The Biden administration has been arguing with itself over its support of Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza. Secretary Antony Blinken, in particular, seems to take both sides, claiming variously that Hamas must be destroyed, that Hamas cannot be destroyed, that the Biden administration isn’t telling Israel how to fight the war, and that Israel must totally withdraw from Gaza. Now the administration wants to signal that it is happy to send Israel weapons while withholding (among other things) 500- and 2,000-lb. bombs and JDAM kits that convert those bombs into precision weapons.
But the current existential threat to Israel comes from Lebanon, and the Biden administration’s fixation on Gazan civilians is leaving Israel fatally vulnerable.
To bolster its case that its commitment to Israel’s security is “ironclad,” the administration (correctly) points out the success of destroying almost all of the 300 missiles launched at Israel by Iran, many by U.S. and other military forces. President Biden evidently believes that this, and the success of Iron Dome in thwarting missile attacks from Gaza, means that Israel is fully secure against external threats and needs at most simply to rebuild and strengthen the Gaza border fence. This explains why Biden advised Israel to “take the win” and not respond militarily to Iran’s attack, and why President Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett that his “ironclad” commitment to Israel’s security is completely fulfilled by shipments of missile defense munitions.
However, the missile threat from Hezb’allah is nothing like that from Gaza, or even Iran. Writing in Forbes, Eric Tegler points out that Hezb’allah had an arsenal of more than 130,000 rockets in 2018, mostly short-range but including anti-ship missiles and some longer-range ground missiles that can strike Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Since then, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies estimates that arsenal had grown to 150,000 to 200,000 projectiles. The Arrow and David’s Sling elements of Israel’s missile defenses are not designed for this threat; only the Iron Dome and the yet-to-be-deployed Iron Beam (laser-based) systems are.
And, whereas Iran chose to launch 300 projectiles in one attack from hundreds of miles away, FDD estimates that Hezb’allah can sustain launch rates of 3,000 to 4,000 projectiles a day, at least initially. FDD estimates that perhaps ten percent of these will evade the Iron Dome, meaning 300 to 400 warheads striking targets in Israel daily. Moreover, within a few days, Israel’s reserves of Iron Dome interceptors would be exhausted, raising the daily successful strike rate tenfold.
Despite the good intentions and pledges of the United States, it is powerless to defend Israel against this threat in the same way as it did against the Iranian attack. There will be no time to move ships and planes into position into range to intercept these rockets, nor would those assets be effective against them anyway. U.S. jets and shipboard systems had time to detect and intercept ballistic missiles and drones during their flight from Iran and Yemen, but the flight time and trajectory of short-range missiles from Lebanon render the U.S. assets useless for Israel’s defense, though they might help defend Israel’s eastern flank against an Iranian attack coordinated with Hezb’allah.
Even now, as Dov Lieber reports in the Journal, 60,000 Israelis remain displaced from their homes near the Lebanese border. Israeli missile defenses are inadequate to protect their communities from a continual string of attacks from Hezb’allah. In the eight months since October 7, Hezb’allah has fired 4,500 rockets into Israel — but in a full-scale war, it could launch that many in less than 48 hours.
Nor can the Biden administration (or the IDF, for that matter) rely on the notion that there would be intelligence forewarning of a full-scale Hezb’allah attack. Israel’s television network Kan reported that an IDF assessment before Oct. 7 deemed it likely that a surprise attack by Hezb’allah over the northern border would succeed in overrunning many border villages and even IDF bases before reinforcements could arrive. The head of military intelligence at the time, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, said that it would not be possible for such an attack to be conducted with complete surprise; shortly thereafter, Hamas accomplished exactly that and overran kibbutzim and IDF bases. Haliva has since resigned.
Israel must assume that its first confirmation of a Hezb’allah attack will be a barrage of several thousand incoming missiles. According to the FDD, because so many of Hezb’allah’s missile launchers are highly mobile, the only way for the IDF to counter this threat once war breaks out is to carry out an invasion of south Lebanon, beginning with intensive bombing raids into Lebanon to destroy Hezb’allah’s missile stockpiles and other military installations. Hezb’allah, like Hamas, has constructed underground tunnels and bunkers that can be destroyed or disabled only with heavy bombs, including 2,000-lb. bombs. Israel’s survival depends on its ability to deliver the maximum number of these bombs to Hezb’allah targets in the shortest possible time.
Clearly, the Biden administration does not understand this imperative. In his CNN interview, President Biden confirmed that his administration has paused shipment of bombs and JDAM kits, and even said artillery shells would be held back if Israel entered Rafah in force. In his zeal to mollify critics of his policy toward Israel and Gaza, and to shake the epithet “Genocide Joe,” he wants to cripple the IDF’s capabilities to conduct offensive war. Israel, he seems to believe, should be happy to be the target of rocket, missile, and drone fire from all sides, since it will lose only a few civilians and soldiers as a consequence — something he sees as a “win.”
Should Hezb’allah initiate a war with several thousand missile launches a day, it would become immediately apparent that no missile defenses could adequately protect Israel for attacks on that scale, and equally apparent that U.S. missile defense assets would be useless in that situation. However, even if President Biden immediately ordered expedited shipment of offensive munitions to Israel for use against Hezb’allah, it would be too late for them to be delivered in time to suppress Hezb’allah’s attacks. If the Biden administration forces Israel to deplete its stockpiles of bombs in its campaign in Gaza, the IDF will not have enough bombs to conduct a sustained suppression campaign against Hezb’allah.
The doomsday scenario in this situation would be Iran taking advantage of Israel’s combat with Hezb’allah to launch a much larger and stealthier missile strike on Israel. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) says, “Iran possesses the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in the Middle East.” Iran Watch estimates that Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal alone numbers over 3,000.
Would President Biden’s ironclad guarantee of Israel’s security extend to U.S. military strikes on Lebanon, or would the president simply ask Secretary Blinken to shuttle between Beirut and Jerusalem? What would the president do if Iran launched not 300 missiles and drones toward Israel, but 3,000? It will be better for the United States to see to it that Israel has the munitions it needs to defend itself — which necessarily means the munitions it needs to conduct offensive operations against its enemies.
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