Israel’s Next Front?

Over the past six months, tensions along Israel’s border with Lebanon have escalated dramatically. Israel has now deployed 100,000 troops to its north to confront the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, and the fighting there has steadily intensified. Nearly 400 Lebanese—including around 70 civilians and three journalists—have been killed, 90,000 Lebanese civilians have been displaced from around 100 towns and villages along the Israeli-Lebanese border, and Lebanese villages and olive groves have incurred widespread damage from phosphorus bombs. Hezbollah, meanwhile, has attempted to demonstrate its support for Hamas, now under siege from Israel in Gaza after its October 7 attack, by firing rockets almost daily at Israeli towns and military targets, displacing nearly 80,000 Israelis and killing a half dozen civilians.

Then, on April 1, Israel bombed Iran’s consulate in Damascus, killing senior officers in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. Two weeks later, Iran launched an unprecedented missile attack on Israeli soil, and Israel retaliated with a strike on Iran. Both Israel’s attack and Iran’s response were unexpected. Iran, in particular, has a long history of muted responses to Israeli provocations, simply because a war with Israel or its main ally, the United States, is not in Tehran’s interest.

But Israel’s attack and Iran’s response upended this uneasy status quo and broke with decades of precedent. Although the world’s focus has now turned to Iran, the heightened tensions between Iran and Israel dramatically increase the odds of conflict—or even a full-blown war—between Israel and Hezbollah. Indeed, on April 21, Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s emergency war cabinet, declared that Israel’s border with Lebanon now constitutes its “operative front” and its “greatest and most urgent challenge.”

A special envoy appointed by U.S. President Joe Biden had been attempting to broker a deal between Israel and Hezbollah to demarcate the long-contested border. Since Israel’s attack in Damascus and Iran’s response, these negotiations seem to have slipped to a second priority. But to prevent a regional escalation, the United States—as well as France, which has recently merged its own diplomatic initiatives with U.S. endeavors—must redouble its diplomatic efforts to freeze Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah. These efforts, however, must first focus on pressing for an end to the conflict in Gaza.

PRIOR RESTRAINT

Since October 7, Tehran has sought to reap strategic benefits from Israel’s operations in Gaza. Iran has tried to expand its support—and that of its partners—among Sunni Arabs angry at the destruction and catastrophic loss of Palestinian lives in Gaza and exert greater influence over the political outcome of the Gaza conflict. It has also sought to deepen its cooperation with Russia in Syria, where Israel’s attacks against Iranian positions have intensified.

But Tehran’s actions also appeared to have been carefully calibrated to prevent an all-out war. For decades, Iran has been building its influence across the Middle East by establishing its so-called axis of resistance, a group of proxy forces and partners in a number of countries in the region. In theory, this strategy stressed that if Israel attacked one member of the axis, the others would come to its defense. 

But the experience of the past decade suggested that after Hamas’s assault on Israel on October 7 and Israel’s subsequent devastating attacks on Gaza, Iran would aim to avoid serious escalation. Since 2017, Israel has struck Iranian-backed forces in Syria and mounted cyberattacks and assassinations aimed at undermining Iran’s nuclear program. Tehran’s response has generally been restrained.

Since October 7, Iran has tried to expand its support among Sunni Arabs.

Iran does not wish to see Israel destroy its regional assets. From Tehran’s perspective, these groups serve not only to project its influence across the region but also to defend its interests and deter any direct attacks on Iranian territory. A serious conflict with Israel that substantially damaged Hezbollah would destroy Iran’s first line of defense in any future conflict with Israel. Before October 7, Iran’s regional position was the strongest it had been since the 1979 establishment of the Islamic Republic. And its rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, announced in March 2023, meant that for the first time since the 1980s, the two countries were aligned on the need to prevent further conflict in the region.

Before October 7, an uneasy truce existed between Israel and Hezbollah—an informal mutual deterrence that kept the Israeli-Lebanese border relatively quiet. Israel did not take overt action against Hezbollah on Lebanese territory. Even when Israel stepped up its attacks after October 7, Hezbollah’s initial response was guarded: Lebanon’s domestic situation is already nightmarish, with its economy in collapse. Even if Hezbollah prevailed in a conflict with Israel, the group’s leaders know that they would sit victorious atop a nation reduced to rubble.

