Israel’s army launches week-long simulation of full-scale war with Hezbollah
Israel’s Defense Forces (IDF) and the defense ministry’s National Emergency Management Authority launched on Sunday a week-long exercise simulating a full-scale war with Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, Israeli media reported.
The military drill will simulate a conflict in which Hezbollah may utilize “100,000 rockets and missiles of different ranges, as well as a smaller but still significant quantity of precision-guided missiles, which have emerged as a potentially major issue for Israel,” the Times of Israel reported.
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Israeli military officials assessed that Hezbollah’s military capabilities are the “second most serious threat” facing Israel, after an Iranian nuclear weapon.
Israel has long viewed the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon as an enemy. Lebanon and Israel are still in a formal state of war and have long contested their land and maritime borders. Israel has also carried out hundreds of air strikes in neighboring Syria in recent years against suspected Iranian military deployments or arms transfers to Hezbollah.
“What concerns me as the chief of staff of the Home Front Command: One is the issue of precision-guided munitions and the effect that they will have on our ability to function and on things in the world of incoming fire alerts,” said Brig. Gen. Itzik Bar, chief of staff of the IDF Home Front Command.
“The second is the rate of fire and Hezbollah’s ability to conduct truly massive rocket barrages at specific geographic areas — I’ll use the phrase ‘demolishing the front line’ — directed fire at the communities near the border,” he added.
The IDF’s atomic-biological-chemical unit will simulate responses to both “intentional chemical weapons attacks along the border, as well as toxic chemical spills from missiles striking Israeli factories.”
Read more:
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