Israel and Hezbollah Are Escalating Toward Catastrophe

Within 24 hours of Hamas’s October 7 terror attack, Hezbollah followed with an attack of its own, launching projectiles from Lebanon into northern Israel. Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, explained that the campaign was intended to strain Israel’s resources and force the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), then preparing its response to Hamas in Gaza, to fight on two fronts. Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar hoped that Hezbollah, along with other Iranian-backed groups across the Middle East, would encircle Israel in a “ring of fire,” overwhelm its defenses, and threaten its existence.

Yet Nasrallah instead chose a middle-ground approach of incremental escalation—a pragmatic effort to signal solidarity with Hamas without risking Hezbollah’s survival as the most sophisticated and lethal arm of Iran’s proxy network. Since then, Hezbollah has continued to design its attacks to stay below the threshold of a full-scale conflagration. The group has continuously pressured northern Israel, forcing an estimated 80,000 civilians to evacuate their homes (creating a political challenge for the Israeli governing coalition) and forcing the IDF to allocate limited air defense, airpower, and personnel to the north. But the confined geographic scope of the attacks; their target selection of military sites rather than civilian areas; and the choice of weapons used, refraining from drawing on an arsenal of precision-guided missiles, are telling.

Until recently, Israel’s leaders opted for retaliatory strikes that didn’t reach the scope or scale to trigger a full-scale war in the north. With each Hezbollah attack, Israel responded with its own pattern of incremental escalation that saw the IDF strike deeper into Lebanon, employ more lethal tactics against higher-profile Hezbollah targets, and create a civilian-free buffer zone in southern Lebanon, from which tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians have been displaced. These daily exchanges always carried a high risk of a miscalculation or accident that would result in a mass casualty event, sending escalation spiraling upward. But for months after October 7, both sides seemed able to keep that risk in check.

Now, however, the violent choreography of incremental escalation and calculated strikes may no longer be sustainable. The shift started in late July, when a Hezbollah rocket attack killed 12 Druze children playing soccer in the Israeli town of Majdal Shams. Israel responded by targeting Hezbollah’s second-in-command, Fuad Shukr, in a residential building in Beirut. At first, the dynamic appeared to be little changed: Israel used precision weapons against Shukr to minimize collateral damage. And after Israel, in late August, preemptively struck Hezbollah missile launchers set to attack military sites in Israel, Hezbollah’s response signaled a limited willingness to escalate. Nasrallah made clear shortly after that he was ready to return to the incrementalism of the status quo ante.

Yet in recent weeks, IDF strikes and targeted assassinations have been occurring at a pace and on a scale that indicate a higher risk tolerance and a readiness to enter a new phase of the conflict with Hezbollah. Back-to-back operations on September 17 and 18, in which Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies exploded, set a new record for Hezbollah casualties, with at least 30 dead and thousands injured. Although the operation was designed to limit civilian casualties, since only senior Hezbollah operatives would have been using devices capable of receiving the messages, the group’s integration into the fabric of Lebanese society meant that many of the explosions occurred in civilian areas. On September 20, Israel executed another targeted assassination strike on a group of elite Hezbollah forces meeting in a residential building in a Beirut suburb. This time, an estimated 30 civilians were killed.

The two sides appear locked in an upward military spiral, but both would lose more than they would gain from a full-scale war right now. The incentive structures in Israel and Lebanon should compel both sets of leaders to de-escalate and energize diplomatic arrangements to restore calm on the border. The experience of the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah and the reality that a war today would be exponentially more devastating—in loss of lives, collateral damage, and the risk of regional spillover—offer additional reasons for both sides to back down. This is also why U.S. negotiators, including the White House envoy Amos Hochstein, have received consistent high-level access in both Israel and Lebanon as they work to negotiate the parameters of a diplomatic arrangement to end hostilities.

The problem is that Nasrallah has linked Hezbollah’s campaign to the war in Gaza. For months, he has received little serious pushback to the notion that de-escalation cannot happen without a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This effectively holds Israel and Lebanon hostage to the decision-making of Sinwar, bound to the decisions of one man hiding in the tunnels beneath Gaza despite clear incentives to de-escalate.

HEZBOLLAH’S ERODING BASE

Hezbollah would lose far more than that it would gain from a full-scale war with Israel. Following the 34-day war in 2006, Nasrallah said he regretted Hezbollah’s cross-border kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, which prompted a severe Israeli military response and the deaths of at least 1,000 Lebanese civilians. Nasrallah appears to recognize that an Israeli air campaign or ground incursion in 2024 would be significantly more devastating for Lebanon, resulting in heavy civilian casualties and collateral damage and risking the already weakening support for Hezbollah across Lebanese society.

