Snap Insight: Israel and Hezbollah exchange heavy fire, but all eyes are on Iran

BIRMINGHAM: The early hours of Sunday (Aug 25) saw one of the biggest clashes between Hezbollah and Israel since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Reactions in the coming hours and days will determine whether the long-feared full-scale escalation towards a regional war is now under way.
The Iranian-backed, Lebanon-based militia group launched a barrage of more than 320 Katyusha rockets which it claims hit 11 military targets in Israel. Just prior to that, the Israeli military carried out strikes against alleged Hezbollah missile launch sites in southern Lebanon, which it said was to pre-empt a more deadly attack.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already vowed a tough response. The pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah on Sunday morning certainly indicates that, for now, Israel has both the intelligence and military capabilities to rein in its adversaries in the region.
The timing of the Hezbollah strikes – especially the thwarted larger missile attacks – is telling.
It comes after yet another visit by United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken – his ninth since the start of the Gaza war – to the region that ended without any breakthrough on a ceasefire deal. While negotiations on a ceasefire, mediated by the US, Egypt and Qatar, have resumed in Cairo, an agreement remains elusive.
There is also an ongoing visit by Air Force General CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and top military official in the US, which indicates both the priority that Washington attaches to the crisis, as well as the dimming prospects that a full-scale regional war can be averted.
US expectations that it would unavoidably be drawn into such a confrontation are also clear from the increased deployment of American forces in the region.
All this points in the direction of further escalation, and Hezbollah’s attacks may well have been only the opening salvo in what is likely to turn at least into another round of tit-for-tat clashes along Israel’s northern border.
Hezbollah’s ominous statement that Sunday’s strike had completed “the first phase” of its response to the assassination of senior commander Fuad Shukr and that the full response would take “some time” certainly indicates the inclination for a drawn-out campaign of retaliation.
Yet, it will be the Iranian response that will be critical in deciding whether this remains a localised confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah or escalates into a regional war.
Iran promised retaliation following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month, but has yet to carry out its threat. With the Gaza ceasefire negotiations in a deadlock and the humanitarian catastrophe rapidly worsening, Iran has few incentives to delay retaliatory action.
But Tehran does not have any good options left to execute its threatened response – either via proxies or on its own.
Among its once highly capable proxy forces, Palestinian militant group Hamas has been decimated after months of the war in Gaza. The threat of Yemen’s Houthi rebels remains mostly confined to shipping lanes in the Red Sea. And Israel’s pre-emptive strike on Hezbollah this morning is another demonstration of the limited utility of Iranian proxy warfare.
The Iranian strikes on Israel in April – of more than 300 drones and missiles but with ultimately little damage– demonstrated capability but not effect. Any similar attack this time is unlikely to deal a devastating blow to Israel and will almost certainly trigger an Israeli military response, and possibly an American one.
The question now is whether the combined Israeli and US military capabilities in the region will be a sufficient deterrent to Iran and its proxies, or whether their combined military might will merely serve as an assurance to Israel that the US will come to its defence in any further escalation.
If it is the former, we may yet avoid an all-out war in the Middle East. If it is the latter, further recklessness on all sides is likely to lead the region further into the abyss.
Stefan Wolff is Professor of International Security at the University of Birmingham and Head of the Department of Political Science and International Studies.