Iran may intensify Hezbollah attacks to prevent Israeli retaliation – report

Dozens of rockets were fired at northern Israel in the last two days; the IDF meanwhile assassinated two senior Hezbollah commanders.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Iran may push Hezbollah to ramp up its attacks on Israel, in a bid to prevent any retaliation for its heavy missile and drone assault on the Jewish state overnight Saturday, Channel 14 reported Tuesday evening.

Israeli officials, said military reporter Hallel Bitton Rosen, “are estimating that it is extremely possible that Iran will try to disrupt the IDF’s reaction [to the attack] through its Middle East proxies, including Hezbollah and the [Iran-backed] militias in Syria.”

This would explain the recent escalation in Hezbollah attacks aimed at northern Israel, not including the approximately 100 rockets its forces fired at Israel during and immediately following the direct Iranian attack over the weekend.

Some 30 rockets and missiles were fired at the border communities and the Upper Galilee on Tuesday, including the IAF base on Mt. Meron.

Many of them were launched in the evening, after Israel’s air force assassinated Ismail Yusuf Baz, commander of Hezbollah’s coastal operations, with a missile strike on his car while he traveled near the Israeli-Lebanese border.

The senior officer had orchestrated rocket and anti-tank missile attacks on Israel from the western part of Lebanon, said the IDF.

Some three hours later, the IAF hit another vehicle, this one containing Hussein Mustafa Shechory, the commander of the Rockets and Missiles Unit of Hezbollah’s Radwan Forces in Lebanon’s central and western region. A terrorist operative in the unit was eliminated along with Schechory.

The IDF was sending its own message to the terror organization’s head, said Bitton, “telling Hassan Nasrallah ‘Don’t mess with us.’”

One Hezbollah attack earlier in the day did injure three Israelis lightly in Beit Hillel, when two explosive UAVs hit the village.

Kiryat Shmona was hit by six projectiles in the evening and some damage was recorded to infrastructure and property. While MDA teams treated two people for shock, no one was physically hurt in this attack.

IDF aircraft then took off for a night attack in southern Lebanon, hitting various military sites belonging to the Iranian proxy as well as several terrorist operatives.

On Wednesday morning, after Hezbollah fired at least 11 rockets at the western Galilee, the IDF attacked the sources of the launches.