A year after Israel halted its invasion of Lebanon with a highly favorable ceasefire, another IDF operation against Hezbollah looks increasingly inevitable.
Under the year-old deal, brokered by the US and France, the Iran-backed terror group was to be relieved of its arms and prevented from rebuilding its fighting forces.
Instead, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned in public comments during last week’s cabinet meeting, Hezbollah has continued trying to rearm. Israel would do whatever is necessary to prevent that from happening, he threatened.
The IDF has stepped up its airstrikes against Hezbollah in recent weeks, carrying out dozens of attacks and sometimes launching wide sorties. On Monday, it deployed another wave of strikes, targeting southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley, deep inside the country.
A senior IDF official told Channel 12 news last week that the strikes were “just a preview” of what would come if Hezbollah is not disarmed.
“If the Lebanese army does not disarm Hezbollah and fails to meet the demands of the ceasefire,” said the IDF officer, “Israel, with US backing, will attack Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, including in Beirut.”
Israel has given Beirut an ultimatum that it will carry out a broad operation if the Lebanese Armed Forces do not step up their efforts, according to the outlet.
The warnings have not come only from Jerusalem. US Ambassador Tom Barrack wrote on X that if Lebanon’s Western-backed government fails to disarm Hezbollah, the Shiite terror group “will inevitably face major confrontation with Israel at a moment of Israel’s strength and Iran-backed Hizballah’s weakest point.”
Last week, he warned publicly that Lebanon is unlikely to meet its obligations in disarming Hezbollah.
The timing of the exhortations is not coincidental. Both Israel and the US recognize that the deterrent effects of Hezbollah’s military defeat last year are starting to wear off, and that Lebanon’s government and the terror group need to take the possibility of a significant Israeli military operation seriously if another war is to be avoided.
Israel has been striking Hezbollah targets since the November 2024 ceasefire in an attempt to stop imminent threats and to further degrade the group’s weapons stocks.
But Israeli officials say the current escalation stems from frustration over the pace of the Lebanese Armed Forces’ campaign to disarm Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is “rebuilding its armaments and battered ranks,” including replenishing its rocket, antitank missile, and artillery supply, The Wall Street Journal reported recently.
“Israel sees that Hezbollah is doing exactly what it tried to do in 2006,” said Orna Mizrahi, senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, referring to the group’s massive rebuilding project following the previous war with Israel. “From day one, to return and start to operate beneath the surface, to start to build a physical presence and to preserve and build military capabilities, to continue smuggling.”
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