LONDON – Israel has miscalculated the cost of a potential new war with Hezbollah, a former US military intelligence analyst warned on Tuesday, noting that it could lead to significant civilian casualties in both Lebanon and Israel.
Harrison Mann, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the top US military officer who resigned over the Gaza conflict, expressed his concerns in an interview with The Guardian.
Mann emphasized the high risk of Israel’s involvement in a war on its northern border for domestic political reasons, led primarily by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s power and his insulation from corruption allegations are seen as dependent on maintaining martial law.
“I don’t know how realistic their assessments are of the destruction Israel would suffer, and I’m pretty sure they have no realistic idea of how successful they would be against Hezbollah,” a former army officer and intelligence analyst. he said.
He said the Israeli military was aware it could not decisively hit Hezbollah’s vast arsenal, which is entrenched in Lebanon’s mountains.
Instead, Mann suggested the IDF target Hezbollah leaders and Shiite residential areas to demoralize the group’s support base, a tactic known as the Dahiya Doctrine, after the Beirut district was heavily bombed in the 2006 war.
“It’s not like actual written doctrine, but I think we can very comfortably judge that bombing civilian centers as a way of coercing the enemy is clearly an accepted and shared belief in the IDF and the Israeli leadership. We’ve just seen them do that in Gaza over the last nine months,” Mann said, but said such a plan would fail.
Mann told the Guardian that he expected Hezbollah to respond to any existential threat with massive rocket and missile attacks.
“They probably have the ability to at least partially overwhelm Israel’s air defenses, attack civilian infrastructure across the country, and cause Israel a level of destruction that I’m not sure Israel has ever really experienced in its history — certainly not in its recent past. history,” Mann said.
With Hezbollah’s arsenal seemingly beyond the reach of airstrikes, Mann proposed that the IDF initiate a ground offensive into southern Lebanon that would come at a high cost of Israeli casualties.
He warned that continued shelling of Israeli cities could force the administration of US President Joe Biden, especially during the election season, to accede to Netanyahu’s calls for greater US involvement.
“Our least escalating involvement may be to attack supply lines or related targets in Iraq and Syria to help cut the lines of communication and weapons flowing to Hezbollah,” Mann said. “But that in itself is risky because if we start doing that, some of the people we hit might be Hezbollah, but they might be the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps).”
Although Mann believes the Biden administration’s goal is to avoid direct conflict with Iran, he acknowledged that the risk of such an escalation remains.
“We know specifically that the Israeli prime minister has to continue to be a wartime leader if he wants to extend his political career and stay out of court, so the motivation is there,” Mann said, adding that pressure would be put on any Israeli government. the displacement of tens of thousands of Israelis as a result of Hezbollah attacks.
Mann also pointed to the Israeli military establishment’s belief that Iran-backed Hezbollah must be confronted as its strength continues to grow.
Mann’s resignation, submitted in November and effective in June, was accompanied by a public letter on LinkedIn in May. In the letter, he condemned US support for Israeli actions in Gaza, saying it “enabled and authorized the killing and starvation of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians.”
As a descendant of European Jews, Mann wrote, “I grew up in an extremely unforgiving moral environment when it came to the subject of being responsible for ethnic cleansing.
He said his resignation was met with a largely positive response from former colleagues, with many expressing similar sentiments.
“A lot of people I’ve worked with have reached out to me, a lot of people I haven’t worked with have reached out and said they feel the same way,” he said. “It’s not just a generational thing. There are quite a few older people who feel the same way.”