Assessing the potential that Israel may declare war on Hezbollah offers an opportunity to show how crowdsourced forecasting can augment traditional RAND expertise and analysis. The recently launched RAND Forecasting Initiative (RFI) compared forecaster assessments of that likelihood with two researchers' analysis of the situation, revealing complementary results.
RAND is seeking to enhance its researchers' ability to understand and develop policy-relevant solutions for complex challenges through early warning of risks and opportunities. We are using crowdsourced forecasting—aggregating many individual forecasts to determine a single, average forecast—to elicit the probability of geopolitical and technological developments. Various academic and research (PDF) organizations have found that pairing quantitative crowdsourced forecasting with qualitative analytic approaches strengthens insight and accuracy, and provides decisionmakers with more context to act upon.
As one case study, we compared how our crowdsourced forecasting community views the prospects for war between Israel and Hezbollah with RAND researchers who are not yet active forecasters. As of today, our forecasting platform says there's a 23 percent chance that Israel will declare war on Hezbollah in the next 12 months. This question will be resolved as “Yes” if Israel announces the opening of a new front against Hezbollah in Lebanon or officially authorizes military steps similar to Israel's cabinet declaring war on Hamas on October 8, 2023.
Pairing quantitative crowdsourced forecasting with qualitative analytic approaches strengthens insight, accuracy, and provides decisionmakers with more context to act upon.
The aggregate forecast on our platform has fluctuated between 7–30 percent since March 2024, with 73 forecasters participating. Some of the primary factors mitigating against the outbreak of war are: 1) Israel wants to avoid heavy casualties and high costs, and 2) Israeli leaders prefer to work with U.S. partners to find a diplomatic solution. In contrast, the factors that forecasters cite that have raised the probability of a declaration of full-scale war include: 1) increasing attacks from Hezbollah, 2) Israel's troop deployments to the northern border, 3) Israeli desire to allow displaced citizens to return home safely to northern Israel, and 4) Prime Minister Netanyahu's desire to stay in power.
We shared these results with senior RAND researchers with expertise in the Middle East and asked for their forecasts, along with their rationales, for how they could be right or wrong. The RAND researchers generally agreed with the forecasters' rationales for why war might or might not occur. They tended to give even greater weight to those factors in favor of war, especially Israeli military preparations for potential full-scale war and Netanyahu's potential political motivations for declaring war on Hezbollah.
One RAND researcher we spoke with, specializing in foreign policy, military developments in the Middle East, and Iranian domestic politics (Researcher A), estimated the probability for war between Israel and Hezbollah within the 40–50 percent range. The researcher noted the increase in press reporting that suggests Israel may be preparing for conflict with Hezbollah. The press reporting the researcher cited included the fact that Israeli leaders and citizens may clamor for action in the wake of 60,000 Israeli displacements in the north of the country because of Hezbollah's actions. Researcher A further noted that Prime Minister Netanyahu might view full-scale war as beneficial for his political survival and coalition stability.
Researcher A noted, however, that the ongoing war in Gaza places downward pressure on the probability of war given the potential strain on Israeli economic and military capacity. The researcher cited how prolonged conflict could further harm the Israeli economy, especially from Hezbollah missile damage. Additionally, Israel would need to reduce operations in Gaza to focus on Lebanon. Researcher A noted that his forecast could be wrong if Prime Minister Netanyahu calls for new elections and voters elect a Prime Minister who is less self-interested and more strategic when it comes to Israel’s security.
A second RAND researcher with experience in defense strategy and planning, and security in the Middle East and Europe (Researcher B), saw a 45 percent chance of war between Israel and Hezbollah over the next 12 months. This researcher noted that both Israeli and Hezbollah leadership face political pressures to de-escalate and may seek alternatives to avoid full-scale conflict. Researcher B thought that de-escalation might be difficult to sustain if Hezbollah were to strike an important target in Israel or if Netanyahu perceived rising public and political pressure to achieve military results. Researcher B judged that a Hezbollah strike on a civilian target (especially a school or a sensitive munitions depot in Israel) would raise the probability of war from 45 percent to 85 percent.
RAND is seeking to enhance its researchers' ability to understand and develop policy-relevant solutions for complex challenges through early warning of risks and opportunities.
This type of benchmarking exercise can be valuable not just for comparison's sake, but to surface where the most consequential differentiators are coming from. As a next step, we plan to hold a Delphi-type exercise to vet participants' arguments for their probabilities and to see if anyone changes their forecast.
Both researchers viewed the application of crowdsourced forecasting as a potentially valuable way to enhance RAND's research and analysis for sponsored work. Some of the potential avenues that we discussed for incorporating forecasting into research plans include:
- Developing scenarios for wargaming exercises
- Developing indicators/warnings and identifying discontinuities
- Providing a snapshot of views to inform final edits before publication of a large report
- Offering quantitative trend analysis
- Supporting post-mortem lessons learned
If you have an idea for how crowdsourced forecasting can contribute to your project, please reach out to the RFI team.
