What started as an Israeli invasion of Gaza and a “war” between Israel and Hamas has metastasized into a multi-front war between Israel, Iran, and other regional actors and non-state actors. The escalation threatens not only to plunge the region deeper into chaos but also to have global security and stability hanging in the uncertainty.
The conflict in Gaza entered a new phase, in which other players in the region began to get involved. Soon after the Israeli atrocities began the Lebanese militant group, Hezbollah entered the fray itself to stand with Hamas. By the time, what began a week ago, as sporadic exchanges of fire, had erupted into an Israeli invasion of Lebanese territory now.
Iran, the mainstay of Hamas and Hezbollah, meanwhile, has been increasingly drawn into the widening conflict. However, fears of an all-out regional war have been heightened by Tehran’s launching of its first direct missile strike against Israel. Iranian proxies, with other militant groups, including Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, and Houthi rebels in Yemen, carried out strikes against Israeli and the US targets. By the time, Israel conducted retaliatory attacks in against of the Iranian attacks of with the 200 projectiles.
In Gaza, as of latest data, nearly 43,783 Palestinians have been killed, along with 16,900 children and 11,500 women who are nearly 70 percent of the total deaths, per health officials’ report. In addition to that, more than a million civilians have been uprooted by the Israeli incursion into Lebanon.
Until now, however, efforts to contain the widening conflict have been diplomatically futile. While publicly urging restraint, the United States has remained supportive in a robust military and political way to Israel. Egypt, Jordan, and many other Arab and Non-Arab countries voiced their support for Lebanon despite the fear of getting sucked into the maelstrom.
Escalation of Israel’s Military Invasion
Israel’s military invasion, after destroying the Gaza strip, stepped up to Lebanon. Israel’s military atrocity started in Gaza where the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) shocked with a mass air and ground offensive. These were unprecedented in scale. In several months, the IDF launched thousands of airstrikes and carried out a major ground invasion in Gaza, causing massive damage to its people.
The constant barrage of rockets by Hezbollah into northern Israel began during the beginning of the Gaza war. However, Israel’s military presence grew very decisive in Lebanon, as Hezbollah’s attacks became sophisticated—using drones to fire missiles at key Israeli targets.
In September, Israel ratcheted its operations against Hezbollah up to more than 125% compared to the previous month, with some 1,700 strikes in Lebanon. It started with a wave of unprecedented covert operations—including the detonation of thousands of trapped pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah operatives and general people across Lebanon. At least 32 people were killed and thousands injured in this covert attack. This came after Israel unleashed its most intensive bombardment of Lebanon in decades. On September 23, the IDF conducted somewhere between 200 and 250 targeted strike events across five governorates, almost triple the number of incidents marking the prior peak of Israeli strikes, killing more than 490 people. While Israel claimed to be targeting Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, Lebanese authorities claimed that many civilians were among the casualties, with 2000 people killed as of October 4—including 127 children and 261 women.
However, this escalation topped out on September 27 with Israel assassinating Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, alongside other senior figures including the group’s southern front commander. The way Hezbollah suffered here dealt a severe blow to its command structure. At least seven high-ranking Hezbollah figures were killed in a week. Between October 2023 and September 2024, Israel killed at least 21 other Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon.
Israeli forces, meanwhile, have kept up their long-term campaign of airstrikes against Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria in a bid to disrupt supply lines and impede the movement of fighters and equipment. One incident, in particular, happened September 8 when Israeli special forces carried out a rare ground raid in the town of Masyaf, Hama province, and targeted and destroyed an underground precision missile factory allegedly constructed by Iran with the help of Hezbollah.
Recently, following Iran’s unprecedented ballistic missile attack on Israel, which saw over 180 missiles launched at Israeli targets, Israel has vowed to retaliate. While the exact nature of this retaliation remains to be experienced, Israeli officials have uttered that Iran will face severe consequences for its actions!
Hezbollah and Its War Capabilities
Hezbollah has become an inevitable player in the Middle East war. The changes its conflict with the Israeli military has brought into play have dramatically reshaped the ‘war’s’ contours, taking something that started as a war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and, making it a multi-front confrontation.
Things began on October 8, 2023, when Hezbollah and Israel exchanged artillery and rocket fires, which Hezbollah had done to exhibit its solidarity with the Palestinians. In the early stages, Hezbollah and Israel fought a tit-for-tat firefight that was not intense to a high extent. Hezbollah’s attacks, however, became more frequent and sophisticated as the conflict in Gaza dragged on. The group showed how advanced military tactics, including the use of drones to fire missiles at key Israeli targets, as well as digital espionage, worked.
The arsenal and military capabilities of Hezbollah have long terrified Israel and its allies. It is regarded as the world’s most heavily armed non-state actor—aptly labeled as “a militia trained like an army and equipped like a state.” The party’s inventory consists mainly of small, handheld, unguided artillery rockets. The group is also a potent militia in the Middle East and has at its prowess a huge weapons arsenal ranging between 100,000 and 120,000 missiles. In addition, many of these weapons are reportedly precision-guided munitions to strike down and hit at all targets in the Israeli territory.
