After days of speculation, Israel’s military confirmed on Tuesday that it has begun “limited, localized and targeted raids against Hezbollah terror targets in the border area of southern Lebanon”.
The announcement said the raids were based on precise intelligence against Hezbollah "terrorist targets and infrastructure" in southern Lebanon as the conflict between the two sides reaches the closest it has come to war since 2006.
“These targets are located in villages close to the border and pose an immediate threat to Israeli communities in northern Israel,” the statement said, carried out by the elite 98th division, deployed two weeks ago from Gaza.
Since October 7 when Iran-backed Hamas invaded Israel, sparking the Gaza war, Iran’s biggest proxy, Hezbollah, has engaged in almost daily bombardments of Israel’s north in allegiance with Hamas.
It has seen 63,000 Israelis displaced and over 100,000 Lebanese. Since operations stepped up two weeks ago when Israel targeted what is believed to be 1,500 Hezbollah operatives in pager and walkie-talkie explosions, hundreds of thousands more Lebanese have fled southern Lebanon and Hezbollah-controlled areas of Beirut.
Air strikes have blitzed Hezbollah, including assassinating its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, last week. Its top commanders have also been eliminated.
The Israeli military also released footage of the preparations for the ground operation named Northern Arrows.
Meanwhile, as the successor to Nasrallah remains to be announced, then group’s deputy, Naim Qassem, warned that the group would continue its campaign in the first televised address following Nasrallah’s killing.
“Hezbollah will go on with its goals and its battle,” he said, saying that in spite of the annihilation of the top ranks of the group’s commanders, they would be easily replaced.
“Our system of command and control as well as the mujahideen [fighters] will continue to follow up and implement the alternative plans accurately. All are ready in the battlefield.”
Addressing the pager operation which left the group humiliated on the world stage after Israel infiltrated the group's communications network, he said: “We have sacrificed a lot since the pager operations, the martyrdom of the commanders and the martyrdom of the leader (Nasrallah).
"If this happens anywhere else with any organization across the world, it will collapse, but we did not. We are going on despite the pains and the sacrifices. We are going on because we have the hope and we trust Allah almighty to be victorious. We are the people of jihad.”
US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, gave the green light to his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, for the limited incursion.
According to a Pentagon readout of the call between the two officials, they “agreed on the necessity of dismantling attack infrastructure along the border to ensure that Lebanese [Hezbollah] cannot conduct October 7-style attacks on Israel’s northern communities”.
While the US and UK were helping citizens to leave Beirut amid the escalation, the situation in Israel remained unchanged. A US official, speaking off the record to Iran International, said: “Israel has a great ability to deter terrorist threats with the likes of the Iron Dome so the situation here is much more stable.”
Andrew Fox, an ex-officer in the British forces, said on X that the Israeli incursion was not a simple operation. “It’s a huge area to try and clear - and impossible to hold, and nothing to stop Hezbollah reinfiltrating after the IDF withdraw,” he said.
“I’ll be amazed if this IDF ground op in Lebanon is more than a relatively limited incursion to clear known sites. Similar to creating a buffer zone. I cannot see any sense in a full scale invasion.”
The operation is focusing on the border area which was meant to be protected by UNIFIL’s peacekeepers in the 2006 UN Resolution 1701. On a clearly marked line, the border between the two countries was meant to be cleared of terror groups and the groups forced to disarm. Neither has happened.
In a statement, UNIFIL said: "Yesterday, the IDF notified UNIFIL of their intention to undertake limited ground incursions into Lebanon. Despite this dangerous development, peacekeepers remain in position.
"Any crossing into Lebanon is in violation of Lebanese sovereignty and territorial integrity, and a violation of resolution 1701. We urge all actors to step back from such escalatory acts, which will only lead to more violence and more bloodshed. We strongly urge the parties to recommit to Security Council resolutions and 1701 (2006) as the only viable solution to bring back stability in this region."
Reuters reported that "the Lebanese forces withdrew five kilometers north of the border”.
A senior political figure opposed to Hezbollah in Lebanon, speaking to Iran International of anonymity, said: "Hezbollah acted alone as a non-state actor and cannot expect the state to defend them when a retaliation takes place. As the Lebanese Army was unable to disarm Hezbollah, it cannot be dragged into a war to defend it either."
"Lebanese sovereign territory is under attack, and Hezbollah is part of a regional armed networked controlled by the Iranian regime. Lebanon alone cannot defend itself against internal and external actors and strengthen its sovereign institutions without the support of the international community represented in the United Nations and Arab League."
On Tuesday morning, sirens were sounded in central Israel as Hezbollah targeted deeper into the country with multiple ballistic missiles. The Israeli military said the projectiles were intercepted but there have been reports at the time of publication of at least one man suffering shrapnel injuries, according to Magen David Adom, Israel's rescue service.
Israeli military announced there had been a direct hit on Israel's highway 6 near Kfar Qasim.
