Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO and founder of Gulf State Analytics, a Washington-based geopolitical risk consultancy.
The war of attrition between Hezbollah and Israel along the Israel-Lebanon border risks escalating into a full-on conflict, amid dueling threats and rhetoric from Hezbollah's leaders and Israeli officials. After Hezbollah released footage from a surveillance drone that recently flew directly over Haifa, filming sensitive sites and civilian neighborhoods, the Israeli military announced it had approved a plan for a possible invasion of Lebanon. "We are very close to the moment of decision to change the rules against Hezbollah and Lebanon," Israel's foreign minister declared earlier this week, signaling what he called an "all-out war." Meanwhile, in a recent televised address in Beirut, Hezbollah's secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, warned Israel that "no place in the country is safe from our rockets."
An Israeli invasion of Lebanon to fight Hezbollah could raise tensions in the Middle East to a whole new level and quickly become a much wider regional conflict than the Gaza war has been since October. What Israel would realistically hope to achieve from a full-scale war against Hezbollah is unclear, especially considering that Israel has not achieved its maximalist aim of "total victory" over Hamas in Gaza. Hezbollah is far better armed and equipped than Hamas, and Lebanon provides Hezbollah with strategic depth, which Hamas does not have in blockaded Gaza. To say nothing about Hezbollah's military strength alone, especially its arsenal of missiles and drones, various groups in the Iran-led "axis of resistance" across the region could enter Lebanon via Syria to fight alongside Hezbollah if such a war broke out. A war this time would likely be much more devastating than the 33-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006.
For Netanyahu, domestic Israeli politics could be shaping his thinking as much as anything else, including strategy from the Israeli military. His government has extremists in high-ranking roles, such as ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who advocate for reestablishing Israeli settlements in Gaza and have been saber-rattling against Hezbollah, calling for an invasion and "Israeli military takeover" of southern Lebanon. A tiny new group of fanatical Israeli settlers calling itself the "South Lebanon Settler Movement" believes Israel should annex and reoccupy southern Lebanon under the banner of "Greater Israel." The group held its founding conference earlier this month and will likely be courting the likes of Ben Gvir and Smotrich.
President Joe Biden's envoy Amos Hochstein has been shuttling between Beirut and Jerusalem, calling for an "urgent" de-escalation. This is setting up to be another diplomatic test for the Biden administration that it could fail. Biden's "ironclad" support for Israel throughout the war in Gaza has undercut the White House's leverage with Netanyahu and any talk of "red lines," especially given what unfolded recently in Rafah.
A war this time would likely be much more devastating than the 33-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006.
- Giorgio Cafiero
Imposing red lines on Israel is "very difficult for this administration to do, not least because Israel seems to be manipulating Washington, putting the U.S. in front of fait accompli situations rather than coordinating their strategies with their major financial supporter," Marina Calculli, a research fellow at Columbia University and an expert on Hezbollah, told Democracy in Exile.
This is not to say, however, that the Biden administration wants Israel to start such a war with Hezbollah, which could prove disastrous for U.S. interests. "It has become clear that Hezbollah has acquired enough military capabilities, technological prowess and precision weaponry to pose a strategic threat to Israel, and to the U.S.'s security stratagems in the region, more generally," said Sima Ghaddar, a policy analyst and doctoral candidate at UCLA, in an interview with Democracy in Exile.
The economic cost of a major war between Israel and Hezbollah would be enormous for the U.S. "Biden has already invested over $25 billion to support Israel's genocidal war on Gaza," Calculli said. "If Israel decides to invade Lebanon, it won't be a quick military campaign." Biden would be faced with having to sell American voters on billions more in U.S. military aid going to Israel to fight another war in Lebanon, just months before November's pivotal presidential election.
Beyond the economics of such a war, the Biden administration also has concerns about how such a conflict in Lebanon could spread to other parts of the Middle East, risking a regional war involving Iran. The White House does not want to see the U.S. pulled into a quagmire just months before Biden's presumed electoral rematch with Donald Trump, especially at a time when the Biden administration wants U.S. foreign policy to focus more on great-power competition with China and Russia.
Hezbollah has been clear that their strikes into northern Israel will cease the moment Israel adheres to a lasting cease-fire in Gaza. The tit-for-tat attacks have emptied much of northern Israel of its residents, creating what journalist Rania Abu Zeid described as a "buffer zone" that, for the first time, is in Israeli, not Arab, territory.
As Mairav Zonszein of International Crisis Group argued recently, "A Gaza cease-fire would almost certainly bring quiet to the north [of Israel], allow much needed respite for the military, pave the way for residents to return to their homes and open up the potential for diplomatic understandings between Israel and Lebanon." But other experts warn that a cease-fire in Gaza may now not be enough to avert a war in Lebanon, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah having possibly taken on a life of their own.
This is setting up to be another diplomatic test for the Biden administration that it could fail.
- Giorgio Cafiero
"As it currently stands, Israel very likely needs a substantial and verifiable withdrawal by Hezbollah from the border in order to avert internal pressure towards a far wider assault," Nicholas Noe, the Beirut-based director of and the editor of the book Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, told Democracy in Exile. "But it is also very unlikely that any combination of domestic concessions which the U.S. might want to, or is able to, bestow on Hezbollah"—a friendly Lebanese president, a demarcation of the border in Lebanon's favor, reconstruction aid—"can bring this about, given the heavy military, historical, political and ideological barriers."
Biden's special envoy, Hochstein, seems to think that his working relationship with Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri is good enough for him to be able to "lubricate some kind of a pullback deal by Hezbollah after a cease-fire," Noe said. But, he added, "the reality is that Berri simply doesn't have the pull on this core interest issue with Hezbollah."
Avoiding an "all-out war" in Lebanon could ultimately depend on whether "Israeli leaders inwardly recognize the changed balance of power and thus decrease their direct demands vis-à-vis Hezbollah, accepting smaller but nevertheless important and 'doable' measures which can over time help to reduce Hezbollah's ability and desire to project its military power," Noe said.
These measures, Noe suggested, could possibly include a stronger presence of the Lebanese Army at the border with Israel, more room for U.N. forces to maneuver in southern Lebanon, and demarcating non-controversial parts of the Lebanese-Israel border. As he noted, however, the prospect of the Israeli government agreeing to such measures is low. He doubted that Israeli leaders "have the desire or ability to follow such a path, while it seems unlikely that the Biden administration would push the Israelis in this direction, much less apply the known pressures towards a cease-fire."
For now, the Biden administration is pursuing a strategy aimed at protecting northern Israel's security by pushing for some form of a buffer zone between Lebanon and Israel, in southern Lebanon, rather than genuine peace. Ghaddar says that this path of negotiation risks failing, given Hezbollah's strength and position in Lebanon. "From past experience with the Israelis, Hezbollah is very unlikely to agree to retracting from the southern border," which she noted is already disputed, "only to help create a security boundary for the Israelis." She referred to a quote from Berri back in February: "'It's easier to relocate the Litani River further south than to displace Hezbollah northward.'"