An Israeli campaign that intends not to deter Hezbollah but to dislodge it from its entrenched positions and destroy its arsenal would not be limited to military targets or to the country’s south. Hezbollah has long worked to shield its weapons by embedding them in urban and civilian areas throughout Lebanon, assuming that Israel would not risk the reputational harm and accusations of violating international law that would arise from an air campaign that targets civilian areas. But since October 7, Israel has been much more willing to tolerate such criticism, as its offensive in Gaza has made clear. Israel would likely strike Hezbollah’s long-range missile arsenal, much of which is situated in densely populated areas including Beirut and the Bekaa Valley, even if it meant a greater risk of civilian harm.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s support within Lebanon’s multiethnic and religiously diverse society is already weak. Hezbollah is widely viewed as responsible for storing the powerful explosives in Beirut’s port that led to a 2020 explosion, killing several hundred, and the subsequent intimidation of judges and investigators seeking to ensure accountability. A recent Arab Barometer survey indicated that 55 percent of Lebanese have “no trust at all” in Hezbollah. The only part of Lebanese society in which support for Hezbollah remains strong is within the Shiite population, the communities in southern Lebanon reliant on the organization for social and economic support. By failing to take steps to prevent a full-scale war with Israel, the costs of which would be carried by all Lebanese, Hezbollah would receive considerable blame.

What’s more, Hezbollah has incurred heavy operational and leadership losses over the past 11 months, which should prompt serious questions as to how long it can afford to be on the receiving end of Israeli action before the organization suffers generational degradation. These losses would increase exponentially in a full-scale conflict. In April, the IDF said that it had killed six Hezbollah brigade-level commanders and over 30 battalion-level commanders. As of September 20, Israel had assassinated Hezbollah’s operational commander, Ibrahim Aqil, and dozens of commanders in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force. A September 21 IDF statement claimed that “Hezbollah’s military chain of command has been almost completely dismantled.” IDF airstrikes also targeted Hezbollah military bases, command-and-control infrastructure, runways, and weapons caches across southern Lebanon. No military organization can sustain this level of losses without experiencing a significant impact on morale and operational effectiveness. Nasrallah’s refusal to delink his organization’s fate from a cease-fire in Gaza is pushing Hezbollah to the tipping point of operational collapse.

ISRAEL’S MISSING STRATEGY

For Israel, the incentives also argue against a large-scale war with Hezbollah. After nearly a year of fighting in Gaza, the IDF is tired, munitions stockpiles are depleted, public support for Israel’s leaders is weak, Israel’s economy is suffering, and its international and regional standing have significantly eroded. And IDF military planners are well aware that Hezbollah’s more advanced fighting capabilities and sophisticated weapons arsenal would make the Gaza campaign look like child’s play.

Hezbollah’s missile, rocket, and drone arsenal would strain Israel’s defensive capabilities, especially when targeting shifts from military to civilian areas. A Reichman University war game shortly before Hamas’s October 7 attack predicted that Hezbollah can launch 2,500 to 3,000 missile and rocket attacks into Israel per day for weeks. Some estimates calculate Hezbollah’s missile, rocket, and drone arsenal to be at least 150,000 strong—ten times the number of munitions it had during the 2006 war—and it now includes precision-guided munitions that could threaten strategic sites within Israel. Israel’s stock of Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile interceptors would be depleted within days. The Reichman war game also anticipated volleys of precision-guided and loitering munitions targeting Israel’s critical infrastructure and civilian centers; it was assumed that U.S. military assistance would not be sufficient or timely enough to back up strained Israeli air defenses, forcing the IDF to defend only priority areas.

Given the anticipated strain on Israel’s air defenses, Israeli military planners have long assessed that large-scale offensive and preemptive operations would be necessary against Hezbollah. A massive air campaign could take out rocket and precision-guided munitions sites, but even this effort would be complicated by Hezbollah’s network of underground tunnels, which, according to a report from the Alma Research Center, is even more developed than Hamas’s tunnel network in Gaza. Israel might be compelled to use heavier ordnance against these tunnels, increasing the level of destruction across Lebanon. And a ground campaign would ultimately be necessary to clear fighters, weapons caches, and launch sites village by village and tunnel by tunnel, a departure from the recent approach of using just airpower and artillery.

The two sides are trapped in an escalatory cycle.

The Biden administration’s May 2024 decision to pause the delivery of certain munitions highlighted a critical vulnerability for Israel: its depleted weapons caches after months of war in Gaza. In July, the IDF acknowledged that it was suffering from a shortage of tanks, after many were damaged in Gaza, as well as ammunition and personnel. There are also reported shortages of spare parts, none of which can be replenished as quickly as an expanded war in Lebanon would require. Some Israeli tanks in Gaza are not fully loaded with shells because of strains on supply. Given the expectation that a war in Lebanon would not be limited in time, scope, or geography, no military would want to initiate a second front with such low levels of operational readiness.

The IDF should also be concerned about the impact on Israel’s manpower. In June, an Israeli organization that provides support to IDF reservists reported that 10,000 reservists had requested mental health support, thousands had been laid off from civilian jobs, and some 1,000 businesses operated by reservists had shut down. It also reported that a significant number of reservists had failed to report for duty after being called up for a second or third time because of burnout. Exhaustion is also prevalent among active-duty forces. In July, four IDF commanders met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sound the alarm about the state of their forces. Low morale and growing fatigue across Israel’s fighting force should give Israeli decision-makers pause as they consider an expanded war.

