Get Tough on Beirut to Rein in Hezbollah Threat

Posted: September 12th, 2017

By Tony Badran

Tony Badran is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he focuses on Lebanon, Hezbollah, Syria, and the geopolitics of the Levant. Born and raised in Lebanon, Tony has testified to the House of Representatives on several occasions regarding U.S. policy toward Iran and Syria. His writings have appeared in publications including The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, and The Weekly Standard, and he is a regular contributor to Tablet and a columnist for NOW.

Hezbollah – an Iran-backed militia that controls southern Lebanon – boasts a medium-sized army and a whopping arsenal of up to 150,000 rockets and missiles. Since 2011, much of that army has been engaged in Syria supporting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. While this has thinned Hezbollah’s ranks, it has also given the group valuable field experience and is opening up new routes of military supply to Iran. The Cipher Brief’s Fritz Lodge spoke with Tony Badran, Research Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, about what this means for Israel and whether a new war with Hezbollah is imminent.

TCB: What is the current balance of forces between Israel and Hezbollah and how does it compare to the balance of forces during the last major conflict in 2006?

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