How Israel's Ground Invasion of Lebanon Began

The ground invasion of Lebanon is underway. After weeks of crushing airstrikes by the nation of Israel, directed against the militant non-state actor Hezbollah, and after a precision-targeted campaign that decapitated much of Hezbollah’s leadership, Israeli troops are on the sovereign soil of their northern neighbor nation. Israel’s stated intent is clear: to demolish Hezbollah’s fighters and infrastructure in the Lebanese south, pushing them so far and destroying them so thoroughly that northern Israel will be safe for many years to come. But Hezbollah’s will to fight back is no less obvious—and with thousands of formidable Hezbollah fighters believed to be scurrying across southern Lebanon, the situation there will almost certainly get worse before it gets better.

Boots on the Ground: Israel Announces Its Long-Awaited Incursion

The information discussed spans from the start of the day, Israel-Lebanon time, on October the first, to the end of the day on October the seventh, 2024. It is all but assured that the situation on the ground will have evolved further since that timeframe. The date of October the seventh marks one year since the brutal terror attacks of the Hamas organization in Gaza into Israel, and just one day shy of a year since Hezbollah began launching rocket attacks into Israel in self-described solidarity with Hamas.

Everything discussed here constitutes the direct repercussions of the actions of Hamas and Hezbollah during those two days. The events at hand began on October the first, 2024, when Israel announced to the world that it had launched its long-awaited ground invasion into southern Lebanon. For close watchers of the conflict, it was an unsurprising next step that had seemed all but inevitable for weeks, as Israel’s air campaign worked to soften Hezbollah’s command-and-control and communications infrastructure.

But it was also a worst-case scenario, an eventuality that much of the world had been trying very, very hard to avoid. The word went out to global news, analysts and foreign diplomats alike echoed the same ultimate concern: that what Israel was describing as a series of, quote, “limited, localized and targeted” raids would eventually metastasize into a far larger occupation—and that fighting would spread and intensify with it. Those fears were assuaged, or worsened—depending on who you ask—by statements via the top spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces or IDF, Daniel Hagari, speaking to the press that same day.

According to Hagari, Israeli forces had been carrying out secret raids into Lebanon for months prior to their official entry to Lebanese territory. During those operations, IDF troops have purportedly identified and explored parts of Hezbollah’s extensive tunnel network in the area, where the group is believed to store weapons caches, command infrastructure, and even vehicles in advance of large-scale fighting. Hagari explained that, quote, “Our soldiers entered Hezbollah’s underground infrastructure, exposed Hezbollah’s hidden weapons caches and seized and destroyed the weapons including advanced, Iranian-made weapons.”

Israel has since released footage of Hezbollah tunnel networks, following up on a promise Hagari made during his statements to share Israel’s findings with the international community. Notably, although many of these tunnels lay underneath Lebanese villages and individual homes, they were typically unoccupied. Instead, weapons, detailed attack plans, and telecommunications equipment were stored there, in advance of Hezbollah fighters using the facilities if a direct Israel-Hezbollah ground conflict broke out.

The First Raids and Early Clashes Along the Border

The raids that went down on October the first appeared to be largely in keeping with the prior, undisclosed ones, reflecting operations designed with the intent Hagari described; quote: “We’re not going to Beirut. We’re not going to the cities in southern Lebanon. We are focusing on the area of those villages next to our border.”

Lebanese civilians were warned not to drive southward past the Litani River, some 20 miles north of the Israel-Lebanon border, where combat operations would be taking place. About 25 villages in southern Lebanon were told to evacuate, and an Arabic-speaking IDF spokesperson warned that, quote, “any home used by Hezbollah for its military needs is expected to be targeted.” Lebanese Army troops, unaffiliated with Hezbollah, pulled back to about five kilometers away from the border so as to minimize the risk of a direct confrontation or accidental exchange of fire.

Israeli tanks, armored vehicles, and infantry moved into Lebanon, while the Lebanese Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, decried the invasion as, quote, “one of the most dangerous phases” of Lebanese history, but declined to order his troops to oppose it. Hezbollah’s Deputy Chief, Sheikh Naim Qassem, vowed that Hezbollah was ready to fight back against the IDF, as their troops began a careful march northward. October the first was a day of some violence on the ground, but far less than what one might expect from a full-scale invasion.

