Live Updates: Israel Again Strikes Hezbollah Stronghold After Earlier Attempt to Kill Leader
Israel said the newest attacks early Saturday destroyed Hezbollah weapons. They came only hours after Israel flattened several residential buildings in an attempt to kill Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s leader.
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Footage verified by The New York Times showed flattened buildings and destroyed vehicles in southern Beirut. Israel said the strikes targeted Hezbollah’s leader.CreditCredit...Ibrahim Amro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Smoke rose above the skyline early on Saturday as the Israeli military launched a new series of airstrikes just south of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital.An earlier attack on Friday that Israel said was intended to destroy Hezbollah’s underground headquarters flattened several residential buildings.
The prime target of the Friday evening strikes was the militant group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, according to eight Israeli and two American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Nasrallah was in the buildings when they were hit.
Killing Mr. Nasrallah would be a major escalation in Israel’s rapidly expanding campaign against Hezbollah over the last two weeks, which has threatened to spiral into a wider regional war. Fears have grown that Hezbollah’s backer, Iran, might be drawn into the fight, further destabilizing the Middle East.
The Israeli airstrikes came shortly after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel gave a defiant speech at the United Nations General Assembly, vowing to continue the fight against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon despite international calls for a cease-fire. He said defeating Hezbollah was essential to Israel’s survival and called the group “a terror army perched on our northern border.”
At least six people were killed and more than 90 injured by the Israeli strikes on Friday, Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said early on Saturday. The toll was expected to rise as emergency workers were still searching through the rubble even as Israel struck again.“They are residential buildings. They were filled with people,” Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said in an interview on Friday. “
Early on Saturday morning, Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari had warned that Israeli forces would soon attack “strategic capabilities” belonging to Hezbollah underneath three building complexes south of Beirut. The Israeli military earlier told residents near the buildings to leave immediately.
Admiral Hagari also said Israel would seek to thwart munitions transfers to Hezbollah and that Israeli warplanes were patrolling near Beirut’s international airport.
At least six people were killed and more than 90 injured by the Israeli strikes on Friday, Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said early on Saturday. The toll was expected to rise as emergency workers were still searching through the rubble even as Israel struck again.“They are residential buildings. They were filled with people,” Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said in an interview on Friday. “
It was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on buildings in the Dahiya, a group of crowded residential neighborhoods south of Beirut where Hezbollah dominates. Many residents of the Dahiya began to flee the area early on Saturday amid more attacks.
Here’s what else to know:
White House watching: President Biden was briefed by his national security team and is receiving regular updates on the latest developments in the Middle East, according to a statement from the White House on Friday evening that said he had directed the Pentagon to assess and adjust U.S. force posture in the region “as necessary.”
Fighting through night: On Friday night, Hezbollah said it had targeted the northern Israeli city of Safed with a rocket salvo, as well as Sa’ar, a kibbutz near Israel’s northern border. There were no immediate reports of deaths or serious injuries.
Emergency departure: Najib Mikati, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, said the latest attack proved Israel “pays no heed at all” to international calls for a cease-fire. In recent days, Mr. Mikati and Lebanese officials held intense discussions on the sidelines of the U.N. in New York about a U.S. and French cease-fire proposal unveiled this week. He will cut short his meetings at the U.N. General Assembly and travel back to Beirut after the Israeli attack on the city’s suburbs, according to a statement from his office.
Netanyahu gives no ground: In his speech, Mr. Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, made no mention of international efforts to broker cease-fires in Gaza and Lebanon. He also threatened Iran, which backs Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. According to his office, he will return to Israel on Friday evening, the Jewish Sabbath, a highly unusual move that underscores the gravity of the situation after the latest strikes south of Beirut targeting Hezbollah leaders.
