Hezbollah’s escalation strategy: Threats without full-scale war

Hezbollah’s recent threats against Israel are part of a strategic approach to escalate tensions without triggering a full-scale war by keeping Israel on high alert and expanding its attacks.

For two weeks, Hezbollah has been threatening to widen the war with Israel. Hezbollah joined Iran in this endeavor, hoping to prepare the way for a possible escalation against Israel. However, Hezbollah has learned that threatening Israel with escalation, may be as good as the escalation itself. This is because it creates a sense of alert in Israel, and Hezbollah doesn’t have to lose anything or spend any capital in return.

In Lebanon there is concern of economic crises. The country is on edge and its electric grid and health sector is already stretched thin. This means that Hezbollah dragging Lebanon into a wider war could deeply harm parts of Lebanon that do not sympathize with Hezbollah and that could lead to Hezbollah losing its clout and influence in Beirut. Hezbollah and Iran have the same calculations here. Both Hezbollah and Iran have profited over the last decade. They used the war on ISIS to achieve new influence in the region and they have even benefited from US sanctions, at least that is their claim in their own media.

7,500 Hezbollah rockets already launched

Hezbollah has already fired 7,500 rockets at Israel and also launched 200 UAVs, according to reports. In recent days it increased the range and sectors of its attacks to threaten Shamir and Ayelet HaShachar in Israel, two communities it had refrained from targeting in this past. Hezbollah is thus escalating without causing a larger war.

Meanwhile Hezbollah’s officials say that it reserves the right to carry out a larger attack on Israel. It says this is separate from its backing of Gaza. It basically argues it has an open account with Israel and it can chose a time and place to escalate into a wider war. Pro-Iran media openly crows about how much this keeps Israel on alert, with stories about drone threats and other incidents.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah meets with top Hamas official Khalil Al-Hayya in this handout picture obtained by Reuters on July 5, 2024, Lebanon. (credit: Hezbollah Media Office/Handout via REUTERS.)

The recent Hezbollah video of the Imad 4 tunnel complex was part of this psychological war. Understanding how Hezbollah has conducted this psychosocial war since late July is important to understanding how it wants to incrementally escalate without risking a larger war. That is the policy of Hezbollah currently. The group wants to preserve its forces as mostly intact and it knows Israel is also wary of a larger war. Therefore it thinks it is winning so long as it can increase threats slowly and not receive a stronger response from Israel.