The border town of Aita al-Shaab reported heavy shelling, while a refugee camp for Palestinians was targeted in an Israeli strike outside the city of Sidon. Other areas along the border were shelled intensely, as well. The bulk of the operations, however, focused on areas directly adjoining the Israeli border—including, in some cases, homes and communities just a few hundred meters from the dividing line.

If any Hezbollah fighters were caught up and killed in the earliest attacks, neither Hezbollah nor Israel gave any outward indication. The same, however, could not be said on the following day. On Wednesday, October the second, Israel reported that eight of its soldiers had been killed in direct combat with Hezbollah in south Lebanon.

Most of those soldiers were commandos hailing from two elite reconnaissance units, Egoz and Golani, respectively. Six of them were killed in a Hezbollah ambush, while the other two were killed in mortar fire. Hezbollah claimed that its troops had used anti-tank missiles to kill and wound dozens of IDF troops in one border village, although it’s not clear that Hezbollah and Israel referenced the same incident—and if not, then Israel, by default, would have disputed those claims.

Hezbollah took credit for the purported destruction of three Israeli tanks, of the Merkava model, as well as the targeting of other IDF troops with explosives and small arms. The IDF stated that its soldiers, along with close air support, had “eliminated terrorists and dismantled terrorist infrastructure through precision-guided munitions and close-range engagements.”

Expanding Operations: October 3rd Through October 7th

Perhaps it was a facet of the intense fighting of October 2nd, or perhaps a pre-planned next move, but on Thursday, the 3rd, Israel signaled a significant upcoming expansion in its ground operations. On that day, the IDF sent evacuation warnings to communities in southern Lebanon that were previously believed to be outside the bounds of its ground incursion. During that day, Israel attested that a combination of airstrikes and ground assaults had hit about 200 Hezbollah targets across the nation.

Lebanon alleged that Israel killed two Lebanese soldiers that day, one in an airstrike and another by artillery fire. Lebanese troops had returned fire, but are not believed to have caused casualties. That same day, Israel claimed credit for the deaths of fifteen Hezbollah fighters.

Hezbollah claimed that the detonation of a roadside bomb had killed and wounded IDF soldiers, although those allegations are as-yet unconfirmed. Still, the ground battles were constrained to a strip of land across the Israel-Lebanon border, not yet moving north toward the Litani River. Israel’s most important foreign backer, the United States, expressed a hesitant endorsement of what Israel had done in Lebanon thus far.

That night, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller echoed a sentiment felt in many parts of the world: “All of us here are very cognizant of the long history of Israel launching what at the time were described as limited operations across the Lebanese border that have turned into something much different—that have turned into full-scale wars and at times occupation.” The following several days, from October 4th to October 7th, saw much of the same from Israel and Hezbollah. Israeli tanks and mobile artillery continued their careful press forward, and on the 4th, an IDF spokesman claimed that Israel had killed 250 Hezbollah fighters in ground operations since the start of its ground mission.

The death toll within the IDF ticked up, from eight to nine, and then to eleven, the following day. The IDF spokesman described operating in an area overflowing with explosives and Hezbollah weapons. A day after that, the IDF disclosed that paratroopers were operating in mountainous regions of Lebanon’s borderlands, and released information on tunnels it had discovered in southern Lebanon.

Israel claimed that 250 meters of “underground terror infrastructure” had been destroyed at that time. Israel ordered more evacuations of Lebanese civilians in several dozen villages, bringing the total number of evacuated villages to 124. Meanwhile, Lebanon’s tally of deceased surpassed 2,000 in the previous year, with the vast majority of the dead having been killed after Israel began its sweeping anti-Hezbollah campaign in late September.

According to UNICEF, 100 children have been killed in Lebanon in the eleven days preceding October 6, 2024. As of Monday, October 7, Israel attested that its southern Lebanon operations remain limited in scope—despite the rising casualties.

Maritime Operations and the Hunt for Hashem Safieddine

As of October 7, 2024, Israel has yet to broaden its offensive past Lebanon’s border regions, but recent developments suggest that the scope of its operations may grow wider yet. Israel indicated that it would begin maritime operations shortly off the Lebanese coast. The IDF’s Arabic-speaking spokesman, in a message shared widely across Lebanon, urged people not to go out to sea or even visit the beach, in areas south of the point where Lebanon’s Awali River empties to the sea.

