In the wake of Israel’s (alleged) triumphant two-day sabotaging of Hezbollah’s communications devices, the subject has often turned to what role the missions played in Israel’s long-term strategy. It’s a legitimate question, but the wrong one to ask at this moment.
This fact is highlighted by a February speech from Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah that has been making the rounds in articles about the pager attacks: “You ask me where is the agent. I tell you that the phone in your hands, in your wife’s hands, and in your children’s hands is the agent.” Nasrallah commanded them to “Put it in an iron box and lock it.”
This was not a plea for parents to limit their children’s screen time. It was an order—one born of frustration because Nasrallah had been pushing for his Iranian terror army to swear off cellphones for years.
He was right to be frustrated: The pager-sabotage mission was well under way by the time he gave that speech. Nasrallah was too late.
By all accounts, this type of operation would probably have taken more than year to go from the planning stage to big boom. That would place its start before the October 7 attacks—before, that is, the entire strategic picture of the Levant changed.
Israel’s long war with Hezbollah, and its even longer struggle to protect its citizens in the north from attacks based in South Lebanon, has gone through other such geopolitical shakeups. South Lebanon has not stopped being a problem through either of the intifadas, the Oslo period, the Gaza disengagement and subsequent takeover of the Strip by Hamas, the development of the Iranian nuclear program, the Gulf War, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the Arab Spring, or the fall of the Soviet Union and the scramble for influence among its former client states.
A lot has happened, and none of it stopped South Lebanon from spinning on its own ornery axis for even a moment.
Israel fought two wars in Lebanon, and the first, in 1982, actually achieved its stated purpose despite going far less smoothly than hoped: The Palestine Liberation Organization, which had created a state-within-a-state, was evicted from South Lebanon. Iran’s proxy army moved in and by now has achieved what amounts to operational control of the state. Lebanon cannot be evicted from Lebanon.
Iran can, though—but only if a multinational alliance fully commits to weakening the regime until it is replaced by one that merits participation in the global order instead of rogue status.
Which means the better question, following the pager attacks, is not What is Israel’s long-term strategy for Hezbollah? but rather What is the West’s long-term strategy for Iran?
Removing Hezbollah from Lebanon would be like pouring salt into a bag of sugar and asking Israel to only remove the grains of salt. There isn’t any appetite in the White House or in the capitals of Europe for Israel to do what it would require to pull this off. And even if there were, without a change in America’s Iran policy (at the very least), it would still make only a negligible difference in the long term, because we would keep funding Iran’s expansionism in the region while asking Israel why Iran is expanding in the region.
You know what else would help focus the West on a long-term goal in the region? Allowing Israel to win its war in Gaza. That, too, is a war against an Iranian proxy. If after October 7 the U.S. is still going to waver on the necessity of fully defeating and removing Hamas, then Iran knows it can get away with almost anything up north as well.
It doesn’t necessarily require a war to defeat Iran’s regime in the long-term. But that’s irrelevant anyway, since there doesn’t appear to be anything Iran could do that would draw the U.S. into such a war. But victory would require opposing Iranian expansionism rather than, say, wagging our finger at the Houthis holding Yemen hostage and bombing the commercial shipping lanes while our European allies flirt with an embargo—on Israel.
In the meantime, Israel—with America’s help, of course—has built missile shields for its own defense and maintained a qualitative military edge over its foes in the hopes of preserving some level of deterrence. Whatever else the pager plan accomplished, it likely paused an escalation by Hezbollah in its tracks, which is what Tony Blinken and the rest of the Biden administration have been asking for. Having now received that delay, it is the Biden administration that ought to be able to answer the question: OK, now what?
