Alexandra Braverman, Kelly Campa, Siddhant Kishore,

Carolyn Moorman, Katherine Wells, and Nicholas Carl

Information Cutoff: 2:00pm ET

Lebanese Hezbollah conducted a drone and rocket attack on Israel on August 24 in response to Israel killing a senior Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr. Hezbollah fired 200-300 projectiles, including around 20 one-way attack drones, in two waves into Israel. Hezbollah fired rockets at 11 Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sites in northern Israel in the first wave of its attack. These sites included a prominent IDF air defense and communications site on Mount Meron, which Hezbollah has targeted repeatedly since October 2023. Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said that the rockets were meant to distract Israeli air defenses and enable the second wave to penetrate deeper into Israel. The second wave involved firing one-way attack drones targeting Ein Shemer base in Hadera and Glilot Base north of Tel Aviv. This tactic of using imprecise and indirect fire to distract air defenses and then using precision weapons to strike targets has become common across Iran and its Axis of Resistance in recent years. Ein Shemer base hosts major IDF air defense assets, while Glilot base has signals intelligence functions. The IDF stated that it intercepted some of the Hezbollah rocket fire in northern Israel and that Hezbollah failed to strike the bases in central Israel. The IDF also reported that an IDF Navy member was killed in the Hezbollah attack.

Hezbollah meant for its attack to be much larger than it was. The IDF conducted a series of preemptive strikes in southern Lebanon about 30 minutes before the attack was expected to begin. The IDF Air Force struck around 40 locations and destroyed “thousands” of Hezbollah rocket launchers and around 40 unspecified launch pads. An Israeli military correspondent noted that the IDF Air Force destroyed over 200 targets “within minutes.” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated that the IDF destroyed between 50 and 67 percent of the munitions that Hezbollah planned to use in the attack. Israeli officials later said that only some of the rocket launchers that Hezbollah positioned appeared to be meant for use in the attack. Hezbollah may have positioned more rocket launchers than it planned to use in order to obfuscate the direction and scale of its attack.

Nasrallah gave a speech after the attack and outlined the factors that led Hezbollah to delay its attack until now. Hezbollah waited nearly 30 days before responding to Israel killing Fuad Shukr in Beirut on July 30. Nasrallah said that the United States and Israeli deterrent postures affected Hezbollah's decision making. Nasrallah also claimed that Hezbollah and the Axis of Resistance delayed the retaliation to allow the ceasefire-hostage talks in the Israel-Hamas war to continue. Nasrallah lastly said that Hezbollah delayed its attack to evaluate whether the Axis of Resistance would respond “as a whole or [on] each front alone.” CTP-ISW has previously argued that these factors were driving Iran and its Axis of Resistance to delay their attacks on Israel.

Key Takeaways:

• Lebanese Hezbollah conducted a drone and rocket attack on Israel in response to Israel killing a senior Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr. Hezbollah meant for its attack to be much larger than it was.

• Hezbollah and the rest of the Axis of Resistance have indicated that the Hezbollah attack is only the beginning of their retaliation. The Axis of Resistance will likely learn lessons from the Hezbollah attack in order to improve the efficacy of future attacks on Israel.

• Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei referenced the Axis of Resistance’s war against Israel during a prayer ceremony in Tehran.

• Hamas rejected Israel’s “new ceasefire conditions” following negotiations between US, Egyptian, Israeli, and Qatari officials in Cairo.

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ISW–CTP has launched an interactive map of Israeli ground operations to accompany our daily campaign assessments of the Israel–Hamas war. This product complements the daily static maps that ISW-CTP produces with high-fidelity and, where possible, street-level assessments of the war in Israel.

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