The information the Israel Defense Forces revealed about Hezbollah's precision missile program is unusual by any measure. It includes details like names, documents, locations and operational plans that would only be known to a select number of people, and as such, tells us just how deeply Israeli intelligence has managed to infiltrate Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons. It also provides a sense of the kind of additional information that Israel may have but has chosen not to make public at this time.
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The details exposed by the IDF follow additional information revealed on Tuesday, first by the British newspaper The Times and later by Israeli media outlets, regarding the target, which according to foreign reports, was attacked on Sunday around 2:10 a.m. in Beirut. Until that very moment, Hezbollah had played dumb, claiming the target had been a negligible media center, which it said had only sustained light damages. The reports revealed that what had been targeted was, in fact, unique equipment manufactured for the terrorist organization in Iran, and was supposed to be used for the serial production of long-range precision-guided rockets on Lebanese soil.
These reports are the height of an impressive public diplomacy campaign being led in recent days by IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis, whose main focus is to ensure the public and international debate on the attacks focuses not on Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's assertion that this was a case of as Israeli aggression and Hezbollah's response, but rather that Hezbollah's actions could lead both sides to war.
It's no secret that Hezbollah is trying to acquire precision weapons that will allow it to strike any location in Israel and present an unprecedented threat to day-to-day life. This threat has been the basis of hundreds of Israeli Air Force attacks on Syria, along with other actions, in recent years that have succeeded in almost entirely preventing the transfer of precision-guided missiles to Lebanon. As a result, Hezbollah switched to efforts to convert old rockets into advanced precision-guided missiles on Lebanese soil and now to efforts to manufacture the missiles from start to finish entirely by themselves.
This presents an operational, technological and economic challenge for Hezbollah of the first degree, and as such is being carried out under the close watch of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Israel has kept a close watch on these efforts and has now begun to take action. By claiming Israel is the one who violated the status quo between the sides when it attacked Lebanon, Nasrallah has turned the situation on its head: Hezbollah is, in fact, the one who broke the rules. Israel, if reports attributing the drone attack to Jerusalem are correct, acted in a limited manner, in order to avoid a larger operation in the future.
The series of reports, which will obviously continue to come out, serve to expose the sites where the missiles are being converted to precision weapons, three of which were revealed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his speech to the UN General Assembly last year, are aimed at exposing the extent of Nasrallah's lies. They are also aimed at making Lebanon's citizens and government wonder what exactly Hezbollah is doing right under their noses and how likely the terrorist organization's activities are to bring disaster upon the country and spur Western governments to act before it's too late. But beyond that, these efforts are also aimed at explaining to Israel's citizens what exactly it is we are up against, should a series of events now be triggered that snowball into a large-scale campaign.
The hope in Israel is that this onslaught of information will also limit the retaliatory attack that Nasrallah has promised by the end of this week and, more importantly, will force him, as well as Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani, to chart a new course. It is not just the exposure of the minute details of their actions that should embarrass them, but what that exposure implies: This week, Israel made it clear that Hezbollah's possession of precision-guided missiles in Lebanon is a red line, one it is not willing to compromise on, even if the price of this determination is war.
This now puts the ball back in Nasrallah's court. If Israel is determined to convey this message, the Shiite organization will not find itself in possession of large quantities of precision-guided missiles. Nasrallah must decide whether this goal – which he will not achieve – is enough to justify dragging his organization and Lebanon into a war, or whether it would be wiser to fold on the matter for the time being and lower the flames. While Nasrallah will likely prefer the latter option, Hezbollah will still aspire to have its revenge, in the form of an attack on Israel.
Still, Hezbollah and Iran will not change who they are, and the missile challenge – and the price of war as a result – will continue to present a problem for Israel in the foreseeable future.
