US intel wrongly envisioned catastrophic outcome if IDF escalated against Hezbollah

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Posted on 12/19/2024 1:43:10 PM PST by KingofZion

US intelligence assessments before Israel escalated its conflict against the Lebanese Hezbollah terror group in September said that such a move risked sparking an all-out war in which hundreds — if not thousands — of Israelis would be killed, three US officials and one Israeli official told The Times of Israel...

...the US officials said, acknowledging that both countries’ assessments proved wildly inaccurate within days, as the IDF methodically took out much of Hezbollah’s missile and drone capabilities, dismantled its military infrastructure in southern Lebanon, picked off almost every member of its senior leadership and killed or wounded thousands of operatives — many of them in audacious mass detonations of the terror group’s communication devices.

Hezbollah did manage to expand the range of its rocket and drone launches, disrupting life for tens of thousands of citizens in parts of Israel that had been free of such threats over the past year. Fifty-seven Israeli soldiers and 21 civilians were killed during the roughly two-month escalation that ensued...

As tensions between Israel and Hezbollah began to ratchet up over the summer, US intelligence assessments had warned of a very different scenario in the offing.

“The assessments… were that this was potentially going to be a catastrophic war that would cause potentially hundreds or thousands of Israeli casualties as Hezbollah missiles overwhelmed Israeli defenses,” said one of the US officials....

But Israel was unmoved by the words of caution from Washington, and the IDF conducted airstrikes two days later that eliminated the leadership of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force. Then, on September 27, Israel killed Hezbollah’s longtime secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah.

Reflecting on how events developed over the past several months, a third US official noted that it was possible to defend the summertime intelligence assessments by chalking up Israel’s battlefield achievements to luck.

(Excerpt) Read more at timesofisrael.com ...

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1 posted on 12/19/2024 1:43:10 PM PST by KingofZion

To: KingofZion

2 posted on 12/19/2024 1:46:55 PM PST by SoConPubbie (Trump has all the right enemies, DeSantis has all the wrong friends.)

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