Israel’s intelligence and air force were able to turn a planned massive attack by Hezbollah on the Jewish state into a complete failure, Dr. Eran Lerman, vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told Tamar Uriel-Beeri on The Jerusalem Post Podcast.
Lerman had stated that Hezbollah's recent attack on Israel was massive, but far smaller than expected and planned.
“They had to prepare carefully because they were planning a fairly complicated operation,” he said of Hezbollah. “Remarkably, Israel's intelligence and air force capabilities, which are heavily discounted in the current debate, proved to be quite sufficient to meet this challenge.”
Since October 7, Israel's military intelligence capabilities have been the subject of considerable doubt and skepticism. However, according to Lerman, they remain effective, especially against the North.
“Despite recovering from a fundamental blow to its prestige and serious doubts about its ability to deal with Hamas, the intelligence service has been focused on Hezbollah for years,” he explained. “This was an opportunity for a major strike.”
Nevertheless, gaps in Israel's security in the north remain, as Hezbollah can continue to fire rockets and missiles at Israel. However, Lerman explained why this is the case.
“These are different types of attacks,” he said.
It is one thing for a small group to sneak to the border with an anti-tank missile and fire at Israel. It is a very different situation, however, for Hezbollah to combine its forces and try to launch a large coordinated attack.
“They gave away a lot of intelligence information that enabled the Israeli army, and in particular the director of military intelligence, in close coordination with the air force … to track them down,” he said.
The success of the Israeli forces in preventing the massive Hezbollah attack may also have led to a shift in the variables in the Gaza hostage crisis.
“The only thing [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar expected that continuing the conflict would bring both Iran and Hezbollah into play,” Lerman said. “What happened on August 25 raises questions on both sides and could dampen his enthusiasm for continuing the conflict.”
Lerman: Nasrallah lies to stop the fighting
Following the recent attacks on Israel, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah issued statements about the terrorist organization's successes in attacking Israel and avenging the killing of senior Hezbollah official Fuad Shukr. Lerman, like many other analysts, called these statements lies. He added, however, that Nasrallah's goal was to end the current round of fighting with Israel.
The Hezbollah leader's words were “a pretext to end the round and not to escalate further because they know that the Lebanese people firmly reject further escalation,” he said.
However, the Lebanese population does not seem to believe this.
“People are not taking this seriously,” Lerman said, pointing to the numerous memes about Hezbollah attacking a chicken coop and killing chickens to avenge Shukr.
“It may not always be healthy to ridicule a dangerous man,” he continued, adding that it was nevertheless a sign that Hezbollah had fallen from grace.
“When Hezbollah took credit for driving us out of southern Lebanon… they were heroes to the Arab world. They were heroes to their own people,” Lerman said. “Now, after 12 years of working with the Assad regime to massacre the Sunnis of Syria and bring little but ruin to Lebanon… the situation is different.”
