JERUSALEM â With Israels stunning capture of the strategically valuable Ali al-Taher ridge in south Lebanon on Sunday, a major Hezbollah and Iran stronghold, the campaign to degrade Tehrans so-called “Axis of Resistance” suffered a severe blow.
While the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) triumph is not a death blow, it means that the Iranian-regime-backed Hezbollah terrorist movement lost one of its key offensive bases to plan an invasion of Israel.
IDF Lt. Col. (Res.) Sarit Zehavi, the founder and president of the Israel-based Alma Research and Education Center (Alma), told Fox News Digital that “In the past three years Israel has attacked Hezbollah against various areas, for instance, we degraded the amount of rockets and missiles.”
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She noted that the IDF has decimated 90% of Hezbollahs rocket and missile arsenal. Zehavi said, “Today Hezbollah is holding between 10,000 to 15,000 rockets, which is much less than what it used to have. Most of the array of sophisticated missiles, accurate missiles and long-range missiles was either eliminated or neutralized.”
She said, “The capability to launch an invasion of thousands of terrorists into Israel which was the plan, and this was the preparedness three years ago. This capability doesn’t exist anymore since the IDF is based in South Lebanon along the borderline, preventing Hezbollah from coming back to those places.”
In late August, Alma released a widely read analysis on: “Hezbollah â Situation Assessment: From a Large-Scale Terrorist Army to a Persistent Dispersed Threat.”
Zehavi, who resides in northern Israel and has experienced Hezbollahs massive aerial attacks into her region since the Lebanese terrorist movement joined Hamas in its war against Israel, warned that, “As long as Iran supports its main proxy, which is Hezbollah, it will be very difficult to prevent its rebuilding of its military capabilities and with everything that happened in Iran In the past year, Iran still supports Hezbollah.”
She noted that Iran still aids Hezbollah via “arms smuggling and money” and “they still put a lot of effort [into] that and the training and the involvement of Iran in Hezbollah in Lebanon. And this must be stopped.”
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Iran’s regime is a state-sponsor of terrorism and Hezbollahs base is the Shiite community in Lebanon. Radical Shiite Islamism unifies Iran’s regime with its chief proxy, Hezbollah, in Lebanon.
Alma, who has a deep knowledge of Hezbollahs activities, wrote on X on Sunday: “The battle for the Ali al-Taher Ridge is over â the struggle with Hezbollah is not.”
According to Zehavi, Hezbollah “today is much more of a guerrilla organization than a terrorist army as it used to be. It is having a lot of difficulties in rebuilding its capabilities⦠It is dedicated to rebuilding its military capabilities. But it has a lo