Iran’s ire: Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called an emergency meeting of the Supreme National Security Council on Friday night in response to reports that Mr. Nasrallah was the target of the strike, two Iranian officials with knowledge of the meeting said. Ibrahim Azizi, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said that Israel “has opened the gates of hell against itself” with its strike on Hezbollah’s headquarters in Lebanon in comments to Iranian state television. He said the “axis of resistance” — the regional militia backed by Iran — were better coordinated and armed than ever and “will respond with force at the right time.”
War in Gaza: The Gazan Health Ministry said on Friday said that 39 people had been killed and 86 injured by the Israeli military in the previous 24 hours. The ministry, which does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, said that the toll in Gaza since the war began last year had risen to more than 41,530 people killed, with more than 96,000 injured.
Buildings destroyed by Israeli airstrikes south of Beirut, Lebanon, on Friday.Credit...Ibrahim Amro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israel’s attempt to kill Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, on Friday came after its government received information indicating he had just convened a leadership meeting at an underground facility south of Beirut, the Lebanese capital, according to five Israeli officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.
The officials said Israeli intelligence agencies had been aware of the facility, under four residential buildings in a densely populated neighborhood south of Beirut, and the government ordered airstrikes based on real-time information indicating Mr. Nasrallah had gone there.
Based on that information, and based on the large amount of ordnance fired at the site, including weapons designed to destroy bunkers, and the intelligence gathered from inside Hezbollah since the attack, the initial assessment of Israeli intelligence agencies is that Mr. Nasrallah has been killed, the officials said. But they cautioned that assessment was preliminary and may yet change.
Three of the officials said the government’s decision to strike was also based on political, strategic and other factors, not on intelligence alone. Israel has had intelligence on Mr. Nasrallah’s location before and has bypassed earlier opportunities to try to kill him, they said.
Latest Images From Israel and Lebanon
Video verified by The New York Times shows the aftermath of Friday's attacks in southern Beirut.
Mourning the deaths of 15 family members after an Israeli airstrike hit a building in Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, on Friday.
Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
A series of airstrikes hit buildings on a block in southern Beirut.
The scene of an Israeli strike Friday in Beirut.
Reuters
The Israeli strikes Friday targeted Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah.
David Guttenfelder
An Israeli air defense system intercepting rockets fired from Lebanon.
Jalaa Marey/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel speaking Friday at the U.N. General Assembly in New York City.
Dave Sanders for The New York Times
Treating a victim after Friday's strike in Beirut.
Wael Hamzeh/EPA, via Shutterstock
A building hit by an Israeli strike in eastern Lebanon.
By AFP
The southern Lebanese town of Saksakiyeh following several Israeli strikes this week.
Associated Press
Israeli soldiers in northern Israel.
Atef Safadi/EPA, via Shutterstock
Air defenses intercepted missiles over Kiryat Shmona, a city near Israel's northern border with Lebanon.
An Iranian holding a photo of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during a rally to support Hezbollah and Palestinians after Friday prayers in Tehran.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Friday night summoned the Supreme National Council to an emergency meeting at his home after learning that Israel had targeted his closest ally, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in an airstrike in Lebanon, according to three Iranian officials with knowledge of the meeting.
The Israeli military on Friday destroyed several residential buildings in the attack, Israeli and American officials said. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Nasrallah was in one of the buildings when they were hit.
But the initial assessment of Israeli intelligence agencies was that Mr. Nasrallah had been killed, officials said. But they cautioned that assessment was preliminary and might yet change.
It was the first time that Mr. Khamenei had convened the Supreme National Council, the group that responds to national security threats, domestic and international and shapes foreign and national policy, for an emergency meeting since July 31, when Israel assassinated a top Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.
The meeting came as Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, and the foreign ministry issued statements strongly condemning Israel’s attack, calling it “an undeniable war crime,” without naming Mr. Nasrallah.
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Mr. Khamenei leading a prayer over the coffins of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and his bodyguard in a photograph released by state media in July.Credit...Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader, via Associated Press
“Iran will follow up on the Zionist’s latest crime and stand by the people of Lebanon and the resistance,” Mr. Pezeshkian said in a statement.
