Israel targeted Hezbollah’s Nasrallah in large bombing in Beirut, officials say

Israel targeted the leader of Hezbollah in a massive airstrike against the militant group’s headquarters in Beirut on Friday, according to five people familiar with the matter. The attack dramatically escalates the conflict in Lebanon and could undermine the Biden administration’s effort to clinch a cease-fire and head-off a full-scale war.

It remains unclear whether the strike successfully killed or wounded Hassan Nasrallah, or if he was even in the building that was hit. POLITICO confirmed the attack with a U.S. official, two Israeli officials and two other people informed of the strike. All were granted anonymity to speak about sensitive internal government deliberations.

If Nasrallah were to be killed, it would mark one of the most significant Israeli blows against Hezbollah in decades; Nasrallah has led the Iran-backed militant group since 1992, after Israel assassinated its previous leader.

The latest strike could also heighten tensions between Biden and Netanyahu, two administration officials said. Time and again, the Biden administration has been surprised by Israel’s brazenness in their attacks amid sensitive cease-fire talks, including the recent detonations of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah operatives that also reportedly killed and wounded civilians.

In Washington, senior West Wing officials scrambled to assess the ramifications of the massive Israeli strike, according to the two administration officials. Both were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations.

Aides watched for responses from Hezbollah and, potentially, Iran that could indicate whether the Middle East was barreling toward the outcome that the U.S. had tried to prevent for a year: an all-out regional war.

Escalating fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in recent days has killed nearly 700 people and forced 90,000 to flee their homes in Lebanon. Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said this week that the Israeli military was preparing for a possible ground operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon, telling soldiers that their “military boots will enter enemy territory.”

U.S.-led negotiations on a cease-fire deal in Lebanon have been stuck in recent days on convincing Hezbollah to withdraw 8 to 10 kilometers from Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. Negotiators viewed this as a crucial first step to cementing a proposed 21-day cease-fire, according to two people briefed on the negotiations.

That cease-fire deal is meant to lay the groundwork for a longer-term peace deal, but the major Israeli airstrike on Friday could entirely upend those efforts. And it does not appear that there was any coordination with the U.S. over the decision to launch the strike.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Israeli Defense Minister Gallant "as the operation was already underway,” said Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokesperson. “The United States was not involved in this operation, and we had no advanced warning."

Those aren’t good signs for the effort to tamp down violence in the region.

“Whether or not Israel was successful in killing Nasrallah today, this will no doubt be a marked escalation in the conflict that will put us beyond the threshold of an all-out war,” said Firas Maksad, an expert on Lebanon at the the Middle East Institute. “It is especially ominous as Israeli ground forces prepare for an apparent invasion of south Lebanon.”

Either way, this airstrike marks the latest in a series of devastating Israeli blows against Hezbollah, which has seen many of its commanders and top operatives killed or wounded in recent weeks amid a stepped-up military offensive.

Israel confirmed its strike on Hezbollah’s military headquarters following a defiant speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the U.N. General Assembly on Friday. "As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice, and Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their home safely," he said, adding that Israel’s military would continue its attacks on Hezbollah "until we meet our objectives."

Netanyahu is cutting short his visit to the United States and returning to Israel on Friday evening, the prime minister’s office said.

Earlier in the week, the U.S. was hopeful that it was making progress for a deal to pause the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. Israel at first backed the U.S.-led plans for a 21-day ceasefire proposal hashed out on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, according to the administration officials. But almost immediately after the proposal was announced, however, Netanyahu backed away from the idea.

To Biden aides, that was just the latest example of the prime minister saying one thing to them in private and then reneging those promises in public.

Biden told confidants and allies while in New York this week that he was livid at Netanyahu and did not believe the Israeli leader wanted to reach peace with either Hamas or Hezbollah, according to the two officials. Biden was frustrated, the officials said, about how often Netanyahu had humiliated Blinken and the president himself. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)

Biden has complained in private about the prime minister for putting his political aims ahead of the will of his people in continuing to brush off U.S.-led peace negotiations to defuse the widening crisis. On Tuesday, during his own speech to the U.N., Biden appeared to allude to those gripes in public, without naming names.

“Some things are more important than staying in power,” said Biden.