Israel and Hezbollah Could Stumble Into a War Neither Wants

By Robbie Gramer and Jack Detsch

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep! Robbie and Jack here. For any of our readers who have a spare half-a-million dollars lying around, there’s a U.S. Navy autonomous drone ship up for auction. Current bidding, at the time of this writing, is at just over $500,000. We think if it’s fitted with a bar and jacuzzi, this ship could have a great second life.

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: growing fears of a new war between Israel and Hezbollah, fallout from U.S.  Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s bungled communications on his hospitalization, how Russia jumps through Western sanctions loopholes, and more.

How a War No One Wants Could Break Out

As Israel wages its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, there are prospects of a new war brewing on Israel’s northern border against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group based in Lebanon. The United States and other Western powers are scrambling to try to prevent it, but diplomatic efforts to keep the war in Gaza from igniting conflicts in Lebanon and elsewhere in the region have already failed in some respects.

Militant groups that act as proxies for Iran—Israel and the United States’ arch regional rival—have ramped up attacks as Israel continues its military campaign in Gaza, from Houthi rebels in Yemen targeting commercial maritime traffic in the Red Sea to salvos of missiles targeting U.S. military bases in Iraq and Syria.

A failure to contain Israel-Hezbollah tensions could be much deadlier, however.

The bigger war that everyone fears. Hezbollah, backed by Iran, is considered one of the most powerful and heavily armed nonstate groups in the world. All sides agree that an Israel-Hezbollah war would be devastating.

But history is rife with examples of wars breaking out even when no side wants one. Given how tensions in the region are already at a boiling point, all it would take is one ill-placed or ill-timed spark to alight a major new front.

“The longer this goes on, the greater the possibility of some mass casualty event which pushes both sides over the edge,” said Aaron David Miller, a former longtime U.S. diplomat and Middle East peace negotiator who now works at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank.

Upping the ante is the fact that U.S. officials now assess that the risk is rising that Hezbollah could begin targeting U.S. troops or diplomatic personnel in the Middle East, or even plan attacks in the U.S. homeland, according to Politico.

The deadliest “what if?” From the first days of the Israel-Hamas war, the Hezbollah question—whether the group would join Hamas’s war effort by launching a full-scale assault on Israel from Lebanon—has hung over the heads of U.S. and regional powers engaged in crisis response. Hezbollah’s military capabilities, with an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 missiles and rockets aimed at Israel and tens of thousands of fighters in its ranks, far outstrip those of Hamas. Experts warn that an Israel-Hezbollah war could be far deadlier and more drawn out than Israel’s operations against Hamas in Gaza, which have killed an estimated 22,000 Palestinians so far, according to health authorities in the Hamas-controlled territory.

Blinken’s warning. During his most recent trip to the Middle East this week—his fourth since the war began on Oct. 7, 2023—U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that the conflict could spill beyond its current contours. Behind the scenes, Blinken’s team has focused much of its efforts on both crafting a postwar plan for Gaza and heading off a major Israeli conflict with Hezbollah. “This is a moment of profound tension in the region. This is a conflict that could easily metastasize, causing even more insecurity and even more suffering,” Blinken said while visiting Qatar on Sunday.

Meanwhile, another top Biden administration envoy, Amos Hochstein, is in Lebanon this week following meetings in Israel to see if there’s room to negotiate on border disputes between the two countries in a bid to dial down the tensions. He has his work cut out for him, to say the least, as Robbie reports this week.

100,000 tons of diplomacy. The threat from Hezbollah is a key reason why the Biden administration deployed a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group and other warships to the Eastern Mediterranean in the months after the Israel-Hamas war started as a deterrent signal to head off any major Hezbollah offensive against Israel.

Ultimately, however, officials and experts widely agree that Iran has the deciding vote on whether Hezbollah should dive into the conflict. “Hezbollah does have a seat at the table, but the Iranians, at the end of the day … they make the decisions, and what they say goes,” said Phillip Smyth, an expert on Middle East terrorist groups.

Iran’s calculus. For now, Iran seems content with the status quo of dragging Israel through a grueling war in Gaza that has alienated much of its support on the world stage, as well as upending maritime trade routes through the strategic Red Sea chokepoint with Houthi attacks. In short, Tehran is already getting a lot for a relatively low cost—keeping thousands of Israeli soldiers occupied near Lebanon’s borders with the threat of a war there, while saving its biggest asset, Hezbollah, in reserve and skirting any direct role in the fight itself.

“Iranians are notorious for fighting to the last Lebanese, to the last Yemeni, to the last Syrian, to the Palestinian, to the last Iraqi, without implicating themselves, and this time is no different,” said Bilal Saab, a regional security expert at the Middle East Institute think tank.

Thus far, Hezbollah has limited its role in the war to cross-border fire targeting northern Israel, a clear sign in the eyes of U.S. officials and regional experts that Hezbollah’s patrons in Tehran don’t want a full-fledged war. Israel, meanwhile, has issued public warnings that it could launch a major military offensive against Hezbollah but has so far held off from doing so, as the bulk of its forces is bogged down in fighting in Gaza.

A powder keg waiting for a spark. The risk of miscalculation is high. On Tuesday, Hezbollah attacked an Israeli army base in Safed, located in northern Israel near the Lebanese border. This attack came just a day after a senior Hezbollah military commander, Wissam al-Tawil, was killed by an Israeli drone strike. A senior Hamas official, Saleh al-Arouri, was also killed in a strike in Beirut, though the Israeli government has not acknowledged its likely role in that killing.

Then there’s the political climate in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be bowing to the far-right members of his governing coalition in how he carries out the war as he scrambles to stop hemorrhaging political support.