Hezbollah also claimed it fired Fadi-4 missiles toward the intelligence agency Mossad's headquarters in Glilot, north of Tel Aviv, while Iran's Tasnim news agency said "the initial plan of the Zionists to advance by land into Lebanese territory has failed so far".
The British foreign secretary, David Lammy, reiterated calls for a diplomatic solution to the crisis which shows no signs of easing. "Speaking to [US] Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken this evening, we were clear on the need for a diplomatic solution in the Middle East."
"The UK is calling for an immediate ceasefire and the implementation of a political plan that allows displaced Israeli and Lebanese civilians to return to their homes,” he said.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, announced that a top Hamas commander, Fatah Sharif, killed by Israel in south Lebanon Monday, was one of its employees but had been suspended since allegations of his ties to the militant group emerged in March.
Israel has alleged that UNRWA has been infiltrated by the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group.
Stopping short of pledging any direct action by the Jewish state itself, Netanyahu said the Iranian theocratic system that his country was confronting would soon end.
The 3-minute speech delivered in English and posted on X came days after Israeli air strikes killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, capping off nearly two weeks of bombings and aerial bombardments which have decapitated the Iran-backed group's leadership.
"When Iran is finally free and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think – everything will be different," Netanyahu said.
"Our two countries, Israel and Iran, will be at peace. When that day comes, the terror network that the regime built in five continents will be bankrupt, dismantled.
Netanyahu said that there was nowhere in the Middle East beyond Israel's reach, a message underscored by Israeli air attacks in Gaza, Yemen and Lebanon over the weekend.
Both Iranian and Israeli leaders have appeared to hold off from any clear pledge of direct confrontation despite the latest uptick in violence.
The response from some in the Iranian diaspora and activist community has been positive, with many sharing Netanyahu's sentiments on Iran.
"Israel and free Iran will reunite as the great allies in the Middle East again", Iranian-American activist Nick Nikbakht posted to X.
Gazelle Sharmahd, the daughter of Jamshid Sharmahd, a German-American national of Iranian descent who was kidnapped for his activism from the United Arab Emirates in 2020 by Iranian agents, thanked the Prime Minister as the "only leader of a nation who directly addresses the people of Iran."
"We agree with everything you said EXCEPT for 1 point: Those khomeinist tyrants are NOT the “leaders of Iran”!!!!" Sharmahd posted to X.
Ellie Cohanim, a former Deputy Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism during the Donald Trump administration, told Iran International that Netanyahu's speech demonstrated that Israelis and Iranians have one foe.
“(The) historic address to speak directly to the Iranian people is meant to clearly communicate to Iranians that they and Israel share a common enemy—the Islamic Republic Regime. And also to let Iranian people know that any military events and conflict are between the Regime and Israel; and not between Israel and the Iranian people.”
This was not the Israeli Prime Minister's first time addressing the people of Iran.
During an earlier premiership he spoke directly to Iranians in a 2013 an interview with BBC Persian, saying, "I would welcome a genuine rapprochement, a genuine effort to stop the nuclear program - not a fake one. Not 'harfe pooch,'" deploying a colloquial Persian phrase meaning "empty words."
Still, he was mocked for comments he made about Iranians not being able to wear jeans in the country, which some critics said showed ignorance of the way Iranians actually live.
Israel's military has long been using the social media channel IDF Farsi to speak directly to people in Iran and circumvent authorities' censorship, gaining access to tens of millions of Iranians online.
“We wanted to build a bridge to the Iranian people," Beni Sabti, the driving force behind the account, told Iran International in a previous interview.
The assassination comes from a change of approach from Israeli intelligence which has now transformed the face of the decades-long conflict with Iran’s most powerful proxy after its top ranks have been shattered by two weeks of targeted attacks across Lebanon.
The Financial Times reported that Israel has relied on exceptional intelligence in recent months, beginning with the July 30 assassination of Fuad Shukr, a key aide to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Officials told the newspaper that there had been a large-scale reorientation of Israel’s intelligence-gathering efforts on Hezbollah after the surprising failure of its far more powerful military to deliver a knockout blow against the militant group in 2006, or even to eliminate its senior leadership, including Nasrallah.
“For the next two decades, Israel’s sophisticated signals intelligence Unit 8200, and its military intelligence directorate, called Aman, mined vast amounts of data to map out the fast-growing militia in Israel’s 'northern arena,'” the paper wrote.
Speaking to Iran International, an Israeli official said that Israel is now working fast before the intervention of the US can stand in the way of its blitzing the group.
“There has to be a major amount of damage done, and quickly, before the US starts to step up pressure for a truce,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“We don’t want a repeat of Gaza where our hands are tied, limiting the success of our operations and in the end, lengthening the war.”
He said the killing of Nasrallah also marked a political change for Israel, which had in recent years acted more cautiously on the killing of the group's leader, treating him as "more like a head of state". But now, the gloves are off.
Since October 8, Hezbollah has launched over 8,000 projectiles towards Israel in allegiance with Hamas in Gaza’s atrocities of October 7. The invasion saw thousands of Iran-backed Hamas militia invade Israel killing at least 1,100 and taking over 250 hostages to Gaza, 101 of whom remain there. In Israel, 63,000 civilians have since been displaced.
