Hezbollah’s deadly threat to Israel

Think about what [Iran’s] been doing with Hezbollah in Lebanon for the past decade or so. Since Israel and Hezbollah went to war in 2006, Iran has flooded its Shiite proxy on Israel’s northern border with weapons — specifically, with rockets and missiles. The last time Hezbollah squared off with Israel, it had fewer than 15,000 in its arsenal. During 2006’s 34-day war, it fired 4,000 of them at Israel, averaging more than 100 per day despite robust Israeli suppression efforts…

Estimates of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile force now range between 120,000 and 150,000. That’s an absolutely stunning number — especially when you consider that the United Nations resolution that ended the war in 2006 allegedly prohibited all efforts to re-arm the terrorist group. It’s also a chilling number that now includes a far larger force of more advanced long-range missiles, capable of delivering massive payloads — upwards of half a ton — to every corner of Israel.

Instead of just over 100 missiles per day, the next war is likely to see Israel experiencing barrages of up to 1,500 rockets and missiles per day…

It gets worse. Among those longer-range missiles that it has acquired from Iran, Hezbollah almost certainly possesses some that can be classified as “precision” missiles, with advanced guidance systems capable of midflight corrections and a high degree of accuracy…

The strategic significance of the Iranian/Hezbollah accuracy project is hard to overstate. Given its small size and limited redundancy, Israel is extraordinarily vulnerable if even a few dozen precision missiles breach its defenses and strike key targets: a handful of power plants and water desalination facilities; a few oil refineries and offshore gas rigs; the Dimona nuclear reactor; the headquarters of the Israel Defense Forces in Tel Aviv; a few vital military industrial sites; Ben Gurion International Airport; or the sea ports at Haifa and Ashdod. Perhaps throw in the Knesset and several high-rise apartment buildings. It wouldn’t take much to inflict unprecedented damage on Israel’s home front, potentially taking a major chunk of the country’s critical infrastructure offline. One former head of Israel’s National Security Council described the potential destruction and casualties that Israel could incur as “unbearable.”