Israel identified five towns and villages near the Lebanese border where civilians should not enter, although those areas were initially evacuated months ago. Although it’s not clear just how large an operation Israel is planning, any combat operations in that area will involve a mirror operation to what’s going on in the main area where the IDF is active, on the other far edge of the Israel-Lebanon border. Future operations may see the IDF move northward and toward the center from both the east and west combat areas, taking militarily advantageous territory on Lebanon’s flanks while squeezing Hezbollah toward the Litani River—though that remains to be seen.

Just as important as Israel’s potential seaside operations is the status of one Hashem Safieddine—presumed to be the current leader of the Hezbollah organization. Safieddine purportedly took over for his cousin, the now-deceased former leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, after Nasrallah’s death in an airstrike. But in a massive bombing operation on Thursday, the third of October, Israel indicated that it had targeted a meeting of Hezbollah’s senior leadership, where Safieddine was believed to have been present.

Safieddine was there for the strike that killed his predecessor, although he did survive that prior attack. The shockwaves from the airstrike were felt some twenty-four kilometers, fifteen miles, away. As of the time of writing, the IDF indicates that it cannot yet confirm whether Hashem Safieddine was killed in the IDF airstrike—although an official for Hezbollah, speaking to the Reuters news bureau, confirmed that search-and-rescue operations were ongoing in the area where Safieddine was purportedly hit.

For Hezbollah, his death would be the second loss of the group’s overall leader in as many weeks, and would put significant strain on Hezbollah’s hierarchy for succession. Hezbollah has long prided itself on its ability to quickly replace senior leaders who die or are incapacitated, but with so many top Hezbollah commanders killed in the last few weeks, the options to replace Safieddine are likely to be quite limited.

The Strategic Calculus: Israel’s Objectives and Hezbollah’s Resilience

From the start of Israel’s publicly acknowledged ground operations, neither Israel’s nor Hezbollah’s stated objectives have fundamentally shifted. Israel still emphasizes its focus on direct action against Hezbollah’s tunnels, its weapons caches, and its other infrastructure scattered throughout southern Lebanon. Hezbollah still emphasizes its eagerness to fight against Israel on the ground, to resist its occupation, and to push it out of Lebanon if possible.

Hezbollah has claimed significant combat kills against Israel, in numbers that go substantially beyond what Israel has acknowledged, creating a clear information gap on just what losses Israel has sustained thus far. Meanwhile, Israel’s stated successes have only involved clearing small pockets of border territory, just a small fraction of the land south of the Litani River. The successes it’s claimed in dismantling tunnel infrastructure, a few hundred meters at the time of writing, fall way short of what Hezbollah has almost certainly constructed below the surface of the Lebanese border highlands.

Neither side would be satisfied in its immediate goals if the situation froze tomorrow, but where exactly this ground invasion will escalate next is not a settled issue. For Israel to fulfill its stated objective and return displaced Israelis to their homes in the northern part of the country, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies have stated quite clearly: Hezbollah must be unable to pose a threat to them. But if that’s the goal, then even though Israel is making progress, it’s still very early in the process to do so.

Hezbollah is believed to have an extremely well-developed tunnel network, and its elite Radwan fighters are believed to still be thousands strong. It’s not enough to just destroy the rest of the estimated 150,000 rockets that Hezbollah had at the start of the war, plus its drones and guided missiles, or the launch tubes Hezbollah relies on to get them into the sky. Instead, Israel has to contend with the fact that if Radwan fighters can use southern Lebanon as a staging area, they could travel into northern Israel in October 7-style raids and terror attacks, directly invading like Hamas did last year.

Whether such a move would be Hezbollah’s chosen route to proceed is immaterial; per Israel’s own objectives, such an eventuality must be made impossible, rather than relying on Hezbollah’s goodwill to avoid launching such an attack. To that end, the IDF will likely have to exert far greater pressure on Hezbollah than it’s done thus far, making southern Lebanon uninhabitable to Hezbollah—and doing it in a way that will keep the area uninhabitable, after Israeli forces leave. Technically, a United Nations resolution regards that area between the Litani River and the Israeli border as a buffer zone—but if that’s going to be the answer, then the meaning of the phrase “buffer zone” will probably have to become a lot more severe.