After the devastating 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, the European Union, the United States, and Arab countries such as Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates quickly helped rebuild Lebanon’s infrastructure. But these countries are increasingly focused on their own domestic issues, and the demands for reconstruction support across the Middle East are growing exponentially. If the same degree of devastation came to Lebanon today, far fewer actors would likely step up to help reconstruct the country.

CLIMATE CHANGE

The balance of interests that has generally driven Iran’s restraint, however, is changing. There has been a shift toward hard-liners in both the Iranian and Israeli governments, and Israel’s strike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus crossed a Rubicon. At the same time, Iran’s domestic politics have been rocked by turmoil, including economic struggles, mass protests for women’s rights in 2022, and recent ethnic altercations in Baluchistan. Leaders in Tehran now have a more urgent need to restore their external deterrence and address internal challenges to their authority and sovereignty.

Israel, meanwhile, has been trying to recuperate its security deterrence after October 7. It has also learned, over the past six months, that it can carry out extensive military operations and flatten large parts of Gaza leading to a horrific loss of life with relatively little pushback from the West. The Israeli government glimpsed an opportunity to take care of other problems besides Hamas. Also over the past six months, Israel’s leaders have repeatedly vowed to remove the risk posed by Hezbollah. The Israeli war cabinet has debated various military options and the means to force the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, the 2006 order that demanded that Hezbollah withdraw its armed forces beyond the Litani River.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, politically beleaguered, may seek to expand the conflict into Lebanon to shore up his domestic position. A broader war against Lebanon could refocus attention from the colossal security breach that led to October 7 and from Gaza’s unfolding humanitarian disaster. Israel has yet to achieve the decisive eradication of Hamas that was the declared goal of its operation or even recover the Israeli hostages that remain in Gaza.

So far, U.S. diplomatic pressure on Israel has helped prevent the Gaza war from expanding into an all-out conflict with Lebanon. But Israel is feeling emboldened. In early April, the Israeli military released a statement titled “Readiness for the Transition From Defense to Offense,” outlining its preparations for a conflict with Lebanon. Since then, its targeted attacks in Lebanon have intensified. It may no longer be a matter of whether Israel attacks Lebanon, but when.

STORM PREDICTIONS

An all-out Israeli attack on Lebanon could involve either a limited or a full ground invasion, as well as expanded aerial bombardments targeting civilian areas. Indeed, Israel is steadily allocating military resources to the country’s north. Several assessments over the past six months by both U.S. and Israeli intelligence have indicated that if war breaks out between Hezbollah and Israel, Israel would suffer significant losses to both its military and civilian infrastructure.

An attack would likely draw in other Iranian-affiliated groups and partners in a much more concerted way than Israel’s offense against Hamas has. Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, has uniquely strong personal relationships with other Iranian-affiliated groups. Over the past decade, Hezbollah has actively trained, cooperated with, and lent its expertise to the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hamas. In Syria, Hezbollah actively supported President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and maintains an established military and institutional presence, especially near Syria’s border with Israel. Iran has also established several smaller proxy groups in Syria made up primarily of Afghan and Pakistani Shiites that it could direct to join an Israeli-Hezbollah conflict.

A fuller regional escalation would also almost certainly prompt more attacks by Iran’s allies against U.S. forces stationed in Iraq, Jordan, and Syria. Such attacks, in turn, would likely solicit more lethal responses by the United States. Even if Iran’s smaller affiliates lack the capacity to mount a serious military threat to Israel, the symbolism of rockets falling into Israel from a variety of countries in the region could galvanize the United States and other Western powers to get more involved militarily, not only by defending Israeli airspace but by directly attacking Israel’s enemies.

An Israeli attack on Lebanon would boost popular support for Iran across the Middle East.