Hezbollah possesses over 15,000 rockets and missiles, while its full-time soldiers and reservists are more than 60,000, per the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). Hezbollah has since augmented its rocket arsenal, currently estimated at 120,000-200000 projectiles, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Hezbollah’s arsenal includes drones and precision rockets that can strike all over Israel. Hezbollah also has some limited anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles and thousands of anti-tank missiles. By contrast, although it cannot station manned aircraft and armored vehicles in Lebanon because of Israel’s air supremacy, it reportedly keeps some armor in neighboring Syria, such as T-55 and T-72 tanks.
Nevertheless, recent events brought forth doubts over how much Hezbollah could achieve. Israel argues it knocked down thousands of the group’s rockets and shells in its recent campaigns. In addition, Israel’s most recent attacks, especially the killing of Hezbollah’s top leader Hassan Nasrallah, and the creation of chaos with attacks on its networks via pagers and walkie-talkies, have driven questions regarding Hezbollah’s resilience and operational readiness.
Some analysts have questioned whether Hezbollah is unwilling or unable to use its most potent military options, while the group is itself seemingly willing to sit through considerable Israeli provocation.
Nevertheless, not all this is enough to write off Hezbollah as a spent force. The group has deep roots in Lebanon’s Shiite community and continues to get good support from Iran. Phillip Smyth, an analyst focusing on the Middle East, cautioned against underestimating Hezbollah’s resilience: “There was this kind of gleefulness about Hezbollah kind of completely disabled and destroyed now that all the leadership’s gone. That’s not how it works.” Recently, on October 14, four Israeli soldiers were killed and more than 60 people wounded by Hezbollah drone on an army base in central-northern Israel.
Hezbollah has continued to show itself capable, even under the hose of intense pressure, of striking Israeli targets. The group, which says it is part of ‘Jabal al-Makhuz’ (translated as the village of the blind), announced it attacked at least two military and civilian settlement locations on October 3 in northern Israel. They are reminders that it still has an arsenal of powerful capabilities in its hands, despite recent reverses.
Tit-for-Tat Game between Israel and Iran
While Iran’s direct role in these missile attacks has been the most dramatic demonstration of involvement, on October 1, 2024, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) took the unprecedented step of firing 200 ballistic missiles at Israel. It was a major escalation in Iran’s confrontation with Israel, by far the most powerful stage yet of a series of strikes aimed at Israel.
Israel’s air defense systems backed by the US forces in the area intercepted most of the missiles but the attack represented a distinct mark in the conflict as the assault marks the sharpest indication yet that deprecation is surfacing. It is not surprising that Iran decided to launch such a large-scale attack as substantiated by the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July 2024 and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in September. Tehran decided to respond harder because of these events, along with ongoing Israeli strikes against Iranian interests in Syria and beyond.
Nevertheless, in the aftermath of the attack, Iranian officials rushed to claim that their ‘response … has been duly carried out’. However, Israel ‘vowed’ to attack Iran and finally, on October 26, it launched warplane strikes on Tehran. Despite Iran called it a ‘limited damage’, its supreme leader said “Israel’s attack should not be exaggerated or downplayed”.
Iran’s involvement in the conflict runs much deeper than one missile strike. The country has long gone down the path of ‘forward defense,’ attempting to dominate the Middle East through a patchwork of proxy forces and reach into areas far beyond. Iran’s most powerful, effective, and longest-running proxy, Hezbollah in Lebanon, has fired rockets and missiles at northern Israel in sustained attacks. Several Shiite militias like Yemen’s Houthi rebels are supported by Iran and have attacked Israeli ships in the Red Sea and so far, even sought to strike targets in Israel. The network of proxies Iran maintains gives it huge strategic depth, extending with the ability to pressure Israel and its allies on several fronts.
So far, Tehran is undecided and facing ‘tough choices’ about the ‘perfect’ response it can leverage, although it vows to respond. As a result of the growing dynamics of the tit-for-tat game between the two countries, it is very arduous to predict what might happen in the future but surely, not positive developments at all.
Humanitarian Crisis and Civilian Causalities
The Palestinian health officials say the death toll has climbed up to 43,783 with hundreds of thousands more wounded. Yet some researchers say the true number of fatalities perhaps could be much higher, as high as 186,000. The ongoing war and the widespread destruction across Gaza make accurate counts nearly impossible.
Indeed, Gaza is in shambles. Ruins cover large swathes of the territory where homes, schools, and hospitals have been reduced to rubble. According to the United Nations, more than 80 percent of Gaza’s housing has been damaged. As of November 2023, per a UN-led aid consortium estimation, more than 234,000 homes have been shattered across Gaza, and 46,000 devastated.
Anyone can see life as disrupted and on hold with no schools, and no functioning society, as International Crisis Group’s Michael Hanna points out, “There’s nothing.” The grim condition spread to Lebanon is straining its already fragile social and economic systems. For years, the nation has been weighed down by government dysfunction, economic crisis, and the arrival of more than a million Syrian refugees. The sudden internal displacement of another million Lebanese now stands to overwhelm state capacity and social cohesion.
However, given the escalating human and material costs of the war, there has never been more of an urgency to draw on creative diplomacy, international multilateral cooperation, and a recommitting to the principles of international law to stop the ‘war’.
[Photo by WAFA, via Wikimedia Commons]
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
The writer is a political analyst based in Dhaka and a researcher at the KRF Center for Bangladesh and Global Affairs (CBGA), Dhaka.
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