Ground Offensive Preceded by Year of Secret Raids in Lebanon, Israel Says

Disclosing the raids as it begins the ground incursion allows Israel to highlight Hezbollah’s buildup of offensive infrastructure for an Oct. 7-style attack, said Jonathan Lord, senior fellow and director of the Middle East Security program at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank.

By “pulling back the curtain on all of the secret infrastructure that Hezbollah has built in southern Lebanon, not for a defensive purpose but for clearly an offensive purpose,” Lord said, Israel “creates the pretense and the public support for them to do this ground operation to clean it all up.”

Read the full story and more from The Washington Post.