Where Will Israel’s Multifront War End?

Israel’s assassination last week of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah marked a transformative moment for the Middle East. Under Nasrallah, Hezbollah became Iran’s closest ally and critical deterrent force, the central pillar of Tehran’s “axis of resistance.” His death was a severe and shocking blow not only to Hezbollah but to the alignment of Iranian-backed forces across the region. For Israel, the killing was a logical, if bold, step up its ladder of escalation. Yesterday, it took the next step—a ground invasion into Lebanon that unleashed a full-scale assault on Hezbollah—all while facing new direct retaliation from Iran, with nearly 200 ballistic missiles launched at Israel this week.

Since the brutal Hamas attack on October 7 nearly a year ago, Israel has consistently demonstrated a willingness to take greater risks in its fight against Hamas’s regional backers, including Iran and Hezbollah. Over the last year, Israel has targeted leaders in both Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), systematically killing hundreds of top operatives. It steadily degraded Hezbollah and Iran, judging that although both would maintain low-level conflict, neither wanted a full-scale war with Israel. Domestic dynamics encouraged Israel’s operations, too. Many Israelis feel that a return to the pre–October 7 status quo would be unacceptable. A key lesson from the attacks was that Israel could no longer afford merely to manage and contain the threats on its borders. It would need decisive military wins—regardless of the costs.

Israeli leaders thus became highly motivated to restore the country’s shattered deterrence and the aura of invincibility punctured by Hamas’s attack. Unable to definitively defeat Hamas in Gaza, Israel may see more opportunity in the fight against Hezbollah and Iran. Its military has spent years preparing for a fight on the northern front and, as recent Israeli attacks in Iran and Lebanon have demonstrated, its intelligence services have extensively penetrated both Iranian and Hezbollah networks.

In the current escalatory environment, U.S. and international efforts to encourage a diplomatic settlement to the war in Lebanon or Gaza are unlikely to succeed, even as calls for a cease-fire have become still more urgent in the face of the new direct confrontation between Israel and Iran. But at the moment Israel is not seeking a diplomatic off-ramp; it is looking for total victory. Adding to the strategic calculations are political considerations that link Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political survival to continued wars that seem only to boost his popularity and the stability of his governing coaltion.

Nasrallah was a deadly enemy, and Israelis—and many others in the region—rejoiced in his demise. Many Israelis support taking on a weakened Hezbollah in Lebanon, and even opposition leaders favor the Israeli ground operations that are currently underway. But once the exuberance fades—which may occur more quickly than anticipated, as Iranian and Hezbollah attacks responding to Nasrallah’s death have forced Israelis across the country into shelters—they may start asking their leaders what victory really means. If victory is escalation and tactical military successes against Hezbollah and Iran, then Israel has indeed succeeded. But this is an ephemeral victory. It carries unpredictable costs and outcomes, and it appears uncoupled from any serious momentum toward peace with the Palestinians—Israel’s most serious existential challenge.

After a year of war, there is a real possibility of no better “day after” in Gaza or the rest of the region. Talk in Washington of capitalizing on Nasrallah’s death and Iran’s weakness to “reshape” the Middle East harks back to the misguided beliefs that drove the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 to disastrous effect. Continued military conflict harms the region, and it harms U.S. interests. Without a change in the current Israeli government, Israel and its neighbors could be moving toward a very different day after: Israeli reoccupation of Gaza and potentially even of southern Lebanon, as well as reinforced control over, if not annexation of, the West Bank. This is a recipe not for victory but for perpetual war.

WAR WAS IN THE MAKING

The risks that the Gaza war could ignite a wider regional conflict, including direct confrontation between Israel and Iran, were apparent from the outset. Hezbollah quickly entered the fray, although perhaps not to the extent Hamas might have wanted. In a show of solidarity, Hezbollah began launching cross-border attacks on northern Israel in the first week of war, and Israel responded with increasingly expansive counterattacks. The uptick in violence led to the displacement of tens of thousands of Israeli and Lebanese civilians on both sides of the border.

Many clung to the illusion that the conflict on the northern front could be contained because no party wanted a full-scale war. Hezbollah largely limited its attacks to targets close to the border, which were within the accepted rules of engagement that the group had formed with Israel after their last war, in 2006. But as the fighting in Gaza dragged on, both Israel and Hezbollah crossed redlines with attacks that reached deeper into Israeli and Lebanese territory and endangered civilians. The casualty count rose, but at a level that suggested the conflict was still containable.