China and Russia are unlikely to get directly embroiled in an escalating Middle East conflict, but they are unlikely to do much to prevent it, either. Beijing ought to care that the Houthis have attacked shipping in the Red Sea, which jeopardizes China’s trade with Europe, but it has not sent warships to the region—nor has it used its influence with Iran, as its largest trading partner, to persuade Tehran to rein in the Houthis. Both countries may well use their positions on the UN Security Council to constrain the United States, blocking resolutions that would negatively affect Iran.

Middle Eastern publics are at a crossroads, dismayed by the prospect of the Israel-Hamas war’s expansion but losing faith in a negotiated peace. The destruction in Gaza has deepened antipathy toward Israel, and an attack against Lebanon would only boost popular support for Iran and its nonstate partners. Despite the Saudi government’s considerable efforts to acclimate its population to a normalization deal with Israel, for instance, 96 percent of Saudi respondents to a Washington Institute survey in December 2023 agreed that Arab countries should cut all ties to Israel. Across the Middle East, polls indicate increasing support for armed resistance as a means of resolving political conflict.

TALK THERAPY

The only way interested actors, especially the United States, can avoid a spiral of escalating conflict is to adopt a much more intentional focus on de-escalation. In mid-April, CIA Director William Burns met with Ibrahim Kalin, the head of Turkey’s intelligence agency, to ask for help mediating between Israel and Iran. In April, Oman and Switzerland acted as effective backchannels for communications between Iran and the United States. Qatar has been working on a deal that releases Israeli hostages and brings a cease-fire to Gaza, and the United Arab Emirates could also play a valuable role in calming tensions.

But the negotiations between Israel and Hezbollah must not be moved to the back burner. Ideas presented in these multilateral talks have been aimed at ending the two parties’ immediate conflict; resolving all outstanding disputes around contested border points; effecting the visible withdrawal of Hezbollah’s armed forces, as well as other armed Palestinian and Lebanese factions, approximately five miles back from the Israeli-Lebanese border; and providing for the deployment of around 10,000 to 15,000 Lebanese troops to the border area. Over the past year, rounds of negotiation had already resolved six out of 13 border disputes. To sweeten the deal for Hezbollah, Amos Hochstein, the U.S. special envoy in the negotiations, had suggested that Western countries would help rebuild the Lebanese towns and villages Israel has destroyed over the past six months. Hezbollah, however, has maintained that it will not continue negotiations without a cease-fire in Gaza.

Given its economic collapse, Lebanon will need significant international support to shore up its political institutions.

The April escalations between Iran and Israel have rendered the negotiations regarding an Israeli-Hezbollah deal more difficult. Yet Iran remains reluctant to get into a larger conflict that would wreak havoc on its regional standing—or its goal to reduce the United States’ influence in the Middle East. Ultimately, the development most likely to reliably prevent escalation is for negotiations about a Lebanon deal to proceed alongside a Gaza cease-fire. Paradoxically, such a cease-fire could also prompt escalation between Israel and Hezbollah if Israel views an end to the hostilities in Gaza as an opening to refocus its attention north. To contain the spread of conflict, it is thus crucial that the United States, France, and other Western powers turn their attention to the negotiations between Israel and Hezbollah immediately after any Gaza cease-fire begins.

But the world’s investments in preserving Middle East peace must not end there. Given its economic collapse since 2019, Lebanon will need significant international support to shore up its political institutions and expand its army. There is a direct correlation, after all, between the weakening of state institutions, including militaries, and the strengthening of violent nonstate actors.

Israel is hoping to transform its security outlook through the destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah. But put plainly, brute military force cannot eradicate either group. Although their capacities may be degraded, they will reemerge in time, having learned from the experience. As the risk of an expanded regional war grows, so does the urgency of ending the war in Gaza, negotiating disputes about the Israeli-Lebanese border, and establishing a serious political process between Israelis and Palestinians that recognizes Palestinians’ right to full self-determination. Unless negotiation remains a top priority, the violent ambitions espoused by hard-liners in both Iran and Israel will win out. And Iran’s panoply of nonstate actors will continue to find purchase among increasingly angry and disenfranchised populations, not only in the Palestinian territories but across the region.