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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestures as he addresses a news conference at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, February 16, 2016.
Will Israel strike Iran – and if so, how hard?
At least nine people were killed in airstrikes on central Beirut early Thursday as Israel intensified its campaign in Lebanon — while also vowing to retaliate for Iran’s missile attack on Tuesday.
Having eliminated Hassan Nasrallah and much of the terrorist group’s high command, Israel now sees an opportunity to strike while command networks are still reorganizing.
On Thursday, Israel also launched a strike on a West Bank refugee camp, killing at least 14, and nearly 100 others were killed in Gaza airstrikes, where the local health authority says the civilian death toll has surpassed 41,000 since Oct. 7, 2023.
How far will Israel go? Iran attempted to avenge Nasrallah’s assassination by firing a barrage of ballistic missiles against Israel on Tuesday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sworn to respond — and, given his risk tolerance level of late, speculation abounds as to what he might do.
US President Joe Biden and other G7 leaders, while affirming Israel’s right to respond to the Iranian attack, warned Netanyahu that it should be proportional. The signal: Don’t hit nuclear facilities.
Republican US Sen. Lindsey Graham on Thursday slammed the White House for this, and some Israeli officials have indeed called for strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, though that remains a remote risk. Those facilities are believed to be well-protected under multiple meters of granite and may prove impossible to fully destroy.
What is more likely — but still escalatory — says Eurasia Group’s Cliff Kupchan is an attack on parts of Iran’s oil industry, the country’s economic lifeline. “The most damaging targets would be oil refineries, oil production facilities, and oil export terminals, in the order of least to most provocative,” he says.
Refineries mostly provide fuel for domestic purposes and might be easier to seal off, depending on how much warning Israel provides. But “if [Iranians] can’t export their 1.5 to 1.6 million barrels a day, they lose critical income,” Kupchan adds.
Early Friday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made a rare public sermon in Tehran. Just three days before the first anniversary, he said the Oct. 7 attack that killed more than 1,200 Israelis was "legitimate" and justified Tehran's attack on Israel on Tuesday. He also called upon Arab nations to unite against Israel, referring to it as their “common enemy.”
Are Israel and Hezbollah on the brink of all-out war?
While the cross-border fire forced about 60,000 Israelis and 100,000 Lebanese from their homes, neither side was inclined to escalate the skirmishes and risk a full-scale war, knowing the destructive consequences of such a showdown. Israel had little appetite to open a second front against Iran’s most formidable proxy while it was actively fighting a grinding war in Gaza. Meanwhile, neither Hezbollah – under growing domestic pressure amid public discontent with Lebanon’s enduring economic crisis – nor its patrons in Tehran – now betting on regional de-escalation to obtain sanctions relief and bolster the regime’s stability – had an interest in going to war on behalf of Hamas.
But after nearly a year of contained clashes, something shifted in Israel’s strategic calculus that led it to dramatically raise the stakes and expand the confrontation with Hezbollah last week.
First came the attacks on Sept. 17 and 18 using remotely detonated Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies, which not only killed dozens and injured thousands of the organization’s members but also crippled its communications network. Two days later, the IDF assassinated Hezbollah’s top military commander, Ibrahim Aqil, along with the entire chain of command of the group’s elite Radwan unit while they were holding an in-person meeting in a residential building in Beirut. (Aqil’s predecessor, Fuad Shukr, had been killed by an Israeli strike in the same Beirut neighborhood back in July.)
Then, on Monday, Israel launched a massive aerial campaign targeting Hezbollah strongholds across the country – primarily in southern Lebanon but also in the eastern Bekaa Valley and southern Beirut’s Dahiyah suburb – and destroying tens of thousands of rocket launchers and weapons depots. More than 550 people (including at least 50 children) were killed that day alone – nearly half the total number of Lebanese fatalities during the entire 2006 war with Israel. One of yesterday’s airstrikes also took out the commander in charge of Hezbollah's rocket and missile division.
