Hizballah Rearmament Has Begun

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

In summarizing winners and losers of the Israel-Hizballah conflict, my colleague Bill Roggio wrote the following in declaring Hizballah a winner:

While the Israeli military may have dealt Hezbollah a tactical defeat generally in southern Lebanon, killed a significant number of Hezbollah soldiers, degraded Hezbollah's long range rocket supplies and was able to push to the Litani at the end of the campaign, Hezbollah's military and political organization survived to fight another day. The resupply of medium and long range rockets from the Iranian and Syrian backers will begin immediately, and the Syrian supply lines into the Bekaa valley remain wide open. . . . Hezbollah will now direct the full efforts of its aid organizations to rebuild the damaged infrastructure and provide for those Lebanese in need. The combination of the military victory along with the ability to care for the Lebanese in ways the State cannot will only increase their stature and support.

I agreed with this assessment at the time. And despite Hassan Nasrallah's protestation that he regrets the conflict with Israel, I believe that events are proving Bill's assessment correct -- as a new Stratfor analysis on Hizballah's rearmament indicates.

First of all, Stratfor reports that Hizballah's rearmament has already begun -- but the terror group is making use of mules rather than vehicles to move weaponry:

Mules, rather than vehicles, are moving small arms, ammunition and some anti-tank munitions over the Anti-Lebanon Mountains along the Lebanese-Syrian border, across the Bekaa Valley and up into the western mountains, particularly through the Greek Orthodox mountain village of Bteggrine. From here, with the assistance of the Syrian Social Nationalist party, the shipments can reach Hezbollah in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where they can be dispersed south.

There haven't yet been reports of shipments of artillery rockets into Lebanon, which Stratfor says indicates that "Israel is effectively interdicting large shipments of weapons into Lebanon."

Moreover, Hizballah is in an excellent position to take advantage of the rebuilding of southern Lebanon:

But Hezbollah is in a remarkably good position as reconstruction money pours in and the militant group basically rebuilds all of southern Lebanon, thus becoming the de facto landlord with a new source of substantial income: rent. To this end, Hezbollah is going out of its way both to avoid provoking Israel and to rebuild its domestic support structure, while at the same time preparing for the next confrontation.

At this point, the terrorist group's preparations for the next conflict with Israel seem to be going about as well as it could have expected.

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