Privately, though, Iranian officials expressed concerned that the absence of a statement from Hezbollah on Mr. Nasrallah’s status portended bad news, the three Iranian officials said. The cellphones of Iranian officials across the country beeped with text messages and phone calls asking variations of the same question: Any news from Sayyed? It was a reference to Mr. Nasrallah by his nickname and religious title.
Iran also requested an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a forum of Muslim countries, to discuss the attack.
Speaking to the U.N. Security Council on Friday, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, accused the United States of being an accomplice to the Israeli attack, saying both countries should be held accountable.
“Netanyahu and his companions have become so viciously emboldened to dream of repeating their carnage in Lebanon and pushing the entire region into a full-scale war,” Mr. Araghchi said, referring to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. “It is very clear that they are counting on U.S. support for their sinister campaign of terror and destruction.”
As Iran assesses how to respond to Israel, it faces a familiar problem: how to establish deterrence without encouraging all-out war. Analysts said that targeting Mr. Nasrallah escalated the standoff between Israel and Iran and its proxy militias to a new, more dangerous level.
Until now, Iran has refrained from letting Israel drag it into an open war, analysts said. That posture is likely to continue.
“Iran’s position seems to be that if Israel wants war, it’ll get it at the time of Iran’s choosing,” said Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group. Mr. Vaez said that Israel had decapitated Iran’s regional allies in the past, and instead of eliminating the threat, it has fed radicalization, enabling Iranian recruitment to continue.
At midnight in Tehran, the Iranian capital, supporters of the government protested in the city’s Palestine Square, waving Palestinian flags and Hezbollah’s yellow flags while chanting, “Revenge, revenge,” Iran’s state television showed.
Around 1 a.m. in Iran, state television was putting senior officials and military commanders, including the anti-Western ultraconservative Saeed Jalili, a member of the Supreme National Council, on air to reassure viewers that Hezbollah would survive even if its most senior leaders were killed.
I can now see additional explosions taking place in the Dahiya, aligning roughly with where the Israeli military warned people to evacuate from. A fiery, flash of light just illuminated the night sky.
President Biden has been briefed by his national security team and is receiving regular updates on the latest developments in the Middle East, according to a statement from the White House. “He has directed the Pentagon to assess and adjust as necessary,” it said.
The Israeli military just announced that it was beginning a new series of airstrikes in Beirut targeting what it said were Hezbollah weapons caches hidden under residential buildings. The Israeli military publicly issued warnings to residents to evacuate from three separate sites in the capital’s southern suburbs in advance of the attacks.
Lebanon's health ministry said at least 6 people have now been killed and more than 90 injured by the Israeli strikes on Friday in the Dahiya, the densely packed civilian area near Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway. Search teams were still working to remove the rubble, and the death toll is likely to rise significantly.
Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, said Israel would seek to stop any attempt to send further munitions to Hezbollah. Israeli warplanes were patrolling near Beirut’s international airport, he said, adding, “We are announcing in advance — we will not allow enemy flights ferrying weapons to land.”
Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, said Israeli forces would soon attack “strategic capabilities” belonging to Hezbollah underneath three building complexes south of Beirut. The Israeli military told residents in and around the buildings to leave immediately.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad
The international credit rating agency Moody’s has announced a downgrade of Israel’s credit rating by two levels, from A2 to Baa1. This is the second time this year that Moody’s has downgraded Israel’s rating.
Christiaan Triebert, Devon Lum, Aric Toler, Bora Erden
Visual evidence shows that at least four buildings were destroyed by Israeli airstrikes in a suburb south of Beirut. Three of the buildings were completely flattened, while another collapsed, with the upper floors partially intact. All four were residential buildings along the same street.
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Christiaan Triebert, Devon Lum, Aric Toler, Bora Erden
Two neighboring apartment buildings that were at least seven-stories tall were hit. About 100 yards away, two neighboring buildings of approximately the same size were struck.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that the Biden administration believes “the way forward is through diplomacy, not conflict.” “The path to diplomacy may seem difficult to see at this moment, but it is there,” he said. He added that U.S. officials were still gathering information about the Israeli strikes in Beirut.