Nevertheless, there was always the risk that full-scale war could erupt in one of two ways. First was the possibility of miscalculation—that an attack by one party would lead to unanticipated casualties and force the other side into an unwanted war. This risk was evident with Israel’s attack in early April on an Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus that killed top Iranian commanders. Israel acknowledged that it had miscalculated, believing the attack would not provoke an Iranian response. But provoke it did; Iran launched its first-ever direct missile attack on Israel. A U.S.-led coalition was able to repel the strike and quickly contain it, but the episode demonstrated how miscalculation can quickly escalate, and also set the stage for the Iranian-Israeli military conflict that is playing out again today.

The other potential path toward full-scale war was a change in strategic calculus—that one of the powers involved would see greater value in waging a war than in avoiding one. This is the mindset that led Israel to scale up its attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Although Iran and Hezbollah appeared to believe that a low-grade conflict with Israel was manageable as long as Israel was preoccupied in Gaza, Israel’s calculus had already shifted as its attention increasingly turned north during the summer.

When it comes to the north, there is far more consensus in Israel’s defense establishment and across its political spectrum than there is in the debate over how to deal with Gaza and the remaining hostages. After the Hamas attacks, relying on Israeli missile defenses to protect the country from Hezbollah’s massive arsenal no longer seemed sufficient, nor would it be enough to allow displaced Israelis to return home. Israel could not tolerate an active Hezbollah on its border, and it rejected the idea that diplomatic deals proposed by the Americans or the French would alone deter future attacks and force Hezbollah to sufficiently retreat. Moreover, Israel assessed that Hezbollah—and Iran, for that matter—was reluctant to go too far in its military conflict with Israel. Thus, Israel calculated that it could benefit from ambushing both adversaries without facing significant retaliation, an assessment that now appears to have been overly ambitious. Nor did Israel expect much pushback from its allies, given that the United States had imposed few if any constraints on Israeli military activity since October 7. That expectation seems to have held: the United States has continued its full military support of Israel as it expands its campaign into Lebanon and faces new attacks from Iran.

Before Iran’s latest missile attack, Israel indicated that it planned only to carry out a limited military operation into Lebanon and not to occupy southern Lebanon again. But there are no guarantees the war will remain limited or short, based on the history of wars between the two countries and given the likely resistance Israel will face from Hezbollah, even in its diminished state, now that it has invaded Lebanese territory. With direct Iranian-Israeli confrontation as the backdrop, the Lebanese war front could intensify further.

Israel may not have intended its mid-September explosion of pagers and walkie-talkies distributed by Hezbollah as the first salvo of a second war. But one way or another, Israel was determined to change the equation with Hezbollah. The question now is how far Israel plans to go. If Gaza is any indication, Lebanon and its people may be facing grueling weeks ahead; one million Lebanese people have already been displaced in a country of just over five million.

THE NEXT TARGET?

Iran faced a dilemma in how to respond to Nasrallah’s death and Israel’s pummeling of Hezbollah. Its decision to forgo an immediate response to the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, in late July, suggested a degree of caution and continued interest in avoiding a wider regional war. For all their enmity toward Israel, Iranian leaders value their own survival above all and understand that a direct war with Israel—one that could involve the United States—might threaten it. Iran and Israel have been engaged for more than a decade in a so-called shadow war marked by assassinations, sabotage, and multiple Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure. The only time Iran had attacked Israel openly and directly was last April in what proved to be an unsuccessful attempt to restore Iranian deterrence as the war in Gaza expanded.

But Israel’s high-profile attacks over the past two months, from the killing of Haniyeh to the pager attacks and the assassination of Nasrallah, increased pressure within Iran to respond more forcefully to repair its image among its axis partners and to end Israel’s winning streak over the past several weeks, which included Israeli strikes against the Houthis in Yemen. Tehran’s leaders might also have assessed that, no matter how they responded, Israel was prepared to attack Iran directly, emboldened by the weakened state of Hezbollah, which had been Iran’s most lethal deterrent against Israel. Indeed, Netanyahu issued a video statement to the Iranian people (in English) on September 30, in which he categorically stated, “There is nowhere in the Middle East Israel cannot reach.”

Israel is not seeking a diplomatic off-ramp; it is looking for total victory.

Consequently, despite the risks, and no doubt after significant internal debate, Tehran acted on its vow to retaliate, launching missiles at Israel for the second time on October 1. It gave less advanced notice than in April, and its targets included military facilities in heavily populated parts of Israel. As before, Israel’s missile defense system—with U.S. military assistance—successfully repelled the attack, limiting the damage and ensuring no Israeli casualties. Netanyahu declared Iran “would pay” for the attack, and U.S. officials promised significant consequences for Iran. Given the direct nature of Iran’s strike and Israel’s expanding target list, Israeli retaliation is nearly certain. What is less certain is whether this new round of direct Iranian-Israeli confrontation will end as quickly as the April exchange.

