Fears are growing of the Gaza conflict widening to engulf Israel and its northern foe, the Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah militia, after both sides claimed this week to be ready to go to war following an intensification of their cross-border attacks.
Israel’s military said it has approved plans for an attack in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has threatened to carry out a war with “no red lines,” although it said it would halt attacks if the Gaza war stopped.
Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.K., Prince Khalid Bin Bandar Al Saud, warned this week that failure to end the Gaza war and the broader Israel-Palestinian conflict would risk serious escalation not easily contained.
“At some stage we will hit a point where the conflict will spread, and it will become regional,” he said at London’s Chatham House.
“It’s very important for everyone to recognize the danger that lies ahead,” he said. “A regional conflict will not remain regional; it will become international very quickly. The reality is that if it continues along the path that it is going, [it] is much worse than what is happening on the ground today or any scenario from what will come from a deal.”
U.S. President Joe Biden’s envoy, Amos Hochstein, has tried to defuse tensions, warning that a “miscalculation, accident or errant missile” could cause the situation to spiral out of control.
Analyst Nicholas Heras of the Washington-based New Lines Institute told VOA that Israel and Hezbollah are currently “on a knife’s edge of conflict,” which could lead to an all-out war.
“Israel’s objective is to eliminate Hamas control from Gaza and to force Hezbollah off of the Israeli border north of the Litani River in Lebanon,” Heras said. “Hezbollah’s goal, which is set by Iran, is to continue to apply increasing military pressure on Israel until the conflict in Gaza ends.”
Hussein Ibish, an analyst with Washington’s Arab Gulf States Institute, told the France24 satellite TV channel that “neither Hezbollah nor Iran want a war under current circumstances.”
“The purpose of Hezbollah in the Iranian alliance is to be a deterrent against and a strategic response to an Israeli or American assault on the Iranian homeland, specifically on their nuclear facilities,” Ibish said.
Still, should a war ignite between Israel and Hezbollah, Heras told VOA that there would be widespread ramifications.
“If there is a war between Hezbollah, and by extension Iran, in Israel, it would draw the United States in that war because the United States is so committed in terms of military assets to Israel’s defense,” he said. “And Iran is so committed to Hezbollah’s defense because Hezbollah represents for Iran a key means to apply strategic pressure on Israel.”
Heras predicts that the entire region would be drawn in and “that type of war could have shattering effects on global society.”