Israel’s economy has also incurred significant losses, which would be compounded if the country were embroiled in a follow-on war in Lebanon. Data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development indicate that Israel’s economy is experiencing the sharpest slowdown among wealthy countries today, with its gross domestic product contracting 4.1 percent since October 7. Rating agencies such as Fitch have lowered Israel’s credit score, assessing that military spending will increase the country’s deficit. Adding an expanded campaign in Lebanon to the ongoing one in Gaza would considerably exacerbate the strain on Israel’s economy.

THE TOLL OF ESCALATION

Despite the clear incentives for both Israel and Hezbollah to de-escalate, the two sides are trapped in an escalatory cycle. On September 22, Hezbollah responded to Israel’s recent attacks with a barrage of rockets, missiles, and drones targeting what it claimed to be military zones near Haifa—pushing the geographic boundaries of previous Hezbollah strikes and showing a willingness to target areas that are also home to civilians. To date, Israel has refrained from striking Hezbollah precision-guided munitions arsenals that are located in populated civilian areas, yet both sides are showing a willingness to expand targets that would have greater collateral damage and reach farther into the other’s territory. Immediately after Hezbollah’s attack, Lebanese civilians received messages instructing them to evacuate areas where Hezbollah stores weapons, and the IDF launched its largest set of strikes since the 2006 war, with more than 300 Lebanese already reported killed. If this scope and scale of strikes continues, it will make clear that Israel has decided to enter a new phase of the war.

Nasrallah trapped Hezbollah when he insisted that its campaign would continue until there is a cease-fire in Gaza. But Sinwar’s maximalist approach to negotiations puts a cease-fire further out of reach, and there is every reason to believe that the IDF will not fully disengage from Gaza for some time, given both Israel’s refusal to agree to a new Palestinian civilian governance structure and the low odds that an international mission or Arab security force would provide security in the absence of a path toward Palestinian statehood. The conditions are set for an ongoing IDF presence in Gaza, which, by Nasrallah’s logic, will prevent Hezbollah from standing down.

Yet Israeli leaders are also trapped. Last week’s pager and walkie-talkie operations and the current phase of Israeli strikes have dealt a significant blow to Hezbollah, and the United States continues to maintain a strong military posture in the region. As a result, Israeli policymakers may be tempted to believe that they can deal a once-in-a-generation blow to Hezbollah and rely on the United States for back up should Iran come to Hezbollah’s aid. Yet the Israeli government has not provided the IDF with specific, achievable military goals or articulated a realistic end state for Hezbollah—laying the groundwork for an extended offensive with ill-defined objectives prone to mission creep. (Recently, the government said that one of its war goals is returning displaced Israelis to their homes in northern Israel—a strategic end state, not a military objective that offers operational guidance.) And without international consensus on how to deal with Lebanon given Hezbollah’s stranglehold on the state, Israel risks locking the IDF into another scenario in which military tools are expected to resolve fundamentally political questions.

While the United States enhances efforts to de-escalate, it should also continue to convey its commitment to Israel’s defense.

There are still ways to prevent a full-scale war. The U.S. government has worked for months to negotiate a diplomatic framework in which Hezbollah’s forces move some four miles away from the Israeli border and United Nations and national Lebanese forces move into southern Lebanon. Yet this U.S.-endorsed de-escalation framework is tied to a cease-fire in Gaza, and no one can afford to wait for that outcome. A regional pressure campaign should bring in other parties to press Nasrallah to delink his negotiations from Hamas and Gaza. And the U.S. diplomatic strategy should also shift, moving de-escalation messaging into intelligence rather than traditional diplomatic channels and coordinating more closely with key European governments, such as Paris and Berlin, which retain meaningful leverage in Lebanon. This new engagement format should push for informal understandings rather than official commitments.

While the United States enhances efforts to de-escalate, it should also continue to convey its commitment to Israel’s defense. Nasrallah must understand that escalation will not drive a wedge between Jerusalem and Washington. Hezbollah and its patron Iran will be more likely to consider de-escalation if it is understood that Israel is not isolated. Iranian senior leaders have spent the past 11 months pressuring Israel while seeking to stay below the threshold of a full-scale war. They should recognize that if Iran enters into this conflict, the United States is likely to as well, threatening, among other things, Tehran’s primary insurance policy against Israel—Hezbollah’s weapons arsenal and army.

Finally, the United States should continue to push Israel to articulate its plan for winding down military operations against Hamas and prioritizing Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Movement on this front will deny Hezbollah, Iran, and the rest of the axis of resistance the upper hand in a regional narrative that paints Hamas as a legitimate defender of Palestinian interests. Such progress is essential to Israel’s long-term security—something that its leaders, trapped by short-term decision-making, have seemed unable to grasp.