WI: No Cedar Revolution. What happens with the 2006 Lebanon War?

Let's say that Rafik Hariri is assassinated in a more surgical way and one in which Syria maintains plausible deniability. Maybe one of those ricin-laced umbrella things the Bulgarians got Georgi Markov with or that succinylcholine stuff, Tom Clancy's favorite plot device. Nobody else except him is killed.

I think this would have been enough to butterfly or at least substantially delay the Cedar Revolution. While a lot of people resented the Syrian occupation and pro-Syrian government before that, staging a massive terrorist style bombing on the streets of Beirut that killed tons of innocent people was the main event that turned people against them. That will destroy even the closest alliance instantly.

So Syria is still in Lebanon, there's a pro-Syrian government, and the 2006 Lebanon War still happens. The core events that caused it are still there; Sharon was at the end of his life after decades of obesity, smoking, and general abuse of his body, Olmert becomes PM, Hezbollah still wants Samir Kuntar and his compatriots released and will launch Operation Truthful Promise, etc.

What does that war look like and what happens? Do the Lebanese Armed Forces join the war with a pro-Syria government at the helm? Does Syria get involved wholesale with Hezbollah?
 

Minty_Fresh

Banned
Israel jumped into the war without a plan or a political leadership that had any idea what it was doing. They made a longtime union activist, Amir Peretz, the Defense Minister. He is most famous for looking through binoculars with the lens cap on and getting photographed while doing so. For those wondering why Netanyahu keeps getting reelected, this is why. Labour discredited itself.

But the point here is that Syria at the time was not in the mood for a confrontation with Israel, and Assad had his eye focused east. Hezbollah would have been kept more in check than they were with Syria's leash gone.

If the war does happen somehow, anyways, it would turn out much the same. A strategic stalemate and a tactical Israeli victory, with a tenuous border. Hezbollah going on a rocket offensive would make Israel more likely to want to commit to destroying Hezbollah's border infrastructure, but OTL, the US had to airlift supplies to them as it was. This would be a much bigger issue if Israel made a real war out of it.
 

Yeah I know Israel really botched the job on the war, I just don't see where Syria would hold them back. They encouraged and aided Hezbollah in doing stuff at least as provocative as Operation Truthful Promise during the Shebaa Farms campaign from 2000-2006. Here's a list of the attacks that happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000–06_Shebaa_Farms_conflict

Nobody thought that Olmert would stage such a preposterous overreaction, so it's hard for me to see where Syria reigns Hezbollah in.
 
The Lebanese army is far too weak to make any difference if it gets involved in the war. All it does is present the IAF with less elusive conventional targets-a column of T-55s or M48s or artillery battery is far harder to conceal than one small rocket launcher. That alone gives Beirut very little incentive to join.
 
The Lebanese army is far too weak to make any difference if it gets involved in the war. All it does is present the IAF with less elusive conventional targets-a column of T-55s or M48s or artillery battery is far harder to conceal than one small rocket launcher. That alone gives Beirut very little incentive to join.

What about the Syrians? If they commit their substantial air defenses to the conflict (they had an air defense brigade or two in Lebanon before the Cedar Revolution OTL) that makes the IAF's task much harder.
 
What about the Syrians? If they commit their substantial air defenses to the conflict (they had an air defense brigade or two in Lebanon before the Cedar Revolution OTL) that makes the IAF's task much harder.

The Syrians were using extremely familiar equipment and their morale was horrifically low post-Bekaa. An abnormally good commander might be able to take advantage of it, but otherwise they get crushed with little to show for it. Depends on how timid and casualty-averse the IAF is, but the Syrian track record doesn't look good.

In theory they could be disruptive at great cost-in practice, it'd be very escalatory and offer lots of pain for very little gain.
 
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