Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday that the once-feared, Iran-backed Hezbollah terror organization has been reduced to 20% of its rocket capacity — a reflection of Israel’s military success in the ongoing Lebanon war.
The Times of Israel reported:
“I estimate the remaining capacity of the missiles and rockets to be in the order of 20%, and also it is not organized in the way that it used to be organized, in a way that [Hezbollah] could fire [large] volleys,” he says during a visit to the IDF Northern Command base in Safed.
Gallant added that Iran understood Hezbollah was no longer a deterrent to Israel.
Israel has been at war on the ground in Lebanon for four weeks, following the Israeli security cabinet’s decision to make the return of more than 60,000 residents to their homes in northern Israel a key goal of the ongoing war.
The Israeli civilians, Jewish and Arab, were evacuated last October when Hezbollah began firing rockets, drones, and anti-tank missiles at Israeli border communities, in a show of solidarity with the Hamas terror attack of October 1.
Hezbollah was thought to have a stockpile of well over 100,000 rockets, enabling it to continue firing at the rate of several dozen per day for many years.
Israel initially restrained its response, then began to fight back in earnest in mid-September, with the “pager” attack that disabled or killed most of Hezbollah’s senior commanders, and followed by targeted strikes on Hezbollah leaders, weapons caches, and headquarters. Ground troops have followed, attacking Hezbollah bases and tunnels in southern Lebanon and removing their rockets and other weapons — many of which were located near, or within, civilian towns.
At 20% capacity, Hezbollah is still a formidable force; the war is expected to continue for at least several weeks, though Israeli media channels are discussing the possibility that it could be wrapped up by the end of the year in the form of some kind of diplomatic agreement brokered by the United States.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
