LONDON: Israel has misjudged the cost of a possible new war with Hezbollah, a former US military intelligence analyst warned on Tuesday, pointing out that it could result in significant civilian casualties in both Lebanon and Israel.
Harrison Mann, a major in the Defense Intelligence Agency and the highest-ranking US military officer to resign over the Gaza conflict, expressed his concerns in an interview with The Guardian.
Mann underlined the high risk that Israel will be drawn into a war on its northern border for domestic political reasons, driven primarily by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s retention of power and his insensitivity to corruption allegations are seen as a prerequisite for maintaining the state of war.
“I don’t know how realistic their assessments are of the destruction that would be inflicted on Israel, and I’m pretty sure they have no realistic idea of how successful they could be against Hezbollah,” said the former army officer and intelligence analyst.
He said the Israeli military was aware that it could not decisively hit the extensive weapons arsenal of Hezbollah, which is entrenched in the Lebanese mountains.
Instead, Mann said, the Israeli army would attack Hezbollah leaders and Shiite neighborhoods to demoralize the group’s support base. This tactic is known as the Dahiya doctrine and dates back to the heavy bombing of the Beirut district in the 2006 war.
“While it is not an actual written doctrine, I think we can safely assume that bombing civilian centers as a means of pressuring the enemy is a belief widely accepted and shared by the IDF and the Israeli leadership. We have just seen them do that in Gaza over the past nine months,” Mann said, but he warned such a plan would backfire.
Mann told the Guardian he expected Hezbollah to respond to any existential threat with a massive rocket attack.
“They are probably capable of at least partially overwhelming Israeli air defenses, attacking civilian infrastructure throughout the country and inflicting a level of destruction on Israel that I don’t think Israel has ever seen in its history – and certainly not in its recent history,” Mann said.
Since Hezbollah’s arsenal appears to be beyond the range of air strikes, Mann suspected that Israeli forces would launch a ground offensive in southern Lebanon, which would result in heavy Israeli casualties.
He warned that continued shelling of Israeli cities could force the administration of US President Joe Biden – especially during an election period – to comply with Netanyahu’s demand for greater US engagement.
“Our least escalatory involvement would potentially be to attack supply lines or related targets in Iraq and Syria to disrupt lines of communication and arms supplies to Hezbollah,” Mann said. “But that in itself is risky because if we start doing that, some of the people we hit could be Hezbollah, but they could also be IRGC (Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps).”
While Mann is convinced that the Biden administration wants to avoid a direct conflict with Iran, he acknowledges that the risk of such an escalation remains.
“We know full well that the Israeli prime minister needs to continue to be a wartime leader if he wants to prolong his political career and stay out of the courtroom. So that motivation is there,” Mann said, adding that any Israeli government would also be under pressure from the displacement of tens of thousands of Israelis due to Hezbollah attacks.
Mann also referred to the Israeli military’s belief that it must confront the Iran-backed Hezbollah, which is becoming increasingly stronger.
Mann’s resignation, which was submitted in November and takes effect in June, was accompanied by a public letter on LinkedIn in May. In the letter, he condemned U.S. support for Israel’s actions in Gaza, saying it had “enabled and authorized the killing and starvation of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians.”
As a descendant of European Jews, Mann wrote: “I grew up in a particularly morally unforgiving environment when it came to responsibility for ethnic cleansing.”
He said his resignation had been met with a largely positive response from his former colleagues, with many expressing similar sentiments.
“A lot of people I’ve worked with have reached out to me, a lot of people I haven’t worked with have told me they feel the same way,” he said. “It’s not just a generational thing. There are pretty old people who feel the same way.”