With Iran’s proxy axis degraded, Israel might decide to seize the opportunity to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities or increase the targeting of IRGC commanders, or even Iranian political leaders. There are also logical reasons why Israel may limit its response to another calibrated and targeted strike on Iran, as it did in April, allowing both sides to declare victory and walk back from the brink. U.S. resistance to expanding the war, too, is likely to be significant. Iranian-aligned militia forces in Iraq have already threatened to target U.S. personnel if the United States intervenes, and the Biden administration is certainly not seeking a direct war with Iran. Israel may in any case prefer to revert to its shadow-war tactics, taking advantage of Iran’s weakened state. Still, the current escalatory climate and the often unpredictable outcomes of war mean that nothing can be ruled out.

Indeed, some analysts speculate that Iran could respond to the degradation of its alliance network and compensate for its own conventional military weakness by moving toward weaponization of its nuclear program. But such a drastic step would likely be detected and would only increase the risk of more severe and extensive Israeli attacks on the country.

A DARKENING DAY AFTER

Israel has been willing to go to great lengths to weaken Hezbollah and Iran, and it has already made significant strides on those fronts. But the war in Gaza and increased militarization in the West Bank raises the question of how far Israel is prepared to go in the Palestinian territories. The past year suggests that Netanyahu’s government is aiming for nothing less than the creation of a new reality on all of Israel’s borders.

Policymakers and analysts have been planning for the “day after” since the war began. They hoped that opportunity could emerge from tragedy. Regional and international actors might help the Israelis and the Palestinians finally come to terms and rebuild the West Bank and Gaza after years of neglect. The enormity of the suffering and loss could be a cruel but effective reminder that this conflict could not be ignored, that it would wreak havoc not only on Israelis and Palestinians but also across the entire region, in ways that would touch every corner of the world. It would prove, they hoped, that the only acceptable outcome would be to find a viable political solution that could break the endless cycles of violence.

Tragically, if not predictably, the vision of a peaceful and prosperous day after is slipping ever farther away. The picture instead is one of continued fighting, climbing death tolls, catastrophic physical destruction, mass displacement, and dire humanitarian conditions. Meanwhile, the remaining Israeli hostages who have not been murdered by Hamas continue to languish in the tunnels beneath Gaza.

Beyond these current calamities lies a longer-term consequence that was by no means inevitable. The choices that Netanyahu and his extremist governing coalition are making now could unravel decades of efforts by previous Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, and Ariel Sharon to disengage Israel from Palestinian land. In Gaza, Israeli forces remain deeply entrenched, maintaining control in the Philadelphi corridor on the border with Egypt and preparing for a long-term military presence. In the West Bank, Israeli settlement expansion continues, protected by the Israel Defense Forces and emboldened by Israeli ministers whose ambition is to control the entire territory. IDF incursions into Palestinian cities, such as massive raids in Jenin and Tulkarm, have increased in recent months as control by the Palestinian Authority weakens. An Israeli ground movement into Lebanon has begun, and Israeli leaders and analysts have been discussing the possibility of reinstating a buffer zone in southern Lebanon, similar to the one Israel established after its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and maintained until Israel’s unilateral withdrawal in 2000.

If these operations continue, Israel could, by design or by default, end up reoccupying parts or all of Gaza, the West Bank, and even southern Lebanon. Needless to say, this is a far darker day after than many envisioned. But it is a real possibility with potentially dire repercussions. Reoccupations would threaten Israel’s longer-term security, quash Palestinian aspirations for independence and dignity, and destabilize the entire region.

FORK IN THE ROAD

Israel’s degradation of Hezbollah will deepen an already entrenched belief among many Israeli leaders and people that only military force can make them safe. And after the trauma of October 7 and with the rise of Israel’s religious ethnonationalist leaders, Israelis may further conclude that seizing land is the best way to secure their country. The formula driving Israeli diplomacy since Israel’s treaty with Egypt in 1979—territory for peace—appears discredited. Back then, Israel agreed to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for normalized bilateral relations. But with the October 7 attack that came from Gaza, which Israel had also previously occupied, controlling land has once again seemed to gain greater currency as a defense strategy. High-tech fences were not enough to keep Israelis out of harm’s way. Missile defense and civilian defense infrastructure limit the damage an adversary can inflict, but without taking the fight to the enemy and reoccupying land, some of Israel’s leaders argue today, Israel will not be secure.

Such an endgame appears more likely by the day. But it cannot bring the long-term security Israel seeks. Instead, it would leave Israel locked in a cycle of war and global isolation, dragging the United States with it. Israel needs a leader who will question the current definition of victory, acknowledging that true victory is not possible without peace. One does not have to believe in a “new Middle East” where Israel is fully accepted, trading and engaging with its neighbors, to appreciate that there is a different, realistic path forward. That path is not one of perpetual occupation and perpetual war. But for now, the latter is the path Israel is taking.

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