Thread by @sfrantzman

Thread/ The replies to my article mocking the 100k "Hezbollah fighters" claim tend to argue that "no, it is possible." Come on folks...run the numbers.

Who are Hezbollah supporters? Some of the Shi'ites in Lebanon. That's the basic pool of people who join Hezbollah, besides some folk from Syria or Iraq who somehow found their way to the group.

Given the principle pool is Lebanon. And it's among Shi'ites and it's a segment of those Shi'ites. What number do you think the pool of potential supporters is? Let's say out of maybe 7 million Lebanese...are we talking 1-2 million potential supporters?

Now wait a sec. We need to look at the supporters as a traditional demographic pyramid with men and women, children and elderly. So what percent of those supporters are military age men who conceivably could join and train? 500,000 men? And what percent them 18-40

So people are saying that basically every man within that group who could potentially have joined, did join...did get trained? Really? Like it was 100% recruitment...

Is it possible Hezbollah thinks it can draw on a pool of 100,000 men. Sure. Is it plausible they trained them all? No.

Someone wrote that Hamas has like 25,000 fighters...well Hamas draws on like 2 million people in the Gaza Strip and those people are completely stuck there.

So Hamas, with 2 million people at hand, could only get 25,000 men under arms. Hezbollah...which operates in a much more free environment, unable to forcibly recruit and not relying on destitute men...has four times that?

By contrast the Israeli Haganah that transformed from a fighting force to the IDF in 1948-49 had like 30,000 to then 60,000 fighters, including women I think. And it had the yishuv population of around a million or so to draw on.

It's just not reasonable to come up with this 100,000 figure except through extreme exaggeration or counting old men who once were linked to Hezbollah and teens who went to a "summer camp" or whatever. Hard core actual fighters is like a quarter of that maybe...maybe.

But exaggeration isn't unique to Hezbollah. I read that Iran pretends its Basij has between 5 million to 7 million and even up to 20 million...because they just count everyone as a member...but that's not really reliable.

Countries that pretend every military age male is a potential fighter can draw all sorts of stats, but anyone who studies war knows that this is not how war works. Even in times of extreme crisis with mass mobilization...not everyone goes to fight.

You can of course look to history to the Paraguayan War, the last year of Nazi Germany, the last year of the Confederacy or other examples where societies tried to mobilize everyone...like the Soviets did for war as well..and some of these were real machine economies.

Hezbollah has a good organization but by nature good organizations like Hezbollah are lean and small, that's why they are successful, when they pretend to take in "everyone" they will grow blubbery and fail.

Those are my thoughts on the "it's possible" model for Hezbollah size. Anyway do your own comparisons with the PMU or Houthis or whoever.