The Israeli military sent out warnings on social media calling on people in and around three building complexes in Beirut’s southern suburbs to evacuate immediately, saying they are in the area of Hezbollah targets.
“For the sake of your safety and that of your loved ones and family members, you must evacuate these buildings at once and get at least 500 meters away,” Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesman, said in a statement. Israel added that Hezbollah had hidden sophisticated weaponry in the buildings.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, will cut short his meetings at the U.N. General Assembly and travel back to Beirut following the Israeli attack, according to a statement from his office. In recent days, Mikati and Lebanese officials have been holding intense discussions on the sidelines of the event in New York about the U.S. and French cease-fire proposal.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Dannon, said Israel would continue to act preemptively. He did not offer details on the strikes in Lebanon that targeted Nasrallah but said: “Israel will not wait for terror to come to our doorstep. We will come to them first, and we will eliminate them.”
A house and a car were hit by a Hezbollah rocket in the attack on Safed, according to the Israeli military. There were no immediate reports of deaths or serious casualties; Israeli paramedics said a woman was lightly injured by a blast in the recent rocket barrages from Lebanon.
Four hours after the Israeli strike, Lebanese television networks showed firefighters still working to extinguish blazes at the site. Others showed people standing outside hospitals, many of which had issued a mass casualty alert that called in off-duty doctors and health workers to assist in treating victims.
Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, speaking on a screen in Baalbek, Lebanon, in 2018.Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
For almost two decades, Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah — who was targeted in an Israeli attack on Friday and whose status remains unclear — has avoided public appearances out of concern that he would be assassinated.
The beard beneath the black turban marking him as a Shiite Muslim cleric has turned almost white over his 32 years in charge of Hezbollah, during which time Mr. Nasrallah, 64, has built it into a potent force. Hezbollah has become both a political organization that holds sway in fractured Lebanon and an army equipped with ballistic missiles that can threaten Tel Aviv.
The leader of the strongest militant group that Iran has helped to create in the region, Mr. Nasrallah has extended its reach well beyond Lebanon. Hezbollah fighters were instrumental in shoring up the government of President Bashar al-Assad next door in Syria when it was threatened by a popular uprising that started in 2011. Designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Hezbollah has helped to train Hamas fighters, as well as militias in Iraq and Yemen.
Mr. Nasrallah is known, according to Arab tradition, as Abu Hadi or father of Hadi, after his eldest son, who was 18 when he died, in September 1997, in a firefight with the Israelis. Mr. Nasrallah has at least three other children.
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Mr. Nasrallah on a large poster in Beirut in 2017.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
He has long called for the liberation of Jerusalem and referred to Israel as “the Zionist entity,” maintaining that all Jewish immigrants should return to their countries of origin and that there should be one Palestine with equality for Muslims, Jews and Christians.
Mr. Nasrallah is believed to live modestly and rarely socializes outside Hezbollah’s ruling circles, eschewing public appearances and the telephone since the 2006 war against Israel. That war, which was set off when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during a cross-border raid, ended after 34 days of combat with both sides declaring victory. Afterward, Hezbollah was lauded across the Arab world, and took on an increasingly active role in conflicts around the region.
Mr. Nasrallah is a powerful orator with a robust command of classical Arabic. He laces his speeches with references to restoring lost Arab virility, a message that resonates across the region.
He comes across as less dour than most Shiite clerics, partly because of his slight lisp and a propensity to crack jokes. He has never pushed hard-line Islamic rules, like veils for women.The state within a state that he helped build with Iranian and expatriate financing as Lebanon struggled to emerge from a long civil war includes hospitals, schools and other social services.
Born in 1960 in Beirut, Mr. Nasrallah grew up in a mixed neighborhood of impoverished Christian Armenians, Druse, Palestinians and Shiites. His father had a small vegetable stand.
