- Here’s what we know about what a Hezbollah counter-attack against Israel could look like
As Israel hits Hezbollah targets in Lebanon with heavy airstrikes, killing more than 500 people in Lebanon’s deadliest day in decades, the UN and other international voices have warned of “all-out” catastrophe if the conflict continues.
The violence has forced thousands of people to flee and follows thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by members of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah exploding last week — an attack widely blamed on Israel — which has not confirmed or denied responsibility.
On Friday, an Israeli airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs targeting senior Hezbollah commanders killed 45 people, according to the Lebanese health ministry. Hezbollah said 16 members of the group were among the dead, including senior leader Ibrahim Aqil and another commander, Ahmed Wahbi.
Hezbollah is expected to respond to the attacks, though exactly what that would look like is impossible to say for sure.
The group says it wants to avoid all-out conflict and that only an end to the war in Gaza will stop the fighting.
Thousands of people are fleeing southern Lebanon for safety amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes. Source: EPA / Wael Hamzeh
Hezbollah is seen as a proxy of Iran, an enemy of Israel. It’s unlikely Iran would want to involve itself directly in the conflict, experts say.
Here’s what we know about Hezbollah’s military capacity to respond to Israel.
How big is Hezbollah’s arsenal?
The group has upwards of 150,000 missiles and rockets, according to the World Factbook of the US Central Intelligence Agency.
Hezbollah says it has rockets that can hit all areas of Israel. Many are unguided, but it also has precision missiles, drones and anti-tank, anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles.
Many of its weapons are Iranian, Russian or Chinese models.
How many troops it has is unclear, but in 2021 Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the group had 100,000 fighters. The CIA World Factbook says it was estimated in 2022 to have up to 45,000 fighters, roughly 20,000 of them full-time.
People gather in front of a damaged building after the strike in Beirut. Source: AAP / Wael Hamzeh/EPA
The past week has shown “the superiority of Israel’s army”, Martin Kear, lecturer in international relations at the University of Sydney, told SBS News.
“At best Hezbollah is a well-trained and well-armed militia, which is fundamentally different from the sophisticated training and equipment of the Israeli defence force,” he said.
“We’re seeing now the aerial superiority of the Israeli defence force, and also the ability of (Israeli intelligence agency) Mossad to infiltrate Hezbollah, and the depth of the intelligence that’s being gathered by Israel on Hezbollah’s top commanders”.
Sally Totman is a specialist in Middle East politics and head of Charles Sturt University’s School of Social Work and Arts.
She said “No-one knows at this point” when asked about the real scale of Hezbollah’s operation and what it might do.
“I don’t think Israel’s got a good handle on what Hezbollah’s capability is and anyone who says they know is probably not telling the truth.”
What is Hezbollah and what is its conflict with Israel?
Hezbollah is a Lebanese Islamist political party and militant group formed in 1982 after Israeli forces invaded southern Lebanon that year. It leads a multi-party alliance that holds just under half the seats in Lebanon’s parliament.
Hezbollah is listed as a terrorist organisation by countries including Australia, the US, Israel, Germany and the UK. The European Union lists only its military wing as a terrorist organisation.
However, Hezbollah itself makes no distinction between its political and military wings.
Israel and Lebanon have most recently been firing missiles at each other since Israel started its bombardment of Gaza following Hamas’ attacks on southern Israel on October 7.
Hezbollah fought Israel in 2006, launching rockets into northern Israel and engaging Israel Defence Forces soldiers in southern Lebanon and northern Israel.
The month-long war killed 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 158 Israelis, predominantly soldiers.
Asked on Monday about a possible Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon, Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said “we will do whatever is needed” in order to return evacuated residents of northern Israel to their homes safely, a war priority for the Israeli government.
An estimated 60,000 people have been evacuated from towns and cities in northern Israel because of rocket fire from Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon over the past 11 months.
How is Iran linked to Hezbollah?
Hezbollah and Palestinian militant group Hamas are both backed by Iran. Hezbollah has its roots in the Shia branch of Islam, which is predominant in Iran, while Hamas is a mainly Sunni Muslim group.
In April, Iran launched 300 missiles at Israeli territory in response to the killing of two top officials.
Iran accused Israel of destroying Iran’s embassy in Syria, and killing senior Hamas commander Ismail Haniyeh in Iran.
Israel has not confirmed it killed Haniyeh.
Kear said rockets launched by Hezbollah, and likely supplied by Iran, have failed to have a real destructive impact on Israel and are being destroyed by its Iron Dome defence system.
“Israel’s strikes are showing how impotent both Hezbollah and Iran are at genuinely striking back at Israel for any tit-for-tat strikes. Hezbollah has launched over a hundred warheads, but they’re rockets, not sophisticated missiles, and they’re easily taken out by Israel,” he said.
Simon Pratt, a political science expert at the University of Melbourne, told SBS News that it’s unlikely that Iran would want to directly enter the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
“Iran would probably prefer to stay under this and let its proxies handle the hard lifting and the heavy lifting,” he said.
“This is because Iran can’t really contribute much to this and is at significant risk if it enters the fray.”
What could a Hezbollah counter-attack look like?
Pratt said Hezbollah has so far avoided firing its rockets at the centre of Israel but it’s possible it could start doing so.
“The repeated strikes on Hezbollah’s elite Red Wing commanders have certainly degraded its capacity to coordinate complex ground operations and deal with a ground invasion of Israeli troops, but it still remains a pretty serious threat to Israel,” he said.
“Should Hezbollah respond to escalation with escalation, I think things are going to get pretty dangerous for all of Israel and much of Lebanon”.
Iran’s president said on Monday that Israel is trying to provoke a larger war, warning of its “irreversible” consequences.
‘On the brink’ of war or ‘saving face’? The events that lead to Iran’s attack on Israel
Masoud Pezeshkian, speaking to journalists at the United Nations General Assembly, said: “We do not wish to be the cause of instability in the Middle East as its consequences would be irreversible.”
Pratt said it could be that attacks in recent days are “the opening steps to an escalation of low-level possibilities into a war that’s much harder and more intense”.
“We’ll see this happen pretty soon.”
“Either Hezbollah responds with a major escalation, or it kind of steps back and says, ‘we’ll respond to this at a time and place of our choosing and tries to keep things going as they are'”.
Kear said the conflict looks unlikely to end soon, because Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will want to inflict further damage on Hezbollah and Iran.
“The more Hezbollah feels humiliated, the more it gets backed into a corner, the more likely it is the response is very dramatic,” he said.
“So it depends how much it’s willing to stand.”
With additional reporting by SBS, Reuters
