Israel removed Hezbollah's top military leader, Fuad Shukr, after a series of impressive intelligence and military operations, but on Sunday it dealt a further blow to Hezbollah by thwarting a major retaliatory operation that Iran-backed militias had planned from southern Lebanon against the Jewish state.
Hezbollah had been preparing to strike “announced strategic military targets” deep inside Israel, with the launch time scheduled for 5 a.m. local time. But at 4:45 a.m., 100 Israeli fighter jets simultaneously launched attacks on dozens of Hezbollah rocket launchers that were moving into position to launch the attack.
Israeli warplanes destroyed most of Hezbollah's offensive assets, but not all of them. Explosive drones and Katyusha rockets entered Israeli airspace, and Israel's Iron Dome air defense system was activated and shot down almost all of the projectiles. In the end, only two images showed Israeli damage.
After footage showed a Hezbollah rocket exploding in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and a chicken coop burning, the world mocked Lebanon's Islamist militias, calling the attack “Operation Grilled Chicken.”
In the first hour of tensions, Hezbollah issued its first statement, which appeared to have been prepared before the operation: “We will take revenge on the criminals,” it began.
The statement added: “As a primary response to the martyrdom of great jihadist commander Fouad Shukr during the Zionist incursion into the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Islamic Resistance Movement's mujahideen have launched a massive drone airstrike deep into the Zionist state against strategic military targets to be announced at a later date.”
Hezbollah also said in a preliminary statement that it had combined attacks on special Israeli targets using explosive drones with missile fire on Israeli army barracks and Iron Dome artillery batteries.
Hezbollah's attack was tactically planned in the reverse order of the Iranian attack on Israel on April 14: Iran would first send in drones to engage and occupy Israel's air defenses and then launch ballistic missiles to strike targets inside the Jewish state, but Hezbollah used missiles to disrupt the Iron Dome and then send in drones to strike deep into Israel.
However, Israel's pre-emptive strikes eliminated an estimated 1,500 missiles before they could be launched, meaning only 320 of Hezbollah's missiles were fired, allowing the Iron Dome to easily shoot them down and deal with the drones.
Hezbollah's attack failed. To save face, the Iranian-backed militia quickly issued a statement listing 11 military targets it had struck and saying it had completed the “first phase” of the operation. The Lebanese group also produced a propaganda video using Google Maps images to mark the targets.
Hezbollah's figure of 320 rockets is probably an exaggeration, but it suggests that the militia was trying to show that it was successful despite a preemptive Israeli strike — a relatively small figure given that Hezbollah has fired as many as 150 projectiles at Israel on a high day — and that the militia felt it was convincing to claim that all of its drones “crossed the border” unintercepted and struck their targets, as planned.
The Hezbollah statement made no mention of the “strategic objectives” that were the goal of the entire operation.
According to Israeli media, Hezbollah was planning to attack Mossad headquarters and the IDF's military intelligence branch, known as Unit 8200. Perhaps realizing that their plan was not working, the Lebanese militias issued a statement characterizing the operation as the “first phase” of avenging Shukr's killing.
Hezbollah has returned to propaganda to compensate for its failure, with its leader Hassan Nasrallah using speeches to misrepresent its failure as a victory, and its ally Hamas, working with Hezbollah, portraying the failed attack as an “insult” to Israel.
With gag orders still in place, the extent of the damage Hezbollah has inflicted on Israel has yet to be assessed, but it is unlikely to have been significant.
What we know so far is that Israel's intelligence and military power has once again defeated Hezbollah, leaving it with no room to move in its rocket launchers and launch an attack as planned.
An inevitable war between the two sides should scare Hezbollah into reconsidering its position by accepting a ceasefire with Israel even without one in Gaza. Hezbollah should then withdraw its fighters from the Israeli border, close enough for 110,000 Israelis to return to their homes and live safely.
If Hezbollah does not learn a lesson from Sunday's attack, it may be in for further Israeli surprises.
Hussein Abdul Hussein is a research associate at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) in Washington, DC.