As many as half a million Lebanese have already fled for the north as Israel looks set to intensify its bombardments over the coming days and weeks, threatening to expand the conflict even further.
What changed? What is Israel’s new endgame? And will Israel’s actions or Hezbollah’s response trigger an all-out war?
Two fronts, no more
Here’s what didn’t change: Some 60,000 Israelis have been displaced from their homes for almost a year. That may not sound like a lot, but in proportional terms, it’s the equivalent of the entire population of the state of New Mexico (2.2 million) being evacuated for a year.
These people have grown frustrated at their inability to sleep in their own beds – or send their children to their schools – and they’ve become a thorn in the side of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Although the Israeli government regularly vowed to do something to allow them to return home, everyone understood that confronting Hezbollah was a distraction Israel couldn’t afford while the fight against Hamas was still ongoing.
But major military operations in Gaza are now winding down. While a negotiated cease-fire remains out of reach, the Israelis have so thoroughly degraded Hamas’ offensive capabilities, destroyed its tunnels, and decapitated its leadership that there’s not much more left for them to accomplish in the Strip. The IDF is accordingly withdrawing most troops from Gaza, freeing them to be deployed elsewhere (read: to the north) if needed.
Moreover, while most Israelis blame their government for the failure to secure the release of the hostages held by Hamas, there is widespread public support for a campaign to return displaced residents to the border areas threatened by Hezbollah. This is critical for the embattled Netanyahu, who can leverage the opportunity to galvanize his fragile coalition, boost his popularity amid mounting domestic tensions, and extend his tenure in office. He also has a chance to rewrite his legacy and become the prime minister who neutralized the threats from Hamas and Hezbollah, instead of the one who oversaw the worst intelligence and military failure in the country’s history.
Escalate to de-escalate
Despite its expansion of the bounds of escalation, Israel’s government does not appear to be trying to provoke a full-fledged war, destroy Hezbollah, or occupy any (let alone all) sovereign Lebanese territory. Its goal, made official last week, is more limited: to fulfill its promise to return the approximately 60,000 displaced residents of the northern border communities to their homes and prevent Hezbollah from threatening their safety in the future.
The problem is that since Oct. 8, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has publicly insisted on conditioning a cease-fire in northern Israel to a cease-fire in Gaza, and the odds of the latter being agreed to anytime soon are slim to none (with Netanyahu and Hamas honcho Yahya Sinwar sharing the blame).
Israel is accordingly seeking to force Nasrallah to decouple Lebanon from Gaza, stop Hezbollah’s attacks on its northern communities, and move its troops and weapons stockpiles away from Israel’s border in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1701. Established at the end of the 2006 war, this resolution calls for the withdrawal of all armed forces in the 18-mile stretch between Israel’s border and Lebanon’s Litani River.
The big question is whether Israel’s escalations over the past week are a prelude to a ground invasion to secure this buffer zone in southern Lebanon or a pressure campaign intended to compel Nasrallah to stand down without said invasion.
My take? Israel would strongly prefer not to have to resort to a large-scale ground incursion. The full-fledged war that it would cause entails much higher costs and risks than Israel wants, and Netanyahu is gambling the devastating show of force will render it unnecessary. Having said that, if the coming days and weeks of escalating military pressure fail to get Nasrallah to fold or trigger an unacceptably retaliatory escalation from Hezbollah (e.g., successful strikes on military installations, critical infrastructure, or cities, mass civilian casualty attacks, assassinations of military or political leaders, etc.), Israel would probably be willing – and certainly ready – to go all the way to achieve its objective.
Hezbollah’s dilemma
Nasrallah made a strategic blunder when he tied Hezbollah’s fate to a Gaza cease-fire. Again and again, he doubled down by publicly insisting on this linkage. Now his organization has been dealt the worst blow in its history, and he’s stuck with no good options to respond.
