₦airaland Forum

Allthelight:
Why can't your pro russians just say Hezbollah failed Lebanon if they are really that smart...

They are yet to shoot down a jet because you all said Hezbollah has the capacity to

Allthelight:
You mean the trash ? Hezbollah was suppose to stop Israel from invading Lebanon right.. Israel has done so thrice.

There is no benefit of Hezbollah to Lebanon they can arm themselves for years but in reality the invasion still happens

LordAdam16:
It is logical of them to sit this out.

The Lebanese Army has less than 100K troops.
It is also diverse.
Israel will use its stationary assets as target practice.
In a few weeks tops, they'll essentially have to fight like a guerilla force.

Meanwhile, Lebanon is a country of 5 million people surrounded by larger countries with major Sunni Islamic terrorist problems.
After sustaining huge casualties in the War, the Islamists will walk in unimpeded and establish terror organizations.
They've had several scrapes with these terror groups, so it's best to let Hezbollah handle the IDF.

The Lebanese Army is doing its job of not letting the Sunni Islamists open a new front in Lebanon as they're attempting to do in Syria.
Because then Hezbollah's attention will be divided. It's core mandate is to defend Lebanese borders not assist Hamas.
So it will redirect some forces to the new threat.

The problem Lebanon faces is peculiar.
The four leading sects--Christians, Sunnis, Shiites, Druze--do not trust each other nor should they.
The natural ally of the Christians are the West + Israel. Natural allies of the Sunnis are the Gulf monarchies. Natural allies of the Shiites are the Persians. The Druze pair up with whomever has the most power at any point.
So even if you send the Army against the IDF, Aman can easily flip a Druze, Christian, or Sunni Muslim soldier into feeding coordinates and intelligence to the IDF, because it is in their sectarian interests for the IDF to prevail over Hezbollah.
It's a mess.

Let them remain neutral, protect the flanks, and offer an off-ramp.
Hezbollah will always have a lifeline because any deal to end the War will involve returning to the status quo or similar.
Unlike Gaza, the West cannot say that all Lebanese want to destroy Israel. So they'll cede control back to the Lebanese Army which will promptly look the other way while Hezbollah acquires deadlier armory. It is clear that after this War, Iran will transform Hezbollah and Houthis into near-equals of the IRGC's.
Hezbollah is far more useful to Lebanon than Iran even.

A lot of what has happened in the War is what you'll expect in a proxy War.
The US has had to watch helplessly as its proxy forces in Syria has been pummeled by both Syrian/Russian and Turkish forces.
If Iran wants to change the calculus, it'll need to build its Air Defense capabilities, its Air Force fleet, and force projection.
So it'll need to establish several bases in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen. Deploy air defense to protect forces there. Then deploy enough air force assets to be able to enforce a No Fly Zone.
To do that, it'll have to move way closer into the Axis orbit and become what Turkey is to NATO.
Unlike Turkey that recognized its limitations early on and acted accordingly, Ayatollah Khomeini famously pursued a "Neither West Nor East" foreign policy. So while Turkey was building its economy and fighting force, the Mullahs have been operating under a self-imposed embargo on cooperating closely with the leading superpowers.
They only changed their stance recently and it is taking this war and the threat of Israeli decapitation strike on the leadership for them to finally give up their completely boneheaded policy.

Everything that has happened so far leads back to that.
Turkey has more F-16s than Israel. It offered to buy more than 100 F-35 and received 4 before they were banned from the program.
In exchange, the US will give them 40 more F-16 of the most recent block. While Israel has 35 F-35's. And they've made some ground in developing their homegrown variant of the F-35 because they were involved in development and production of the F-16 and also involved in the development of the F-35.
If the Mullahs were not complete buffoons, they could have had a similar relationship with the Russians or Chinese. Iran will be crawling with S-400s, S-35s, S-57s, J-20s, and UAVs. We would not be concerned about Israeli strikes and they could have been able to enforce a NFZ in Syria, Iraq, and Beirut. That'd mean that IRGC officers operating in these countries will have operational freedom and better able to support the Resistance. Russia and China will be so pleased that they have a partner that can beef up protection of their interests in the region. In the War in Syria, the Axis would have made and held more ground.
In this War against Ukraine or the potential War in Taiwan, they'd be able to free up assets for their war effort and Iran would have picked up the slack easy. And vice versa. Russian and Chinese jets would be patrolling some flanks in Iran while they forward-deploy more Iranian air assets closer to the frontline.
And this is before we get to the topic of nukes.

Leadership is not all about having titles, living large in mansions, and having a harem.
It requires strategic planning and words can't express how awful the Mullahs have been.
The Resistance is having to do more heavy lifting under impossible conditions because of decade-spanning errors by the Mullahs.

-Lord