Does Lebanon have enough interest in allying with Israel against Iran's proxy Hezbollah?
The latest asymmetric threat [to Israel] is off the coast, where Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and a Hamas in Gaza are now trying out new tactics and weapons. In the north the main threat is to the new source of Israeli wealth in the form of offshore natural gas deposits worth billions of dollars and now in production. So much gas is now available that Israeli domestic needs are already met and export customers are sought. More gas being produced than Israel needs and this surplus is going to exist for at least a decade or more. New offshore gas and oil exploration techniques that Israel used have been adopted by Lebanon, Egypt, Greece and Turkey. Iran sees this offshore asset as an Israeli vulnerability and wants to attack Israeli offshore facilities. To further complicate the situation Turkey is seeking to take possession of offshore areas that belong to Greece and, it is feared, eventually Lebanon as well. This Iranian threat has generated blowback in the form of a Lebanese effort to reduce Hezbollah control over southern Lebanon and disruption of the democracy Lebanon is seeking to preserve.
I keep expecting Israel to really hammer Hezbollah with a big ground raid:
I assume that any war will be a multi-division push north of the Litani that will take advantage of the fact that Hezbollah, after 2006, wrongly believes it can go toe-to-toe with Israeli troops and so will fight as light infantry rather than as insurgents. For a while, Israel will be able to really pound Hizbollah ground forces as the Israelis take over rocket-launch sites and armories with troops.
Further, I'd guess the Israelis will push rapidly into the Bekaa Valley as far as Baalbek to tear up Hezbollah's rear area to slow down rearmament after the war is over. Air strikes would take place north of that, if necessary, I'd guess.
Does the shift in Lebanon against Hezbollah tip the scales to war? I've long worried that an operation that rips apart Hezbollah in southern Lebanon requires Lebanon to move in to fill the Israeli-created vacuum. Otherwise Hezbollah rebuilds given enough time and money. Would Lebanon's government be able to survive essentially siding with Israel? Maybe that is possible now.
Does the threat to Israeli offshore gas wells tip the scales to war by adding another reason to go after the Iran proxy?
And bonus discussion in that initial post of the utter banality of "asymmetric" warfare that so many think is some novel thing. As well as touching on the utter banality of "hybrid" warfare which Strategypage seems to be calling "ambiguous" warfare and which I have sometimes called "subliminal" warfare.