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Supporters of Hezbollah watched a televised speech by Mr. Nasrallah in 2018, urging them to participate in forthcoming elections.Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
He studied briefly in a seminary in Qum, Iran, in 1989 and considered Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolutionto be the model for Shiites to end their traditional second-class status in the Muslim world.
In 1983, suicide bombing attacks against first the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, then the barracks of American and French peacekeepers, killed at least 360 people, including 241 American service members. The murderous attacks were claimed by the Islamic Jihad Organization, considered a precursor to Hezbollah, and some of those suspected of planning it later became top commanders under Mr. Nasrallah.
Security around Mr. Nasrallah has long been extraordinary, particularly given that an Israeli rocket incinerated his predecessor. When he granted a rare interview to The New York Times in 2002, the reporter and photographer were blindfolded and driven around the southern suburbs of Beirut for a short time before the meeting. His security team then inspected absolutely everything that would enter the room, even unscrewing the pens to make sure that they contained only ink.
Hezbollah has exchanged artillery barrages with Israel since the war in Gaza started, but has been hesitant to bring its full arsenal to bear, given that many Lebanese, weary of grinding economic problems and general chaos, do not want another war.
On Sept. 19, in his most recent televised remarks, he blamed Israel for the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies that killed dozens of his foot soldiers and wounded several thousand more in the days before. “This retribution will come,” he said. “Its manner, size, how and where — these are things we will certainly keep to ourselves, in the narrowest circles even among us.”
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Watching a speech by Mr. Nasrallah this month in Beirut.Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called an emergency meeting of the Supreme National Security Council at his home compound, according to two Iranian officials with knowledge of the meeting. They said the meeting was in response to Israel’s strike in Beirut that targeted the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah.
The aftermath of Israeli strikes on Friday in Beirut’s suburbs.Credit...Ibrahim Amro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
When Israel unleashed deadly strikes on residential buildings south of Beirut late Friday in an attempt to target Hezbollah’s leader, the deafening explosions rattled the entire neighborhood, said Rabia Ali, a Syrian refugee and mother of three, and left her children “shaking with fear.”
“They were loud, loud,” she said of the blasts that sent shock waves and smoke through the surrounding streets.
Standing on a road near the strike site afterward, Ms. Ali said that she, her children and a cousin had fled the home where they had been staying — though they did not have anywhere to go.
At least six people were killed and more than 90 others wounded in the strikes, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Videos and photos from the site of the strike that were geolocated by The Times show at least four buildings had been flattened; at least two were no less than seven-stories high. The strikes also destroyed nearby vehicles and left craters in the streets about 700 feet away.
The health minister, Dr. Firass Abiad, had said earlier that most people were still trapped under the rubble, and the toll was expected to rise.
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Lebanon’s health minister said the toll from the strike was likely to rise.Credit...Wael Hamzeh/EPA, via Shutterstock
He said the Israeli strikes had caused a “complete decimation” of four to six residential buildings. “They are residential buildings — they were filled with people,” Dr. Abiad told The New York Times. “Whoever is in those buildings is now under the rubble.”
Lebanon’s civil defense agency said paramedics and emergency workers were still trying retrieve the dead and injured.
The Israeli military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the strikes had targeted Hezbollah’s headquarters, which he said was underneath residential buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Lebanese capital. The strikes were among the most intense near Beirut since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah began last October.
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Lebanese paramedics and emergency workers at the scene.Credit...Ibrahim Amro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“After almost a year of Israel warning the world and telling them that Hezbollah must be stopped, Israel is doing what every sovereign state in the world would do if they had a terror organization that seeks their destruction on their border,” Admiral Hagari said.
The strikes occurred barely an hour after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel finished speaking before the U.N. General Assembly in New York. Thick, black smoke spiraled into the sky after the explosions.
Residents of the Dahiya, crowded neighborhoods south of Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway, described a terrifying series of blasts that drove them to flee, many on foot and most without any possessions, even their ID cards.
