Matthew Levitt on Israel's War with Hizballah

·46 min·4 clips

How does Hezbollah keep operating after Israel degraded its arsenal, leadership, and finances?

Host Jonathan Silver introduces the episode by noting that while attention has shifted to Israel-Iran tensions, Israel has achieved significant tactical successes against Hezbollah in Lebanon over the past month. He frames the central question: how can Israel leverage these successes into a strategic victory that allows displaced citizens to return home. Guest Matthew Levitt, former Wexler Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of a book on Hezbollah, joins to analyze the situation. Levitt begins by contextualizing Hezbollah's post-2006 buildup in violation of UN Resolution 1701. He describes visiting Metula in northern Israel and predicting that a cross-border raid, not rockets, would likely spark conflict, citing Hamas's October 7th attack as borrowing from Hezbollah's playbook. Levitt outlines Israel's operational successes, starting with the pager and walkie-talkie attacks that wounded thousands of Hezbollah operatives and disrupted communications. He details the killings of senior figures like Fouad Shaker and Ibrahim Akhil, who were planning a cross-border raid response. Levitt estimates Israel destroyed 50% to two-thirds of Hezbollah's rockets, though tens of thousands remain. He explains that Israel avoided full war initially due to crises in both the south and north, with only 650 IDF soldiers on the northern border on October 8th. Levitt cites Lebanese public opposition and Iranian nuclear considerations as factors restraining Hezbollah. The discussion turns to lessons from the 2006 war, where Israel lacked clear war aims and granular intelligence. In contrast, current Israeli war aims focus on enabling displaced citizens to return home, with the IDF tasked to degrade rocket and cross-border raid threats. Levitt praises Israel's multi-layered intelligence collection, including human sources and old-school tradecraft like front companies selling rigged pagers. He describes a series of body blows to Hezbollah, including leadership decapitation and infrastructure destruction. Levitt addresses Hezbollah's current operations, noting it remains dangerous but with degraded command and control. He highlights the bombing of Hezbollah's bank, Al-Qard Al-Hassan, which incinerated millions in dollars and gold. The conversation explores post-conflict scenarios, with Levitt arguing that Israel likely won't occupy southern Lebanon but will enforce security from the air. He expresses skepticism about Lebanese forces or society decisively challenging Hezbollah, despite the group's weakened state. Levitt concludes that Israel's goal is to degrade Hezbollah's strategic threats, not eliminate it entirely, and that long-term border security will require innovative international efforts.

As heard by us

A focused account of Israel's gains against Hezbollah and the strategic lessons of 2006.

Israel's retaliatory strikes on military targets in Iran set the frame, but the episode is most engaged by Lebanon: how Hezbollah keeps functioning after heavy damage to its arsenal, leadership, command structure, communications, decision-making, and finances.

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Why you'd press play

You want to know whether Israel can turn battlefield gains in Lebanon into a way home for residents of the Galilee and Golan.

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