The vast Hezbollah arsenal awaiting Israel in Lebanon

livemint.com:

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. BEIRUT—Israel launched devastating attacks on Hezbollah in recent days with airstrikes and remote-control explosions that put the Lebanese militant group on the defensive and demonstrated Israel’s vast superiority in intelligence gathering and technology. A ground war between the two, if it occurs, would likely be a different story.

Hezbollah, which has been regularly striking targets in Israel for nearly a year, has kept in reserve a massive arsenal of rockets, drones and antitank missiles that it can deploy to counter Israeli advances. Among its most dangerous new weapons is an Iranian-made guided antitank missile called Almas—the Persian word for diamond—which gives Hezbollah a much higher degree of precision in its strikes than it had when it last fought a war with Israel in 2006. As in that war, which ended in a stalemate, Israel would have to fight on a battlefield in southern Lebanon that plays to Hezbollah’s strengths.

The conflict could turn into a quagmire, much like the war in Gaza. “It’s a little like saying to the United States in 1980, ‘Let’s go back into Vietnam,’" said Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and former U.S. government official, who co-wrote a recent study of Hezbollah’s arsenal.

The risk of full-scale war escalated further on Monday, after Israel intensified its airstrikes across Lebanon including in the capital Beirut, killing almost 500 people and wounding more than 1,600 others in the deadliest single day in Lebanon since the Gaza war began last year. Hezbollah also launched missiles into Israel. Israel has said it wants to push Hezbollah back from the border and degrade its military