Another Hezbollah-Israel War Could Spark Regional Conflagration, Expert Says

As Israel appears poised to launch a ground operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, its main enemy to the north, the Iran-backed Hezbollah, may open up another front, sparking a war that could impact the entire region.

Nicholas Blanford, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of the 2011 book Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah’s Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel, believes Hezbollah and Israel are at the closest point to war since they last fought a destructive month-long conflict in 2006.

Furthermore, Blanford told me the region faces “By far the most dangerous moment in my 30 years of covering the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

Like Hamas, Hezbollah is armed and financed by Iran. The group is Tehran’s most powerful and well-funded proxy militia in the Middle East.

Hamas and Hezbollah, along with several factions of the large Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) paramilitary in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen, are members of Iran’s self-styled “Axis of Resistance” against Israel and the United States.

Iran is widely suspected of having played a significant role in helping Hamas prepare for its devastating Oct. 7 attack and infiltration of Israel, which killed 1,300 Israelis. However, Washington says it has not yet found a smoking gun.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah reportedly held a virtual meeting in March with his other militia allies and warned them to prepare for war with Israel, including a ground invasion. It’s unclear if that meeting was about the Oct. 7 attack specifically. They may well have discussed the prospect of another Hezbollah-Israel conflict in detail.

With the help of Tehran, Hezbollah has amassed a large and sophisticated arsenal of well over 100,000 rockets and missiles, a number of which are precision-guided and could devastate Israel’s infrastructure.

The ground war Nasrallah discussed with his militia allies could have been a potential Hezbollah ground war against Israel. After all, Hezbollah has made no secret of its intention to seize the Galilee region. As recently as this August, a senior Hezbollah commander declared the next war will take place in Galilee, “and if the enemy and its tanks enter Lebanon, they will not be able to leave.”

Aware of the threat, Israel sent reinforcements to its volatile border with Lebanon shortly after the Oct. 7 attack and has engaged in tit-for-tat cross-border fire with Hezbollah.

The United States has deployed the Gerald R. Ford carrier task force in the Eastern Mediterranean and sent fighter jets to Middle East bases in a clear warning against Hezbollah and Iran intervening in the present Gaza conflict. President Joe Biden, on Oct. 11, confirmed the deployments aimed to deter Iran, saying he “made it clear to the Iranians: Be careful.”

Hezbollah’s fellow Iran-backed militia allies, the PMF and the Houthis, have threatened to attack American interests in the region if the United States intervenes militarily in Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas.

Since Israel has already sent reinforcements to its northern frontiers and put the military on high alert following the Oct. 7 attack, Hezbollah will not likely have the element of surprise if it launches a ground incursion into Galilee or elsewhere in Northern Israel anytime soon. But even that fact might not dissuade it from doing so.

“I would expect Hezbollah to cross the border even without the element of surprise,” Blanford told me. “The Lebanon-Israel border crosses complex terrain that can be used to Hezbollah’s advantage.”

Furthermore, Blanford pointed out Hezbollah doesn’t even need to cross into Israel from Lebanon since there are also parts of the Syria-Israel border where it has forces and could conceivably use for infiltrating and attacking Israel.

“I think one tactic that is probably off the cards now is the seizure of border settlements where the population is held hostage,” he said. “It seems most of the Israeli border communities have been evacuated.”

Blanford also doubts the U.S. would get “directly involved” in Israeli attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon, anticipating Washington will offer intelligence and munition resupplies to support any Israeli campaign.

“We might see direct U.S. involvement at striking at regime targets in Syria and possibly Iran-related targets in Syria as well,” he said.

The U.S. has attacked Iran-backed militias in Syria in the past, including earlier this year, when those forces fired on U.S. troops in northeast Syria, where they support a Kurdish-led fighting force against the Islamic State (ISIS).

If a full-scale war breaks out on Israel’s northern border — in which Israel strikes targets across Lebanon and sends in ground forces and Hezbollah crosses the frontier and fires missiles at Israeli military and infrastructure targets — that could ignite a broader regional conflict.

“An attack on Hezbollah by Israel will ignite the other fronts,” Blanford said.

These fronts could include Iraq and Yemen, where Iran-backed militias have amassed substantive drone and missile arsenals, including long-range munitions that could conceivably target Israel and or U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf.

“It will change the region,” Blanford added.