Since the pager explosions which saw around 1,500 Hezbollah operatives taken out of action in Beirut, Israel has gone full force, with troops now on the ground as the country vows to create safety on its northern border in a bid to return home the residents now spread around the country.
Another Israeli official told Iran International that there is a “limited incursion” underway but did not give details beyond the fact special forces are there to dismantle key military targets in the area meant to have been demilitarized under 2006's UN Resolution 1701, a resolution Hezbollah has since continued to breach.
Speaking to the FT, Miri Eisin, a former senior intelligence officer, said Israeli intelligence had “widened its aperture to view the entirety of Hezbollah, looking beyond just its military wing to its political ambitions and growing connections with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Nasrallah’s relationship with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad”.
It has taken 40 years for Israel to get such an upper hand, having seen the group through this time as a “terror army”. Changing this approach, Eisin told the FT that Israel was forced to study the Iran-backed militia with the same eyes as it had the likes of the Syrian army. The Syrian war for which Hezbollah lent its troops, offered the chance to see the group in a more revealing light.
The FT said that “while Hezbollah’s fighters were battle hardened in Syria’s bloody war, the militant group’s forces had grown to keep pace with the drawn-out conflict. That recruitment also left them more vulnerable to Israeli spies placing agents or looking for would-be defectors.”
According to Randa Slim, a program director at the Middle East Institute in Washington, “Syria was the beginning of the expansion of Hezbollah …. That [war] weakened their internal control mechanisms and opened the door for infiltration on a big level.”
The war in Syria also “created a fountain of data, much of it publicly available for Israel’s spies — and their algorithms — to digest”, the report noted.
Obituaries, regularly used by Hezbollah for its martyrs, were one of those vitally revealing tools, offering insights such as where the fighter was from, where he was killed, and his circle of friends posting the news on social media. Funerals also offered the chance to draw senior leaders out of the shadows, even if briefly.
Quoting a former high-ranking Lebanese politician in Beirut, the FT said the penetration of Hezbollah by Israeli or US intelligence was “the price of their support for Assad”.
“They had to reveal themselves in Syria,” he said, where the secretive group suddenly had to stay in touch and share information with the notoriously corrupt Syrian intelligence service, or with Russian intelligence services, who were regularly monitored by the Americans.
Hezbollah blew up Shin Bet’s headquarters in Tyre not once but twice in the early years of Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon. At one point in the late 1990s, Israel realized that Hezbollah was hijacking its then-unencrypted drone broadcasts, learning about the Israel Defense Forces’ own targets and methods, according to two people familiar with the issue.
Israel’s technical expertise also saw it take advantage of the likes of spy satellites, sophisticated drones and cyber-hacking capabilities that turn mobile phones into listening devices.
Israeli news outlet Ynet said that as Israel began to close in on Hezbollah, the first military intelligence used cyber technology and electronic intelligence gathering, mostly by the IDF's 8200 unit. Then the military gathered visual intelligence that could identify precise coordinates and locations and, finally, the military's 504 unit gathered information from human sources.
Intelligence agency Mossad likely laid the foundations for the entire effort in operations, Ynet said, and the details of which will likely never be revealed as Israel has a tight 50-year non disclosure rule on security information, much of which, even is locked beyond that.
Mossad has a long history of agents on the ground in Lebanon such as the high-profile case of Erika Chambers, a Mossad operative who was one of the people behind the 1979 assassination of Ali Hassan Salameh, a high-ranking official in the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Salameh was a founding member of Black September, the militant group responsible for orchestrating the attack that killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Chambers had entered Lebanon posing as a British charity worker and lived in an apartment overlooking a car park used by Salameh. Eventually, that lookout post would see her detonate the bomb that killed him in 1979, planted on his car by another operative, before she left the country soon after.
Today, Unit 9900, which writes algorithms that sift through terabytes of visual images to find the slightest changes, has also been key, wrote the FT, its work to identify an improvised explosive device by a roadside, a vent over a tunnel or the sudden addition of a concrete reinforcement, hinting at a bunker.
The unit identifies an operative, feeding daily patterns of movements into a vast database of information, siphoned off from devices that could include family phones, or his smart car’s odometer. These can be identified from sources as disparate as a drone flying overhead, from a hacked CCTV camera feed that he happens to pass by and even from his voice captured on the microphone of a modern TV’s remote control, according to several Israeli officials speaking to the FT.
The huge bank of information has allowed Israel to take out of action the top echelons of the group and shock the world in the wake of the pager and walkie-talkie operation in which explosives were planted in the group's communications devices just 10 days before the leader of the group was killed. In between, nearly all the group’s top commanders had been hit, along with a wealth of military infrastructure.
Now, as the Lebanese militia stands in disarray and Israel continues to pound it hard so there is no room to regroup, the Jewish state is simultaneously going hard on Iran’s Yemeni proxy, the Houthis, to make sure they are clear of the consequences of trying to step into the breach.