Iran Preparing for ‘Imminent’ Missile Attack on Israel, US Official Warns

Iran is reportedly preparing to “imminently” launch a ballistic missile attack on Israel, according to a senior US administration official, AP reported, as Israel began what it called a “limited” ground incursion into southern Lebanon.

The unnamed official, also warned Tuesday, of “severe consequences” should it take place with Washington having earlier offered its full support for Israel and warning Iran that the US will get involved if it attacks Israel directly.

The warning also comes as the US embassy in Israel has told its employees and their family members in Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza to shelter in place “until further notice”.

The US has has gone from hollow declarations of “wanting a ceasefire” – while simultaneously supplying the Israelis with billions of dollars, sending more advanced weaponry, military hardware and troops to the region – to full support for Israel following of Israeli bombardment as the much-predicted war between Israel and Hezbollah broke out.

While Israel says the invasion is limited, analysts say this so-called limited invasion could be an attempt by the Israelis to test the strength of Hezbollah’s forces in preparation for a comprehensive ground invasion.

Omar Rahman, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, told Al Jazeera that Israel’s deployment of a limited number of special forces soldiers inside southern Lebanon “makes perfect sense” for the moment, and ahead of a possible full-scale ground invasion.

“Obviously, Israel would be making a fatal mistake to send in, at the start, a massive ground invasion given what has happened in the past fighting Hezbollah,” he explained.

Rahman said Israel started with its bombardment of the south, then sent in special forces which was an “expeditionary force to probe and see the landscape, see the level of Hezbollah resistance that remains”.

Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and 2006 and was forced to withdraw from its self-declared “security zone” in 2000, which it established in southern Lebanon, following repeated attacks by Hezbollah in a years’-long attritional war.

Weakening Hezbollah over the last few weeks has been an Israeli objective and one it has successfully carried out with its blanket bombing of southern Lebanon, Beirut and the Bekaa Valley, as well as its pager and walkie talkie attacks on Hezbollah operatives when the communication devices were loaded with explosives, killing dozens and injuring many more, including civilians.

Israel’s bombing campaign has killed well over 1,000 Lebanese and injured many more. More than a million Lebanese and Syrian refugees have been displaced, with over 100,000 Lebanese and Syrian refugees fleeing over the border into Syria.

Many of the displaced are sleeping on the streets in Beirut and relying on locals for food leading to the UN launching an urgent humanitarian appeal.

Not only has Hezbollah suffered significant military setbacks in these attacks but it has also been psychologically affected with the loss of many of its leaders and the sophisticated infiltration of its communication devices leaving fighters struggling to communicate and fearful of being blown up in any follow-up explosions.

Israel has also assassinated several other leaders from various Palestinian factions in Lebanon, including Hamas, Fatah and the Palestine Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

However, Israel may be getting overly confident in being able to defeat the resistance organisation which, unlike Israel, sees its fight as a long-term strategy and not the quick, hard war Israel wants.

Israel’s blitz campaign has emboldened its military and political leadership with premier Benjamin Netanyahu’s popularity rising, giving him a welcome respite from his unpopularity over the Gaza war and his inability and unwillingness to secure the release of the remaining Israeli hostages trapped in Gaza’s tunnels – as well as the corruption charges he is facing.

Netanyahu has now moved his war goals for Lebanon from beyond enabling the 60,000 displaced Israelis to return to their homes in the north, to driving Hezbollah beyond the Litani River and destroying the organisation completely – much as he vowed that the Gaza war wouldn’t end until Hamas was likewise completely destroyed – an unlikely scenario in both cases according to many.

The Jewish state is now fighting on several fronts, Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen with the Israeli Air Force also carrying out several attacks on Yemen.

Israel’s confidence has been further boosted by the US promising to back it militarily if Iran retaliates. It’s doubtful it would have taken this all on without Washington’s military, economic and political backing.

One of the big questions now is how Hezbollah will respond to Israel as it continues to fire rockets into northern Israel despite its serious losses.

Elijah Magnier, a military analyst based in Brussels, told Al Jazeera that Israeli attacks in Lebanon had injured thousands of Hezbollah operatives, reducing the group’s combat effectiveness.

“There are thousands of Hezbollah operatives who’ve lost their hands or their eyesight, and they’ve been evacuated to hospitals in Syria and Iran.

“Therefore, these fighters are out of the equation and can no longer participate in any potential war,” he said.

Magnier also said that at least 3,000 to 3,500 of Hezbollah’s missile units, which have been “highly effective against everything that is above ground” had been damaged and destroyed in Israel’s bombardments, AJ reported.

However, he warned that Hezbollah’s armed forces that have not been engaged in any attacks, as well as their naval forces, were still “intact”.

Bilal Saab, Associate Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House said it would also be a mistake to assume that Hezbollah was now helpless, or that it would fold because of Israeli hits.

That’s just not its philosophy. Even Israel has admitted that the group still has significant military capabilities. The harm it is capable of inflicting on Israel could still be devastating. Its precise missiles can strike any strategic facility or urban centre in Israel

Bilal Saab, Chatham House

Mustafa Barghouti, the leader of the Palestinian National Initiative party and a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, told Byline Times that if Hezbollah failed to react strongly it would lose all credibility as a resistance organisation and its raison d’etre after the group was formed in response to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 which saw the killing of thousands of civilians.

While Israel has air superiority, fighting on the ground is not its strength and this is where Hezbollah could gain advantage leading to Israel possibly getting bogged down in a Lebanon quagmire, and suffering many casualties, as it previously did.

Whether or not Israel will achieve its war objectives is also open to debate. “Despite its tactical successes, Israel is nowhere near achieving strategic gain,” Saab explained.

Its northern region is almost entirely depopulated, its international reputation is in tatters for the killing and suffering of so many civilians, its economy is in serious trouble and its domestic politics are in turmoil

Bilal Saab, Chatham House

Saab added: “Absent a diplomatic strategy, continuing to pummel Hamas and Hezbollah – while politically useful for Netanyahu – will not address any of Israel’s above-mentioned challenges. On the contrary, Israel’s reliance on the military instrument alone, as it is prone to do, will not make it safer.”

The other big question is whether this war will blow-up into a full-scale regional war dragging the US and Iran into the conflict with most analysts, while uncertain exactly how the bloody events will ultimately unfold, unanimous that the situation is going to significantly escalate, painting an extremely negative picture.

“We are entering an area of great uncertainty. (Hezbollah Lebanon leader Hassan) Nasrallah was a figure whose strategies we knew and could predict. The vacuum left in his wake upends all the understandings and equations established regarding Hezbollah,” said Carmit Valensi from the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv.

“The window to head off the Middle East war US President Joe Biden has spent much of the past year working to avert may be closing,” said the International Crisis Group.

Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem had already previously responded to Israeli threats of an invasion late Monday saying the group was prepared for any such event.

Furthermore, Hezbollah is Iran’s prize proxy in the region and although it doesn’t want to be dragged into a regional war neither does it want to see the organisation destroyed.