Since October 7, Israel has been fighting on seven fronts against Iran and its proxies in the region. Due to limits on strategic capabilities, conflicting political priorities, and external pressure, Israel has focused its main offensive capabilities on defeating Hamas in Gaza over the past year and has limited itself to absorbing Hezbollah’s attacks when it comes to the threat from the north. It seems that strategy has changed, and the region could be at the brink of a major escalation.
When Hamas launched its deadly surprise attack on Israeli communities and party-goers on that dreaded Saturday morning almost a year ago, Hamas surprised Hezbollah almost as much as they surprised Israel. For almost a day, the Lebanese terror organization had to make a cardinal decision: Hezbollah could launch a similar attack into Israel with a full-on onslaught and invasion and risk retaliation, or it could join its Iranian sister proxy in a less aggressive yet still significant way with a more targeted approach.
Hezbollah opted for the smarter option, and launched a fire campaign against northern Israel that has been going on for 11 months, during which Hezbollah has fired no less than 8,000 rockets, missiles, and UAVs at Israeli communities and military bases, claiming the lives of 25 civilians and 23 security personnel.
The results, from a strategic point of view, are astonishing: The Lebanese terror organization has achieved an unprecedented feat, creating a de facto buffer zone inside Israel and forcing some 70,000 Israelis to flee from their homes. While calibrating the severity and range of its attacks mostly to northern Israel, Hezbollah managed to inflict tangible military, social, and political damage to Israel without escalating events beyond its desired intensity and risk.
Smoke billows from a house in Baalbek in east Lebanon after a reported explosion of a radio device, on September 18, 2024, amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters.
AFP via Getty Images
For months, Israeli civilians suffered, demanding their military and government facilitate their safe return home. Yet they insisted they could not return to their beloved homes with Hezbollah units deployed along the border, since this essentially meant Hezbollah would have the option to choose to conduct a gruesome and deadly October 7-style attack against them. As the months went by, frustration rose and was translated into political pressure on the military and government.
This week’s events, with the fantastic surgical strike on thousands of Hezbollah operatives in two waves of exploding communications devices, coupled with the successful elimination of the commander of the elite Radwan unit in Beirut along with a majority of Hezbollah’s senior officials, marks an apparent change in Israeli strategy towards Hezbollah.
Israel does not seek war with Hezbollah, at least not now, and is trying to persuade Hezbollah and its Iranian masters to agree to the U.S. offer to de-escalate the border area and allow Israelis to return home. Israel cannot end a year of fighting with Hezbollah and Hamas with Hezbollah deployed along the border, and there are only two ways to prevent that: either a direct diplomatic deal now, or one that is signed after a bloody war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Hezbollah faces a tough choice, which in many ways may seal its fate for years to come. It can either knowingly expose Lebanon, its population, and infrastructure to tremendous destruction and pain by deciding to unleash its more lethal and long-range weapons at Israel, or it can stand down now and agree to vacate the border with Israel and halt its aggression against it.
Both choices carry severe consequences for Hezbollah and its leader—and are of course not only theirs to make. The Islamic Republic of Iran will have more than a say in the matter.
Israel has been signaling to Hezbollah, the Iranians, the U.S., and others for months on end that it needs to return its citizens safely to their homes. This week, Israel chose different signals to carry that same message with additional weight.
Now the ball is in Hezbollah’s court.
My assessment is that despite the catastrophic possible regional consequences, the Iranians and Hezbollah may opt for war. If they do so, the destruction of Lebanon is on them, and on all those who failed to act sufficiently for 11 months to prevent this from happening. I hope to be wrong.
Jonathan Conricus is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former IDF spokesperson.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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