Israeli attacks on Hezbollah roil Middle East: 5 pressing questions

Israel has decimated Hezbollah’s leadership with strikes over the past week, while also killing hundreds of civilians and forcing nearly 1 million people from their homes.

Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was taken out in an Israeli attack Friday on Hezbollah’s central headquarters in Beirut. The United States has said justice was served to Nasrallah, a key Iranian ally in the region.

However, Washington is also urging a diplomatic solution to a conflict that is moving ever-closer to an all-out war, especially as Israel threatens a ground invasion.

Israel expanded its air strikes across Lebanon over the weekend, hitting central Beirut on Monday for the first time in months. Local officials say more than 1,000 civilians have been killed across Lebanon over the past week, including 100 on Sunday.

“There’s no safe place guaranteed in Lebanon,” Jihan Kaisi, the head of a group helping displaced people, told NBC News .

Here are five pressing questions about the conflict.

Will Israel launch a ground invasion?

Multiple outlets reported Monday that Israel has informed the United States of plans to launch a limited ground incursion into Lebanon as soon as Monday.

The Washington Post reported that Israeli forces carried out limited raids across the border Monday. Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force is believed to be hiding in tunnels close to the border.

“The Radwan force, no matter how many times we attack, you cannot destroy that from the air,” Miri Eisin, a former senior Israeli military intelligence officer, told the Post. “To be able to get to that subterranean arena, which is 2-3 kilometers from Israel’s border, you have to go in.”

U.S. officials say they have been told that Israel will not conduct a full-scale invasion.

“They have at this time told us that those are limited operations focused on Hezbollah infrastructure near the border, but we’re in continuous conversations with them about it,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in Monday’s briefing.

Israel has repeatedly threatened to send troops into Lebanon to push back the threat of attacks on northern Israel, with its top commander telling troops this week and last week to prepare for a ground invasion.

“The goal is very clear — to safely return the residents of the north,” Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi told troops Wednesday. “To achieve that, we are preparing the process of a maneuver, which means your military boots, your maneuvering boots, will enter enemy territory, enter villages that Hezbollah has prepared as large military outposts.”

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant indicated to troops on Monday that a ground invasion was imminent.

“The elimination of Nasrallah is a very important step, but it is not the final one,” Gallant said while visiting troops near Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. “We will employ all the capabilities at our disposal, and if someone on the other side did not understand what those capabilities entail, we mean all capabilities, and you are part of this effort.”

A ground war could be extremely costly.

Israel would have to commit a significant number of troops in a fight that would likely be worse than a 2006 war with Hezbollah, which lasted for 34 days and left both sides with significant losses and few victories.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week that a ground war would not help Israel achieve its goal in the north, pressing for a diplomatic solution instead.

“If there were to be a full-scale war, that wouldn’t solve the problem. It wouldn’t get people back to their homes,” Blinken told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

Who is leading Hezbollah now?

On the other side of the conflict, Hezbollah is reeling from the death of its charismatic leader, but also the loss of five other commanders in the past 10 days, and upward of 20 in recent months.

In his first public speech since the attack in Beirut Friday, the group’s new acting head Naim Qassem pledged to keep fighting Israel and said the Lebanese militant group was ready for any ground invasion.

“We will face any possibility, and we are ready if the Israelis decide to enter by land and the resistance forces are ready for a ground engagement,” he said in a televised address.

Qassem has served as deputy secretary general of Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, since 1991. He reportedly took part in meetings that led to the formation of Hezbollah in 1982 as a proxy of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

He has been a leading face of the group internationally, speaking with foreign media for interviews. In Lebanon, he’s worked as the coordinator of parliamentary election campaigns.

Qassem said in his Monday speech that a permanent replacement for Nasrallah would be appointed as soon as possible, adding that the group’s military capacity was not impacted by the deaths within its top ranks.

How does Iran respond?

Israel’s hits on Hezbollah, a main proxy for Iran, has dealt a significant blow to Tehran.

The Israeli strikes in Lebanon, coupled with the July assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, appears to have Iran spooked, with the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei going into hiding, Reuters reported Saturday .

Iran still has not made any big retaliatory moves over Haniyeh, and sources told Reuters that Iran reached out to Hezbollah and its other proxy groups in the region to decide what response to take to Nasrallah’s killing. In addition to backing Hezbollah and Hamas, Iran also arms the Houthis in Yemen and numerous militias in Syria and Iraq.

“The fate of this region will be determined by the forces of resistance, with Hezbollah at the forefront,” Khamenei said in a Saturday statement.

In a separate statement he declared: “The blood of the martyr shall not go unavenged.”

One option for revenge would be for Iran to press its proxies to increase attacks on Israel and U.S. troops and interests in the Middle East.

Stepped up attacks on U.S. bases seem likely given that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has already partly blamed Washington for Nasrallah’s killing, as the U.S. has been providing Israel weapons.

“The Americans cannot deny their complicity,” he said in a statement aired on state media.

Where do cease-fire talks stand?

While the U.S. is urging diplomacy between Israel and Hezbollah, neither side is signaling any inclination toward peace or compromise.

President Biden’s efforts to steer Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu away from military escalation, in both Gaza and Lebanon, have shown few signs of success.

Last week, hours after the U.S. announced “an important breakthrough” to pause fighting for 21 days, Netanyahu rejected the idea.

Biden has largely been unwilling to use U.S. leverage to change Israel’s behavior, with the U.S. last week approving another $8 billion in weapons to its ally.

Netanyahu says he will do whatever is necessary to allow Israelis to return to the country’s north, from which they fled when Hezbollah began firing into Israel in response to its invasion of Gaza a year ago.

Israel reportedly dismissed a “breakthrough” in U.S.-brokered talks with Hezbollah last week.

“My policy, our policy, is clear: We continue to hit Hezbollah with all our might. We will not stop until we achieve all our goals,” Netanyahu told reporters as he arrived in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly.

Biden said Sunday that he planned to speak directly with Netanyahu soon.

How will it impact the US election?

The fears of a bigger war in the Middle East are refocusing attention on one of Vice President Harris’s political liabilities in terms of foreign policy.

Biden faced a significant protest vote in Democratic primaries over his support for Israel’s war on Gaza, and Israel’s continued aggression in the region is likely to stoke continued anger toward the administration, especially with a cease-fire elusive in Gaza too.

Michigan has the largest Lebanese population in the country and is part of the “blue wall” seen as crucial to Harris’s path to the White House.

Harris said the death of Nasrallah delivered a “measure of justice” to his victims, but she said diplomacy was the best path to stability in the region.

“I have an unwavering commitment to the security of Israel. I will always support Israel’s right to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis,” she said.

While former President Trump has largely avoided commenting on the situation in Lebanon, Republicans more broadly have criticized the Biden administration for pushing for a cease-fire, arguing the U.S. should back Netanyahu’s hard-line approach to Hezbollah.

Trump has repeatedly said that the wars in Ukraine and Gaza would not have happened under his watch, though he has offered scant plans to bring them to an end if he returns to the Oval Office.

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