Hezbollah wants Israel to know that it is better armed and still has Iran's arm firmly up its nether regions moving their lips and arms, and Israel says not so fast:
Israel's prime minister says it will deliver a "crushing" strike against Hezbollah if the Lebanese militant group attempts to attack. ...
In an interview Friday, Nasrallah boasted that his group is much stronger than during the 2006 war and is capable of striking anywhere in Israel. Pointing to a map, Nasrallah identified a list of targets he said his group could strike, saying "in all fields, the resistance has developed in quantity and quality."
Although Hezbollah does have a point about all their rockets aimed at Israel--Iron Dome will run out of anti-rockets long before Hezbollah runs out of rockets. And it is even worse now that Hezbollah has a sizable precision rocket force.
So while Israel can pound Hezbollah from the air, they can only crush Hezbollah in time to turn off the rocket spigot with a ground campaign that seizes the launching sites.
And even that is just a short-term effort that will allow Hezbollah to rapidly rebuild their arsenal.
Which makes me think, as I have for nearly a decade now, that Israel will drive deep into Lebanon in a multi-division ground raid to seriously tear up Hezbollah fighters, rear echelon personnel, and infrastructure.
After all, why shouldn't Israel do that? Lebanon's formal government seems unwilling or unable to rein in Hezbollah. If Lebanon's parliament wants to defend two Hezbollah lawmakers sanctioned by the U.S. in that parliament, Lebanon places itself in the path of a war against Iran's proxy force in Lebanon.
But I've been expecting a big Israeli ground operation for some time now. So there's that.