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Lebanese soldiers closed off several nearby streets.Credit...Bilal Hussein/Associated Press
“The whole neighborhood seems like it’s destroyed,” said Khawla Sheikh, another Syrian refugee who had been living in the neighborhood and had fled with her six children. “I can’t describe how bad it is.”
Lebanese TV broadcast images of emergency workers with flashlights picking their way through mounds of smoking rubble at the site of the Israeli strikes. At least one heavy duty excavator was digging through piles of jagged concrete and twisted metal.
Lebanese soldiers closed off several nearby streets, as the sounds of ambulance sirens wailed throughout the area.
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A vehicle fell into a crater from the strike.Credit...Bilal Hussein/Associated Press
“It was like Judgment Day — I can’t describe it,” said Hussein Awada, 54, who was in the Dahiya neighborhood of Borj al-Brajneh when the explosions erupted.
Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the top U.N. official in Lebanon, said she was “deeply alarmed and profoundly worried about the potential civilian impact” of Israel’s “massive strikes” in the densely populated neighborhood.
“The city is still shaking with fear and panic widespread. All must urgently cease-fire,” she wrote on social media.
Four hours after the Israeli strikes, Lebanese television networks showed firefighters still working to extinguish blazes at the scene of the attacks. Others showed people standing outside hospitals, many of which had issued a mass casualty alert — meaning off-duty doctors and health workers had been called in to assist in treating victims.
As night deepened, people gathered on sidewalks, fearful that more buildings could be hit — or collapse.
Early Saturday, the Israeli military warned residents to evacuate three different sites in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Then, a new explosion erupted and smoke could be seen rising above the capital’s skyline.
The Israeli military announced that it was beginning a new series of airstrikes in Beirut, targeting what it said were Hezbollah weapons caches hidden under residential buildings.
Residents of the Laylaki area in Beirut southern suburbs began fleeing en masse.
In a post on social media, the Iranian embassy in Lebanon called the strikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs “a reprehensible crime and reckless behavior” that constitute “a dangerous escalation that changes the rules of the game.” Mojtaba Amani, Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, was wounded last week when thousands of wireless devices belonging to Hezbollah members exploded.
In Karak Nouh, a town in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, dozens of people attended a mass funeral today for the Shoaib family. An Israeli strike overnight killed 15 members of the family, leaving a sole survivor.
Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the top U.N. official in Lebanon, said she was “deeply alarmed and profoundly worried about the potential civilian impact” of Israel’s “massive strikes” targeting Hezbollah’s top leadership in a densely populated neighborhood south of Beirut. “The city is still shaking with fear,” she wrote on social media.
Videos taken after the airstrikes show that they flattened at least these two large apartment buildings in a densely populated neighborhood south of Beirut, known as the Dahiya. It is unclear how many people lived in the buildings or if they housed any shops or offices. Lebanon’s health minister has said that the strikes caused the “complete decimation” of four to six residential buildings.
Smoke rising over southern Lebanon after Israeli strikes on Monday.Credit...Aziz Taher/Reuters
Over the last week alone, Israel launched more than 2,000 airstrikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon and continued its near-daily bombings against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Its air defenses also fended off attacks, in one instance intercepting a ballistic missile headed for Tel Aviv.
And there are no signs of the onslaught slowing. “We’re not stopping, while simultaneously preparing plans for the next phases,” the Israeli military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said on Wednesday.
But how long can Israel keep it up?
Military and weapons experts say that is not clear. Israel, like many countries, is highly secretive about the weapons in its stockpile, and government spokespeople who vigorously safeguard that information did not respond to requests for comment.
Yet there are several reasons why experts believe Israel could outlast its adversaries in its two-front offensive, even while defending itself from approaching strikes. Israel’s defense industry churned out so many weapons last year that it was able to export some, even despite the war in Gaza beginning in October. The United States has sent Israel at least tens of thousands of missiles, bombs and artillery rounds in recent years.
