KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Iran’s ballistic missile strikes on Israel on October 1 have raised fears of an all-out war in the Middle East. The deepening spiral of bloodshed began on September 17 and 18 with the detonation across Lebanon of thousands of pagers and two-way radios used by Hezbollah operatives — one analyst deemed the unprecedented Israeli operation “the most extensive physical supply chain attack in history.” Ongoing airstrikes in Beirut and southern Lebanon have marked the most significant Israeli barrage in 11 months of tit-for-tat escalation. On September 27, Israel dealt Hezbollah a devastating blow by killing its leader Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike on a Beirut suburb. Despite reeling from these latest reverses and the evisceration of its command structure, the Shiite militia continues to lob missiles at Israel. Stunned and outraged, Iran — Hezbollah’s patron — fired around 200 ballistic missiles at Israel; at least one person was killed in the West Bank. Iranians are now bracing for Israeli retaliation. The cycle of violence, it appears, is far from over.
This latest episode underscores the near-complete breakdown of deterrence in the Middle East. Both state and nonstate actors are taking huge risks. As a standalone operation, the pager attack could have signaled Israel’s resolve to compel Hezbollah to de-escalate or face a catastrophic war. But Israel’s decisions to assassinate Nasrallah, intensify strikes on Lebanon, and even commence a ground invasion suggest a grimmer possibility: the pager operation was merely meant to put Hezbollah on the back foot as a prelude to a more expansive Israeli military intervention.
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