can't rule out a situation in which the next war ends while Hezbollah is holding on to territory, after killing and injuring Israelis, as well as kidnapping some, including some from the border towns. This is a completely new ballgame. It is not just a tactical matter, it is strategic. Nasrallah believes that if he will have Hezbollah fighters on Israeli territory when the war ends, he will be able to have Israel enter talks over the redrawing of the international border."
Learning from the Egyptian model
Israel has to learn how Egypt entered the 1973 Yom Kippur War, he insists. "Then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and his military chief Saad el-Shazly had made sure Israel got used to having Egyptian forces deployed along the canal so that when the order came to cross it would be easy to launch an offensive, and indeed the commando did just that. This model is very much in line with Hezbollah's conduct today," Cohen notes.
"You have to take Nasrallah's words at face value, as the years have shown that he tells the truth; he likes to have the ability to tell Israel 'I told you so'," Cohen says. "This was the case with the abduction of soldiers and other matters."
Cohen says that despite the fact that the Israeli public has been told many times that Hezbollah has tens of thousands of rockets and precision-guided munitions, the problem that Israel would face in the event of a flare-up is the ground maneuvers of the Shiite fighters.
Hezbollah can surprise Israel
The IDF is fully aware of the threat that is developing and in recent years has been building a barrier along the border to prevent an invasion by the Radwan Force. But as we have already seen, Hezbollah knows how to surprise Israel and have its people cross the border – as demonstrated by the recent would-be attacker that infiltrated and made it all the way to the Jezreel Valley with a bomb before trying to return to Lebanon.
Today's IDF – rank and file, as well as senior staff – don't know Lebanon; they did not fight there. I am not dismissing the special forces, but the situation among the ground forces is not great, as we have recently seen during the cross-border attack from Egypt. I don't think we will succeed in repelling the Radwan Force within two or three weeks. Our military may not be prepared for that."
Cohen, based only on his own assessment and not on any intelligence, is not ruling out a scenario in which Hezbollah operatives have already carried out some cross-border raids to learn the terrain and set up positions for snipers and anti-tank launchers, or may have also placed IEDs underground that would be activated when war erupts.
"This is only my assessment," he notes. "In light of the tunnels that Hezbollah was found to have dug toward Israel, and the terrorist who managed to make it all the way to Megiddo using an electric bike while carrying an IED – I can't rule out the possibility that they have already made preparations inside Israel. I am a veteran of Lebanon. I remember their frightened squads after they crossed."
High combat worthiness
Cohen explains that When an Israeli soldier crosses into Lebanon for the first time, he also exhibits shock because he is not familiar with the lay of the land, but now we have had someone cross into Lebanon and make his way deep into Israeli territory and then, as if it was an afterthought, felt confident enough to make his way back home. They feel safe on our territory and I assess that they are well prepared for perpetrating an attack."
Cohen hopes this warning will be heeded by Israeli leaders. "Those who have not served in Lebanon like my generation, are not fully aware of the stakes. The more remote this era becomes, the IDF's ability to deal with Hezbollah gets further eroded. This has been demonstrated in 2006, but things are much worse today."
"That is why there is a risk that Hezbollah's maneuver will succeed. The period that precedes the war could see a whole host of events take place, to the point that guerrilla warfare takes place along the border, and with Hezbollah no longer worried about the situation escalating into a full-fledged conflict," he concludes.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
