IDF Raid on Elite Radwan Force of Hezbollah

In Lebanon, the IDF has been devastating Hezbollah at breakneck speed. It has killed Hassan Nasrallah and his successor, Hashem Sufieddine, and dozens of the group’s commanders. As of October 21, the IDF had hit more than 3,200 targets across Lebanon, destroying command-and-control centers, warehouses full of rockets and missiles, weapons manufacturing workshops (including some underground), intelligence headquarters, air defense facilities. It had destroyed dozens of terror tunnels snaking under the border with Israel. It had killed more than 3,000 Hezbollah fighters, and wounded thousands more with its “exploding pagers.”

And now the IDF has conducted raids on underground bases belonging to the Radwan Forces, the elite commandos of Hezbollah, and discovered huge quantities of weapons that were intended to be used in a vast assault — that had it taken place would have been many times more deadly than that by Hamas on October 7, 2023 — on Israel’s Galilee.

More on what the IDF soldiers of the 646th Brigade found during their raids on these underground bases can be found here: “IDF raids Hezbollah Radwan Forces underground bases, discovers massive cache of weapons,” Jerusalem Post, October 24, 2024:

…They cleared several bases of terrorists and dismantled several pieces of terror infrastructure as well as weapons caches and manufacturing compounds.

The bases were intended for use by the Radwan Forces as part of Hezbollah’s “Conquer the Galilee” plan.

Inside the base

Inside the IDF discovered bunk beds, storage cabinets, food supplies, infrastructure for long-term stay, a large amount of equipment, weapons, and abandoned offensive positions.

Troops located four Hezbollah weapons storage facilities, some of which were inside civilian homes….

Hezbollah never expected that the IDF would conduct its assaults so deep into Lebanon. It assumed that its firing of missiles into Israel — some 8,500 in the past year — would be responded to, as has happened ever since the Israel-Hezbollah War of 2006, with an answering barrage of Israeli missiles. It did not expect a ground invasion, particularly since Israel, Hezbollah believed, was “bogged down” in Gaza. How wrong it was.

And Hezbollah did not think, either, that the IDF would be able to kill not just Hassan Nasrallah, but also his successor, Hashem Safieddine, and in addition, dozens of the group’s top commanders. Indeed, the whole command structure of Hezbollah has been dismantled. Nor did Hezbollah think that the IDF would be able to so quickly locate the network of tunnels that it had built both near the Israeli border, and under southern Beirut. Those tunnels are now being systematically blown up or filled with cement by the IDF. Hezbollah had been counting on its tremendous arsenal, furnished by Iran, of 150,000 rockets and missiles, that would be used not just now, but mainly in a future war with the Jewish state. During the past year, Hezbollah has fired 8,500 missiles at Israel. Most were intercepted by the Iron Dome, and by the other anti-missile systems — Arrow 3, and David’s Sling — that are now operational. Very little damage was done by those missiles. About 850 of them landed in Lebanon.

Of those 150,000 rockets and missiles that Hezbollah had on October 7, the IDF calculates that two-thirds of them have been destroyed. That still leaves 50,000, but the IDF is locating and blowing up those rockets and missiles. Its aim is to reduce that remaining to one-tenth of its present size. The Israeli government must stave off calls for an “ceasefire” in Lebanon, in order to buy the time necessary to achieve that goal.

Meanwhile, everyone and his brother — UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, EU Foreign Minister Josep Borrell, French President Macron, the Bidenites — has been shrilly calling for ceasefires in both Gaza and in Lebanon. Netanyahu so far is holding firm. He’s giving the IDF the time it needs to finish destroying the few thousand Hamas remnants trying to regroup in northern Gaza, and time, too, to continue its swift and relentless assault on Hezbollah. That group is now rudderless without its commanders, and is helplessly watching as its arsenal of rockets and missiles is being systematically destroyed by the IDF, so that two-thirds of them are already in ruins. And Hezbollah’s tunnel network has been unearthed and its tunnels are being destroyed, one after the other.

How much more time does the IDF need to compete its mission in Lebanon? According to IDF Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi, as of late October, “in the north (of Israel), there’s a possibility of reaching a sharp conclusion.” He told soldiers on October 23 during a visit to northern Gaza, referring to Lebanon, that “we thoroughly dismantled Hezbollah’s senior chain of command.” The possibility of this “sharp conclusion” means that the IDF has been successful in devastating Hezbollah, by “dismantling its senior chain of command,” killing about 3000 of its operatives, blasting the tunnels that snake under the border into Israel, and destroying an estimated two-thirds of Hezbollah’s arsenal of 150,00 rockets and missiles.

Hezbollah now knows that the IDF will never again fail to react, should Hezbollah again try to build up its arsenal, which is what happened between 2006 and 2023. At the first sign of any Hamas weapons buildup, the IDF will attack. Deterrence did not work. Preemption will. The rules are different now. After the October 7 attack by Hamas, the IDF has one guiding principle in dealing with its enemies, a principle as old as the Talmud: When someone is coming to kill you, rise up and kill him first.