Forty years ago this month, Israel launched what is now known as the First Lebanon War, with the aim of driving the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Lebanese soil. Lazar Berman explains:

Kiryat Shmona, a small Israeli city a short distance from the Lebanon border, had indeed been burning over the previous year. The Palestine Liberation Organization’s Katyusha fire from inside Lebanon in July 1981 had caused residents to flee, and rockets continued to rain down over the ensuing months. The final straw came on June 3, 1982, when members of the Palestinian Abu Nidal Organization tried to assassinate Israel’s ambassador in London, Shlomo Argov, leaving him in a coma until his death in 2003.

The campaign was seen as an entirely justified operation against the Palestinian terrorists who were firing rockets on border towns, slaughtering passengers on buses, and shooting Israeli diplomats in Europe.

Although the most intense fighting was over in a few months, and the main part of the war lasted only until 1985, the IDF would remain in Lebanon until 2000, as it found itself dragged into conflict with the Syrian army, various Lebanese factions, and eventually Hizballah. The war succeeded in ousting the PLO from Lebanon, yet it is remembered by Israelis much as the Vietnam war is remembered by Americans. Berman analyzes its enduring legacy:

Israel has . . . become extremely skittish about capturing ground, once seen as the key to victory. Now, the fear of getting stuck occupying hostile territory leads military planners to design campaigns around air and artillery fire, resorting to ground maneuvers only as a last resort, and only when they know how and when forces are going to leave. The tentative and ineffectual ground maneuver in Lebanon in 2006 and the limited incursions in the rounds of fighting in Gaza are symptoms of this Lebanon syndrome.

The failed effort in 1982 to install a friendly government in Beirut also restricts Israel’s foreign policy four decades later. Before the war, Israel built ties with a range of proxies across the Middle East and beyond, including in Iraqi Kurdistan, Yemen, and of course, Lebanon. But since sinking into the Lebanese mud, Israel has been careful to keep its boots clean. Iran, meanwhile, has turned its proxy forces into valuable assets in the region.

Between the explosion of thousands of Hizballah pagers on September 17 and now, Iran’s geopolitical clout has shrunk dramatically: Hizballah, Iran’s most important striking force, has retreated to lick its wounds; Iranian influence in Syria has collapsed; Iran’s attempts to attack Israel via Gaza have proved self-defeating; its missile and drone arsenal have proved impotent; and its territorial defenses have proved useless in the face of Israeli airpower. Edward Luttwak considers what might happen next:

The myth of Iranian power was ironically propagated by the United States itself. Right at the start of his first term, in January 2009, Barack Obama was terrified that he would be maneuvered into fighting a war against Iran. . . . Obama started his tenure by apologizing for America’s erstwhile support for the shah. And beyond showing contrition for the past, the then-president also set a new rule, one that lasted all the way to October 2024: Iran may attack anyone, but none may attack Iran.

[Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s] variegated fighters, in light trucks and jeeps, could have been stopped by a few hundred well-trained soldiers. But neither Hizballah nor Iran’s own Revolutionary Guards could react. Hizballah no longer has any large units capable of crossing the border to fight rebels in Syria, as they had done so many times before. As for the Revolutionary Guards, they were commandeering civilian airliners to fly troops into Damascus airport to support Assad. But then Israel made clear that it would not allow Iran’s troops so close to its border, and Iran no longer had credible counter-threats.

Now Iran’s population is discovering that it has spent decades in poverty to pay for the massive build-up of the Revolutionary Guards and all their militias. And for what? They have elaborate bases and showy headquarters, but their expensive ballistic missiles can only be used against defenseless Arabs, not Israel with its Arrow interceptors. As for Hizballah, clearly it cannot even defend itself, let alone Iran’s remaining allies in the region. Perhaps, in short, the dictatorship will finally be challenged in the streets of Iran’s cities, at scale and in earnest.