And given the threats it has faced, Israel has almost certainly built up its stockpiles to sustain multiple conflicts at once — especially if Iran rallies its allied groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen to strike at the same time.
“It will not run out, because in the Middle East, you cannot run out of weapons,” said Yehoshua Kalisky, a military technology expert at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “The leaders know how to calculate the amount of weapons that are needed, and what they would have to have in the stockpile, because in this jungle you have to be strong.”
Here is what we know about Israel’s weapons arsenal.
The demands on air defenses
Israel says it has been targeted by more than 9,300 Hezbollah rockets since Oct. 8, 2023. Although those attacks killed 49 people, Mr. Kalisky estimated that most of those rockets — 75 percent — were intercepted by Iron Dome, Israel’s vaunted air defense system.
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A rocket-intercepting Iron Dome battery in Ashkelon, southern Israel, in 2022.Credit...Ariel Schalit/Associated Press
U.S. officials reportedly assessed this summer that Iron Dome batteries could be overwhelmed in a full-blown war with Hezbollah. Analysts have estimated Hezbollah has stockpiled between 100,000 and 200,000 rockets and missiles.
But one indicator of Israel’s air defense arsenal is the sheer number of interceptor missiles it was able to fire against Iranian missiles and drones in a single night last April, said Tom Karako, a missile defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
On April 14, Israel shot down most of about 330 incoming drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles with its Iron Dome and Arrow 3 defensive weapons. Some were also intercepted by the United States and other allies. That showed what he said was “an amazing success” of Israeli air defenses that were clearly well-equipped.
Still, “there’s not enough Iron Domes in the world to catch all of the rockets that Hezbollah has,” he said. “Missile defense buys you time, but you have to use that time well to end the threat by other means.”
A ‘surplus’ of weapons made in Israel
Last year, Israel’s defense industry produced enough weapons “to have a capacity surplus to meet its own needs, within the country itself,” said Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks arms transfers.
In fact, Israeli companies produced so many arms in 2023 that they were able to export a record high $13 billion in weapons to foreign militaries.
With that kind of surplus, “we must assume that Israel is confident that it has the kind of arsenals which it can use in case the conflict would escalate further,” Mr. Wezeman said.
Defense industry companies generally do not release production numbers, in part for competitive reasons. But Mr. Wezeman said Israel’s weapons manufacturers focus largely on producing ammunition, guided bombs and missiles.
Tens of thousands of American imports
The United States is Israel’s largest arms supplier, and the only country that has delivered missiles and bombs to Israel over the last 15 years, according to the Stockholm institute, SIPRI.
SIPRI estimates that the Pentagon and American arms companies have delivered at least 29,100 guided bombs, artillery rockets and various missiles to Israel since 2009. More than a third were delivered in the last two years alone, and the 15-year total almost certainly is a low estimate, Mr. Wezeman said, since comprehensive weapons sales are rarely publicized and Congress is only notified of the most expensive arms transfers.
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The aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on a United Nations school complex in central Gaza in June, carried out with the American-made GBU-39 bomb.Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock
In the weeks immediately following the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack that started the war in Gaza, the United States sent planeloads of weapons to Israel, including about 3,000 bombs and tens of thousands of artillery shells. The United States has also delivered at least $3.5 billion in unspecified “essential wartime procurement,” Israel’s Defense Ministry said in a statement Thursday.
But since May, the Biden administration has stopped sending Israel 2,000-pound bombs for fear they would cause mass casualties of civilians. And Israel is still waiting for additional bombs, guidance kits and fuses for munitions that it has asked the United States to send over the last year, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington research institute.
Bradley Bowman, a weapons expert there, said those requests show that Israel is trying to build up its stockpile.
“These are things that Israel needs,” Mr. Bowman said. “If you look at the quantities of attacks going back and forth since Oct. 8, but especially in the last week or so, they are increasingly more frequent and more intense. So they’re clearly expending munitions.”
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