It might be foolhardy to poke the Russian bear, but poking the Lebanese one seems to be a different matter.<\/p>\n
Hezbollah<\/a> is almost unquestionably the world\u2019s most formidable non-state fighting force. Its military capability exceeds that of the armies of many Middle Eastern states, Lebanon among them. Its vast arsenal includes guided missiles that could hit any Israeli city.<\/p>\n Yet the group\u2019s response to days of provocation has been pretty tepid so far.<\/p>\n Hassan Nasrallah<\/a>, the Hezbollah leader, had repeatedly warned Israel that any airstrikes on its strongholds in southern Beirut would be met with a salvo of rocket strikes on Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n In the past two months, Israel has twice bombed the Lebanese capital, killing some of Nasrallah\u2019s most experienced battlefield commanders<\/a>. Last week, thousands of Hezbollah\u2019s rank-and-file were incapacitated<\/a> in synchronised attacks on the group\u2019s pagers and walkie-talkie radios.<\/p>\n Hezbollah\u2019s response has not quite been to bend over and ask for more.<\/p>\n This weekend, it unleashed its most ferocious cross-border rocket salvo<\/a> since it began firing into northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas last October.<\/p>\n But the group has deliberately not targeted Israeli population centres, nor has it deployed its most sophisticated weaponry. It has spoken menacingly but vaguely about retaliation at an unspecified time in the future.<\/p>\n This is well short of a full-scale declaration of war, that some of its fighters are itching for \u2013 so why the coyness?<\/p>\n The most obvious answer is that Iran is restraining the group. Hezbollah is Tehran\u2019s most powerful proxy force in the Middle East. Its precision-guided missiles, like the Fateh 110 with a range of 300km, and its attack drones come from Iran.<\/p>\n The Iranian regime, however, regards Hezbollah as its insurance policy if Israel attacks its nuclear programme. The more missiles Hezbollah fires, the more Iran\u2019s deterrent is eroded. The group has to sing to its paymaster\u2019s tune.<\/p>\n But Hezbollah\u2019s leadership is also reluctant to escalate the conflict too far for reasons of its own.<\/p>\n Some of those are to do with domestic opinion, said Kassem Kassir, a Lebanese commentator with close links to Hezbollah and inside knowledge into its thinking. The other reasons concern the group\u2019s fears that embracing war would be to walk into a trap laid by Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a>, Israel\u2019s prime minister.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are two things to take into consideration,\u201d Mr Kassir told The Telegraph. \u201cThe first is internal. Hezbollah knows that Lebanon is divided and so does not want to take the country into a war that some do not want.<\/p>\n \u201cThe other is that Hezbollah knows Netanyahu is trying to draw it into an all-out war in the hope of drawing the United States into the conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHezbollah knows that if it fell for this, any war would not just be with Israel but also with Israel\u2019s western backers,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Hezbollah is much better equipped than it was in 2006 when its forces fought Israel\u2019s to a standstill in a bloody 34-day confrontation in southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n During that conflict, the group had just 15,000 mostly unguided rockets, firing off just 4,000 of them.<\/p>\n But even though it now has an arsenal 10 times greater in number and far more potent, Mr Kassir said Hezbollah would far rather engage Israel in a longer low-level conflict that weakens its resolve rather than blow its full firepower in a single confrontation it probably cannot win.<\/p>\n \u201cWeakening Israel through an attritional, drawn out confrontation is, in my opinion, the strategy Hezbollah prefers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Hezbollah-rockets.jpg\")
<\/a>The barrage followed with a declaration that Hezbollah is now in an \u201copen-ended battle of reckoning\u201d with Israel.<\/div>\n