Red lines. One major lingering problem is that both sides don’t have a clear idea of what the other’s red lines are. Israel may perceive the targeting of Hezbollah commanders as fair game in the so-far limited skirmishes along the Lebanese border, but Hezbollah may not. Similarly, Hezbollah could launch what it sees as skirmish attacks against Israeli bases, but Israel could perceive those as a major attack.

“There’s no mutually agreed-upon definition of what escalation is for both sides,” Saab said. “I’m not sure that intentions on their own to prevent a major war … [are] sufficient for actually preventing one.”

Let’s Get Personnel

Paul Nakasone, the director of the U.S. National Security Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command, will step down from his post in February, Bloomberg reports.

Former Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin has been tapped as the U.N. secretary-general’s new envoy for Cyprus.

Republican national security expert Morgan Viña has joined the government relations firm Invariant from the Jewish Institute for National Security, where she was the vice president of government affairs.

Security expert (and FP columnist) Elisabeth Braw has joined the Atlantic Council think tank as a senior fellow.

On the Button 

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Austin drama. The Pentagon’s inspector general will investigate the failure of U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and others at the top of the agency’s food chain to notify the rest of the government about his hospital stay in a reasonably timely manner, which has led to multiple bipartisan calls for Austin’s firing.

Austin went to the intensive care unit at Walter Reed hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, on Jan. 1 and stayed for four days after suffering serious complications from prostate cancer surgery. Many senior Pentagon officials—including Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—didn’t know until Jan. 2 that Austin was hospitalized. President Joe Biden wasn’t informed until Jan. 4, and he didn’t learn about Austin’s prostate cancer diagnosis until this week. Kathleen Hicks, the deputy secretary of defense, assumed Austin’s duties from vacation in Puerto Rico but was also not immediately informed of his hospitalization.

The inspector general’s probe will occur while Austin’s front office conducts a 30-day review to determine what went wrong.

The costs of inaction. The United States saw a record number of billion-dollar climate disasters in 2023, according to new data from a top U.S. science agency, in a year that shattered global temperature records in a stark warning about the present and coming dangers of climate change. The disasters caused by climate change, experts warn, from floods to droughts and ever-longer fire seasons, could have widespread ramifications for global security and stability. This will also have an acute impact on U.S. military infrastructure: The Defense Department’s internal watchdog studied 79 U.S. bases in 2022 and found that two-thirds were vulnerable to flooding and half are vulnerable to increased droughts and wildfires.

Loopholes. Russia has effectively found ways to circumvent Western sanctions and keep up a flow of Western technology and goods to support its war in Ukraine, according to a new study from a team of U.S. and Ukrainian experts.

Western sanctions have aimed to cut the supply of microchips, navigation systems, and other tech for Russia’s military and munitions to keep up its fight against Ukraine. However, in the first 10 months of 2023, Russia was able to import some $8.77 billion worth of Western goods with battlefield uses as it dodged sanctions and export controls, according to the study from the Yermak-McFaul International Working Group on Russian Sanctions and the Ukraine-based think tank KSE Institute.

“Export controls are rightfully seen as the new frontier in economic statecraft but, in the absence of robust enforcement, they risk losing their bite,” the report warned.

Snapshot 

Ecuadorian soldiers patrol outside the premises of Ecuador’s TC Televisión network in Guayaquil after gunmen burst into the state-owned television studio live on air, following a government-declared state of emergency after a notorious narcotics cartel boss escaped prison, on Jan. 9.Marcos Pin/AFP via Getty Images

What We’re Reading

Electionpalooza. 2024 is the year of elections and the biggest stress test for democracy globally to date. Read the feature story from the latest issue of FP’s print magazine, by our colleague Allison Meakem, on the rundown of what’s at stake during upcoming elections in India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and, of course, the United States.

RIP to a World War II legend. Mike Sadler, a legendary British special forces operative who navigated North African deserts to lead raids on Adolf Hitler’s Afrika Korps in World War II, has died at age 103. Read more about his incredible life in this New York Times obituary.

Put on Your Radar

Thursday, Jan. 11: South Africa’s genocide case against Israel over its military assault Gaza begins at the International Court of Justice.

Friday, Jan. 12: U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai travels to India.

Saturday, Jan. 13: Taiwan holds presidential elections.

Monday, Jan. 15: Republican primary caucasus are held in Iowa; the World Economic Forum begins in Davos, Switzerland; and Uganda hosts the 19th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement.

Wednesday, Jan. 17: NATO chiefs of defense meet in Brussels.

Quote of the Week

“Are we learning that negotiating with the Democrats in the White House and Senate with a slim majority is hard and you can’t get everything you want, no matter who is in the Speaker’s office?”

—Republican Rep. Mike Collins on X, after House Republicans got angry (again) at their newest speaker over spending negotiations with the Democrats, as the House continues to slog through a monthslong state of paralysis.

This Week’s Most Read

1. Ukraine Has a Pathway to Victory by Rose Gottemoeller and Michael Ryan
2. 5 Reasons the Israel-Palestine Conflict Won’t End Any Time Soon by Stephen M. Walt
3. Is Israel Winning the War on the Tunnels in Gaza? by Daphné Richemond-Barak

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

The Taylor Swift psyop. A Fox News host falsely claimed this week that the Pentagon had floated the idea of using pop star Taylor Swift as part of the U.S. Defense Department’s psychological operations. We don’t think that Swift and the Pentagon are exactly a match made in heaven, unless she has some hit new singles planned about unintelligible PowerPoints or failing multitrillion-dollar audits.