Passengers wait after their flights were delayed or canceled at Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut, Lebanon, on Monday. Several countries, including the United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Kuwait and Italy have urged their citizens to leave Lebanon due to heightened tensions in the region. Photo by Wael Hamzeh/EPA-EFE
Iran and its most powerful military arm, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, cannot but avenge last week double assassinations by Israel of Hamas leader in Tehran and Hezbollah top commander in Beirut.
However, they face the high risk of falling into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trap of dragging them and the United States into a full-scale war, analysts said. Advertisement
Ten months into the Gaza war, such a dreadful confrontation that no one wants except Netanyahu, is more likely today than ever, the analysts said.
The assassinations of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday morning and hours earlier of Fouad Shukr, Hezbollah senior military commander and founding member of the Iran-backed group, have changed the dynamics that have been in place since the outbreak of the Gaza war Oct. 7. Advertisement
So far, Iran has been playing a restraining role on Hezbollah and its other allied militias in the region to contain any wide-scale escalation.
Even the suspected Israeli strike on its consulate in Damascus that killed Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, among other Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders April 1, generated a direct but very calculated retaliation by Tehran.
The attack, however, led to practically no serious damage, with most drones and missiles fired into Israel brought down. Even the timing of such a retaliation was known in advance.
It is not the case this time, at least for now.
Iran needs to respond directly and forcibly at least for Haniyeh’s July 31 killing that occurred hours after the Hamas political chief attended the new Iranian President’s swearing-in ceremony.
It is Iran’s pride and dignity that are at stake this time, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said during a speech Thursday.
All parties are gearing for the expected confrontations: Iran and its allies coordinating their attack plans; U.S. warships moving close to the Lebanese coast, foreigners in Lebanon asked to leave; and Israel getting ready for war with Iran. Advertisement
Brig. Gen. Hisham Jaber, a Lebanese military expert and former army general, said Iran’s response “is inevitable” and should take place within few days.
“They [the Iranians] were late [responding] because they are studying a well-prepared and wise retaliation that would not lead to an overall war,” Jaber told UPI. “Maybe they are also playing a psychological war and creating panic among Israelis. But in my opinion, they should not take longer time.”
Different scenarios are circulating, with drones and missiles fired by Iran and its proxies on Israel simultaneously or consecutively for several days. But Tehran might have other plans that would “exceed all expectations and scenarios,” according to Jaber.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said Monday that his country “seeks to establish stability” in the region, but it must punish Israel and create “deterrence against the adventurism of the Zionist regime.”
Hezbollah, on its part, is also preparing to avenge not only the killing of its senior military commander Fuad Shukr, who was targeted while meeting an Iranian official in a building in the party’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs, but also the three women and two children who also were killed and dozens of others injured. Advertisement
Shukr, who is also Nasrallah’s adviser, was accused by Israel of being responsible for the July 27 attack on Majdal Shams in Syria’s occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 children and young adults playing football.
Hezbollah has denied responsibility, and its leader accused Israel of having crossed “the red lines” by killing Shukr, pledging a “real, studied” response to the assassination.
Nasrallah, who was speaking to a large crowd of his supporters through a giant screen during Shukr’s funerals Aug. 1, also warned that the war with Israel has “entered a new phase.”
“It is clear that Nasrallah is trying to be creative in keeping his popular base mobilized in light of the setbacks,” Riad Kahwaji, who heads the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai, told UPI.
The assassination of Shukr, who is equal to a chief of staff in the army, is “another clear indication of the intelligence breach by the Mossad within the ranks of the party… with spies on the ground …. which enabled this strike to be successful,” Kahwaji said.
The daily cross-border engagements between Israel and Hezbollah resumed after a short lull following Shukr’s killing, while Hezbollah is preparing for a “bigger retaliation… a wide scale coordinated strike with the Iranians and others of the so-called axis of resistance to avenge Shukr and Haniyeh,” he said. Advertisement
However, Hezbollah is trying to restrain the Iran-backed Iraqi militias — the Popular Mobilization Forces — so that Israel does not take their actions as a “pretext” for a widescale war, according to Jaber.
The fact is that Netanyahu has cornered all the parties involved, including the United States, which prepares to defend Israel if it is attacked while trying to avoid an expanded war in the region.
“Netanyahu is clearly trying to magnify, instigate and incite some sort of an Iranian response that ignites a bigger conflict, possibly dragging the Americans into it,” Kahwaji said.
Would Washington be able to control Israel and contain such a dangerous escalation?
“No one wants the war, not Hezbollah and Iran, nor the U.S. and Europe, because the region will become a stage for military operations only God knows how they would end,” Jaber said.
With Netanyahu accused of caring only about his political future and staying in power to avoid facing trial for security lapses leading to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, concerns are increasing about how he would retaliate to Iran’s planned revenge attacks.
Netanyahu “bragged” about killing Haniyeh and Shukr, “thinking that he has scored a victory within 10 hours compared to 10 months of failure in Gaza,” Jaber said. “He could not destroy Hamas, although he broke its back, and he will not be able to destroy Hezbollah because it is a doctrine that could come back again in a bigger way.” Advertisement
Undoubtedly, Israel feels it is not yet the time to end the war and reach a settlement.
Assassinating Haniyeh, who had been involved in indirect internationally brokered talks to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, means that Netanyahu “does not want negotiations but rather to continue the war and declare victory the way he wants,” Lebanese political analyst Amin Kammourieh told UPI.
Destroying Hamas, preventing its fighters from returning to northern Gaza, controlling the Philadelphi corridor between Gaza and Egypt, keeping free access to the heart of Gaza and imposing a civil administration in the Palestinian enclave are Netanyahu’s conditions to stop the war in Gaza.
Pushing Hezbollah fighters away from the border and securing the return of some 80,000 displaced Israelis to their homes in the north are his conditions for a de-escalation on the Lebanese front and for averting an overall war that may be inevitable now or in the future.
Is there a way out? Could a wide-scale war be avoided again this time?
Jaber emphasized that only Washington can help avert such a devastating war by halting the supply of weapons to Israel that never stopped since Oct. 7.
“In that case, we would be back to the status quo and the big, inevitable war [with Hezbollah] pushed to next spring. By then, the U.S. presidential elections would have been concluded and a new president is elected,” he noted. Advertisement
