Thread by @Saul_Sadka

I almost feel bad for Hezbollah. They’ve spent the 18 years since the Second Lebanon War preparing for this day.

They dug bunkers and tunnels, turned bedrooms into missile silos, and mosques into fortifications. (1/8)

They concealed firing positions under bushes across Lebanon's hills and in the Bekaa Valley. They carefully distributed their weapons.

But in those 18 years, Israel has been working too, and the technological advances in that time have vastly increased Israel's edge. (2/8)

What the IDF has now confirmed in this video was obvious: there’s no doubt they have centimeter-level 3D models of every building in Lebanon. On lidar maps, the entrances to all of Hezbollah's "secret" hideouts would light up like Christmas trees. (3/8)

It’s trivial to track changes in these maps: when a farmhouse is extended, when new tracks appear in a wood, the changes show up bright.

Like the French in the 1930s, Hezbollah prepared for the last war. It turns out they’ve built a modern Maginot Line. They’re cooked. (4/8)

As their civilian human shields head north, leaving them exposed, Hezbollah's fighters will now be scrambling through the brush and across the hills, unable to safely use roads and with no way to contact each other. They’ll desperately try to reach whatever rockets they can, only to ineffectually fire back at Israel.

But they’ll be tracked by Israel's endless eyes in the sky and eliminated along with their rockets. (5/8)

The question is: Can Israel sufficiently reduce the Hezbollah threat with targeted airstrikes alone and avoid a ground incursion?

In the past, this would have been impossible, even with carpet bombing.

However, with the new technology available and complete air superiority, Israel may be able to keep their enemy pinned down from the air, slowly degrading them into dust. (6/8)

If the Israelis do need to go in, it might be sufficient to cut off Hezbollah's heartland in the south from the Bekaa Valley, and thus from resupply from Iran, just as was done to Hamas at Rafah, sealing their demise. It might even be possible to achieve this from the air alone.

Lebanon's geography makes this feasible, as it is split north-south by mountains and east-west by around 12 large canyons. There are no more than seven bridges across each canyon, and there are minimal passes through the mountains.

(7/8)

Israel would just need to pick a river and make it impassable for Hezbollah with a few bombs. With careful monitoring, Hezbollah's southern activities would dry up and fizzle out.

The Litani River probably isn’t far enough north, as it bisects Hezbollah's Shia heartlands, and parts of it are less than 10 km from Israel.

Don’t be surprised if the bridges on the Awali or Damour rivers go kaboom at some point.

If the Israelis do go in, it might simply be to take up positions on the very lightly populated (mostly Druze) western reaches of Mount Hermon (highlighted). Occupying those heights, with one of the valleys made impassable, would force Hezbollah's communications over a single mountain road—essentially turning it into a shooting gallery.

(8/8)

Full thread:

Based on the number of major ammo cookoffs that people are posting, the IDF claim to have destoryed 50% of Hezbollah's stocks doesn't look implausible. The IDF are unlikely to let up now that even the minority of civilians who remained have fled the battlefield.

Looks like a Hezbollah cruise missile cooking off somewhere in the Bekaa Valley at around 6 pm local time. Dramatic.

@GAZAWOOD1 thank you