There’s no doubt that Nasrallah feels compelled to reciprocate Israel’s escalations, but Hezbollah has no effective means to do so without risking all-out war against an overwhelmingly superior adversary. Unlike the bounded confrontation we’re currently seeing, a full-scale war would entail intensive and sustained strikes by both sides on each other’s critical and state infrastructure (including electricity and energy assets, ports, and airports) as well as densely populated civilian areas. It would also feature Israeli tanks and boots battling inside Lebanon.
That is a war Hezbollah knows it can’t possibly win – and one that both the Lebanese public and the group’s Iranian backers desperately oppose. This is especially true after the events of the past week, which have severely degraded the group’s military capabilities, eliminated most of its leaders, dented its morale, and compromised its power to coordinate a response.
At the same time, Nasrallah has no face-saving way to walk back his threats to continue attacking Israel until there’s a Gaza cease-fire. But what good is keeping his word to the Palestinians if Hezbollah gets destroyed in the process?
What I expect, therefore, is neither full capitulation nor full defiance. Nasrallah will keep up his tough rhetoric and refuse to comply with UN Resolution 1701, but Hezbollah will quietly bow to the pressure to let up its attacks against northern Israel. The IDF’s intensifying air campaign, meanwhile, will turn southern Lebanon into a ghost town as civilians and fighters continue to evacuate the area, making it easier for a small contingent of Israeli troops to eventually set up a buffer zone with minimal resistance and allowing the 60,000 displaced to return home. Hezbollah’s deterrence will suffer greatly, but the tip of the Iranian spear in the Levant will live to fight another day.
Danger ahead
Of course, I could be wrong. There’s a lot of uncertainty and it’s ultimately a close call, with lots of room for accidents and unintended escalations.
But even if I’m right and all-out war doesn’t break out between Israel and Hezbollah, the regional situation will still remain exceptionally dangerous. Other Iranian proxies in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen are determined to continue the fight. The two-state solution is all but dead. Palestinians both in Gaza and the West Bank are being driven to desperation, their prospects of living normal lives deteriorating wildly before our eyes. The powerless Lebanese are watching as their moribund economy takes yet another hit. The impact all of this is having on the Arab public mood, normalization efforts with Israel, and radicalization and extremism cannot be overstated.
All the regional leaders I've met in New York for the UN General Assembly over the last 48 hours have told me that this is the most flammable they’ve seen the Middle East since 1967. They’re right. As I wrote last January, “The region is no longer quiet, and it won't be for ages.”Boys scouts carry a picture of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah during the funeral of Hezbollah member Ali Mohamed Chalbi, after hand-held radios and pagers used by Hezbollah detonated across Lebanon, in Kfar Melki, Lebanon September 19, 2024.
Israel strikes Lebanon as Hezbollah decries “acts of war”
Israeli warplanes on Thursday struck dozens of targets across south Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah missiles and infrastructure. Two Israeli soldiers were also killed on Thursday in Hezbollah drone and missile attacks on northern Israel.
The Israeli strikes come after Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies across Lebanon and Syria exploded in coordinated attacks over two days, killing at least 26 people and injuring around 3,000.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared those attacks an “act of war” by Israel in a nationally televised speech Thursday, as Israeli jets buzzed Beirut. He said Israel had “crossed all the red lines,” hinting at possible retaliation. If Tel Aviv is worried, they aren’t showing it, as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant insisted Israeli military action in Lebanon will continue, adding, “Our goal is to ensure the safe return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes.”
It’s all bad news for Gaza peace talks, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated that escalatory actions make progress even harder to achieve. An adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly floated a plan to the White House involving the peaceful exile of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar — not that anyone seems to have asked his view on the subject.
We’re watching for further escalation in the north, where Nasrallah says Hezbollah will continue supporting the fight in Gaza “no matter what the consequences are, what the sacrifices are, what scenarios will unfold.”