In the wake of Hezbollah’s first ballistic missile attack on Israel, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been told to prepare to fight in Lebanon. That statement, from the Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, is the strongest indication so far that an invasion of the north is fast approaching.
“You hear the jets overhead; we have been striking all day. This is both to prepare the ground for your possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah,” Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said in a message to his troops on Wednesday. “Today, Hezbollah expanded its range of fire, and later today, they will receive a very strong response. Prepare yourselves.”
Halevi told the troops they would be needed to create a buffer zone to help foster the return of tens of thousands of Israelis who have fled their homes in northern Israel as a result of Hezbollah missile, rocket and drone attacks.
“To achieve that, we are preparing the process of a maneuver, which means your military boots, your maneuvering boots, will enter enemy territory, enter villages that Hezbollah has prepared as large military outposts, with underground infrastructure, staging points, and launchpads into our territory and carry out attacks on Israeli civilians.”
Israeli troops, he vowed, are more than up to the challenge. The IDF has called up two reserve brigades to bolster its forces in the north, according to PBS.
“Your entry into those areas with force, your encounter with Hezbollah operatives, will show them what it means to face a professional, highly skilled, and battle-experienced force,” he added. “You are coming in much stronger and far more experienced than they are. You will go in, destroy the enemy there, and decisively destroy their infrastructure. These are the things that will allow us to safely return the residents of the north afterward.”
A ground operation into southern Lebanon appears aimed at creating a buffer zone to keep Hezbollah from using its massive quantities of short-range rockets, as well as anti-tank missiles, small drones, and sniper fire to make life near the border and in northern Israel in general very challenging. While the goal may be to protect the north, Hezbollah also has an arsenal of missiles and drones that can strike into Israel from a significant distance. So such an operation could severely degrade Hezbollah’s ability to strike into Israel, but it alone would not come close to eliminating it entirely.
Hezbollah’s long-range capabilities were driven home when the militant group fired what it called a Qader-1 ballistic missile at Mossad headquarters near Tel Aviv yesterday.
Hezbollah “confirmed that the targeted headquarters is responsible for assassinating the leaders and blowing up the pagers and wireless devices,” the group’s Al Mayadeen news outlet reported on Telegram. You can read our reporting of the first wave of those explosions here, and the second wave here.
Israeli officials say the missile was intercepted by the David’s Sling air defense system with no casualties or damage. The IDF said it quickly struck the launch site.
However, the ballistic missile attack marks a major escalation by Hezbollah, which has previously struck only northern Israel and mostly with rockets and drones.
Little is known about the Qader-1. The official Iranian Mehr news agency described it as “a long-range missile” using a combination of solid and liquid fuel, with a range of up to 1,950 km (about 1,200 miles) and a warhead weighing between 700 and 1,000 kilograms (about 1,540 to 2,200 pounds.”
As we noted in our deep dive into Hezbollah’s massive arsenal of missiles and rockets, the Lebanese militant group’s weapons development and stockpile is primarily provided by Iran.
One expert on Iranian and Hezbollah weapons told The War Zone that it could be from the Fateh family of weapons.
The Qader-1 could be “a single-stage, short-range ballistic missile, probably a copy of the Fateh system,” Benham Ben Taleblu, a senior research fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank in Washington D.C., told The War Zone Wednesday.
It could be a Fateh-110, he surmised. Or it could be “the domestic upgrade that turns rockets into missiles with guidance systems and controllable fins.”
After we interviewed Taleblu, Hezbollah released images it claims were the Qader-1. After The War Zone shared them with Taleblu, he said that confirmed his earlier suspicions about it being some version of a Fateh-110.
As we previously reported, the Fateh-110 is one of the longest-range weapons Hezbollah possesses, able to reach targets as far away as 186 miles. That is certainly far enough to strike Tel Aviv, about 70 miles south of the border.
The Fateh-110 can carry a high explosive warhead weighing around 1,000 pounds and has become increasingly accurate in later variants and derivatives, with GPS-assisted guidance added. The use of Fateh-110s and Zolfaghar (also written Zulfiqar) derivatives to target a U.S. military base at Erbil, in Iraq, in March 2022, as well as on other targets in Syria, suggests that current variants are much more accurate, offering true precision strike capabilities.
It remains unclear if Hezbollah has the latest versions and/or in what quantities.
In the wake of Israel’s massive bombardment of Lebanon to degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities, an image emerged of a reported Fateh-110 in the rubble of a home that was struck.
Regardless of what kind of ballistic missile Hezbollah fired at Tel Aviv, such a launch is significant, Taleblu said.
“This is the first launch by Hezbollah of a ballistic missile at Israel,” he stated.
That Hezbollah launched just one ballistic missile may be a message to Israel that the campaign described by Halevi to degrade Hezbollah ahead of a looming Israeli incursion did not work, an Al Jazeera correspondent posited.
“It’s only one missile, so it’s more than likely to be a message from Hezbollah that they still have ballistic missile capability,” Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan said.
You can see the results of part of Israel’s strike campaign against Hezbollah in this video below. It shows rockets cooking off after a building in Lebanon was hit.
In addition to the attack on Tel Aviv from Hezbollah, Israel was also struck by Yemen’s Houthis, another Iranian-backed group. The IDF said the southern port city of Eilat was struck by a Houthi drone. Video emerging from the scene shows damage to the port, but the extent is not immediately clear.
With Halevi hinting that Israeli troops and armor could soon roll over the border, the U.S. is frantically working behind the scenes to reduce hostilities and avoid a regional war that could draw in Iran and potentially U.S. forces.
The Biden administration “is working on a new diplomatic initiative for a ‘pause’ in the fighting in Lebanon and a resumption of negotiations on a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal,” Axios reported, citing two U.S. officials, one Israeli official and two sources with direct knowledge. “The aim is to achieve a pause that will give space for negotiations on a broader diplomatic deal to prevent a wider war, allow displaced civilians to return to their homes on both sides of the border, and provide renewed momentum for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal.”
While Axios suggested that the plan could be announced as early as Wednesday, it had yet to officially emerge as of 6:30 PM Eastern time.
Asked whether his country would join Hezbollah in a fight against Isreal, Iran’s Vice President Javad Zarif told CNN‘s Christiane Amanpour that both Iran and Hezbollah “have exercised restraint” so far.
“Iran has exercised restraint when Israel took conducted military operations against Iran, conducted terrorist operations killing the leader of Hamas who was attending the inauguration of our president, of all things, and we exercised restraint,” Zarif said. “We believe that Hezbollah is capable of defending itself. It has been exercising restraint enough to doing so, it is the responsibility of the international community to come in before Hezbollah has to take its defense into its own hands and maybe, the situation will get out hand.”
Meanwhile, amid the growing tension, the U.S. is sending an unspecified number of additional troops to the Middle East. Given the dynamics in the region and Israel’s growing frustration with Hezbollah attacks, which have now reached their furthest point yet, whether the Biden adminisgtration can prevent a ground war in Lebanon could be a challenge.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com