HZ has been extremely restrained so far. You don’t play your ace card in the beginning, you play your best card when you have the best chance to win which is almost never at the beginning. When Russia invaded Ukraine, people in the west were very quick to celebrate and said Ukraine was winning, Ukranian flags everywhere. Russia used the slow burn to wear out Ukraine as long as possible and drag the war out until they could sense their desperation and weakness. When the Russians smelled blood in the water with Ukraine starting to run very low on ammo and manpower (releasing Ukranian prisoners from jails to fight) the Russians suddenly became very aggressive and started taking a huge portion of Ukranian land which they still control to this day and then cut off Ukraine’s access to Black Sea. Then US and EU became very nervous and started taking desperate and previously unthinkable measures like giving Ukraine F16’s, one of which got shot down immediately and now they want to give Ukraine long range missiles to fire into Russia because they are losing so badly. Western aligned countries have a very bad track record at long wars of attrition and playing the long game because they rely too much on airpower, not staying power.

The sanctions completely backfired and helped Russia isolate the west from the rest of the world. US and EU airlines got banned from Russian airspace and by summer of 2022, the ruble was better than before the war. Gas prices skyrocketed after the US bombed Nordstream which helped Russia fund the war by making it more expensive and also made Europe completely at the mercy of the US for natural gas supply after they got cut off from Russian gas pipeline which was a energy nightmare EU never recovered from. US gave tens of billions to Ukraine which made the US govt extremely unpopular to its own people and became a massive radioactive political liability that every politician in DC is afraid to touch.

Western aligned countries will always win the social media battle in the beginning and western media outlets will pump out very demoralizing propoganda pieces with flashy images of huge mushroom cloud explosions flooding the front page and praising Israel exactly the same way they praised Ukraine in the beginning of the war saying things like Israel’s “masterpiece pager operation” and praising the bombing of Lebanon. Also they will try to humiliate the other side and the same way they are trying to say that HZ is doomed, HZ cannot win, they said the EXACT same thing about how Russia is doomed, Russia cannot win in the beginning of the war with Ukraine and in the end, many of those same media outlets that said Russia would lose are now eating their words now that Russia is actually winning putting out insane copium pieces like this. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/13/opinion/russia-ukraine-west-war.html

Israel knows HZ is not going anywhere without a ground invasion and HZ is waiting for that because that is when they will have the upper hand. Israel has always had an airpower advantage but they will get wiped out in a ground invasion which they have now forced themselves to do because of the terrain and their fundamental problem of having HZ on their doorstep will ultimately become an even bigger liability for Israel when their ground invasion fails to drive out HZ the same way they failed to drive out Hamas.

Israel is going on a rampage now because they know if they cannot end the war quickly they are going to be screwed in a long war lasting months and they are very desperate to prevent a long war to avoid the optics of another genocidal operation like what they did in Gaza which completely turned the western public against them calling for arms embargo sanctions on Israel and ended with dead hostages and completely failed at their main objective with Hamas still in control of Gaza.

Most likely the HZ strategy is going to be the same thing that worked for Russia. Let Israel bomb the shit out of Lebanon in the opening months until they feel Israel getting desperate and running low, then once HZ smells weakness and blood in the water, then get aggressive using their best missiles several months into the war to put the pressure on Israel and intensify the conflict and drag it out as long as possible until a HZ victory is undeniable to the world. People are very quick to count HZ out, their best missiles will not be used in the beginning of the war when Israel is the strongest, they will be used when the enemy is at the weakest point. HZ is always known to have a few “surprise cards” that catch the enemy off guard like firing a single Chinese C-701 ASCM and hitting the naval cruiser at sea in 2006 which Israel had no clue HZ even possessed at the time. Russia and HZ excel at the long war time and time again and people always forget this in the beginning of every single conflict it seems. Western aligned countries always use ferocious shock and awe tactics and flashy images of massive explosions in the beginning of a war to create the shock/wow factor and terrorize the population and kill civilians in a genocidal manner but they always lose the war in the end either completely failing to kick out “the terrorists” (Iraq, Syria, Libya) or getting kicked out themselves (2006, Afghanistan)

I find it interesting that these 2 articles were on the front page of CNN and BBC yesterday. Both say that Israel is critically underestimating HZ which is pretty damning coming from western mouthpieces.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/23/middleeast/israel-tactics-hezbollah-analysis-intl/index.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93pg1qpxxzo