Influential Netanyahu allies have suggested as much, floating the idea of depopulating the area of Lebanese civilians so that there’s nowhere for Hezbollah to hide. More extreme versions of the idea suggest that southern Lebanon become an extra-large iteration of the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, that separates North and South Korea. Southern Lebanon would become impassable, watched by both sides.

But getting to such a reality, if it were made Israel’s objective at all, is another matter. Despite Israel’s combat losses and the fierce fighting the nation has seen with Hezbollah, this is still the easy part. As Israel encroaches on more valuable Hezbollah targets, or starts to push Hezbollah fighters into smaller and smaller defensible pockets of territory, larger and more violent confrontations with Hezbollah will become more frequent.

Hezbollah resistance is likely to get more fierce as Israel broadens its operations, and Israel’s losses may grow exponentially higher. For all the devastation that Israel has wrought on Hezbollah, Hezbollah has got a lot of fight left in it. While the group has taken somewhat more of a battering than it expected, this asymmetrical warfare is what Hezbollah has prepared for, across many years.

Lebanon’s Political Fragility and the Ceasefire That Never Was

At the same time, the conflict has also drawn increasing attention to not just Hezbollah’s role within Lebanon, but the potential for political change in Lebanon to either heighten or diminish Hezbollah’s position. Lebanon has been a failed state for some time, by the admission of its own leaders, where the government hardly functions well enough to tie the Prime Minister’s shoes, and where Hezbollah has cultivated deep political influence for a generation. Meanwhile, the nation has lacked a president for nearly two years—directly due to Hezbollah’s influence in blocking any presidential hopeful who wasn’t a Hezbollah ally.

Now, though, American and Lebanese political groups have begun an effort to elect a new Lebanese president at a moment when Hezbollah is at its weakest and most distracted. To bring in a new president would give Lebanon a chance to kickstart legislative action, economic reform, and potentially even military action that have been impossible for some time. On the other hand, however, Hezbollah’s relative absence from Lebanese politics could very well turn into a destabilizing factor, creating a situation where a weak Lebanese government suffers infighting, slowly weakens, and is eventually overtaken by Hezbollah even easier than it was the first time around.

Lebanon, or at least this shattered half-country where Lebanon used to be, is extremely fragile, and it can be either salvaged or thrown away, based on what the power players in and out of Beirut choose to do. Lebanon’s Foreign Minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, introduced a new wrinkle to the ground invasion in a CNN interview on October 3. According to Habib, the now-deceased Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had apparently agreed to a 21-day ceasefire that had been pushed desperately by the United States and France, in order to head off the conflict now playing out.

Per Habib, Nasrallah had agreed to the settlement just days before he was killed in a massive Israeli airstrike, and if Habib is to be taken at his word, then Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu had agreed to the ceasefire as well. As Habib alleges, Hezbollah and Israel had briefly agreed to a common ceasefire, but since Habib’s interview, the US has thrown water on his assertions publicly. Neither Israel nor Hezbollah ever accepted the proposal publicly, and Netanyahu would publicly rebuke the proposal shortly after it was made.

But if, behind the scenes, both Hezbollah and Israel were amenable to a ceasefire right before Israel changed course and assassinated Hezbollah’s leader, then it certainly adds a new dimension to any peace talks moving forward. On the one hand, Hezbollah’s new leaders might feel inclined to follow Nasrallah’s example and work toward a peace. On the other, those same leaders might conclude that Israel will shake on a peace deal with one hand, while pressing a red button to launch an airstrike with the other hand.

How that dynamic plays out, and how Habib’s allegations ultimately do or don’t impact the conflict, will only become clear with time.

The Ongoing Air War: Rockets, Airstrikes, and Devastation on Both Sides

The major developments in Israel and Lebanon are not constrained solely to Israel’s ground invasion; far from it. The air war between the two sides is just as important. Hezbollah has launched hundreds of rockets into Israel since the Israeli ground operation began, including some 240 rockets just on Wednesday, the second.

Those were followed by another 230 on Thursday, and at least 180 on Friday, bringing the total to about 700 across those three days. The pace of the rocket attacks has kept up since then, albeit only resulting in a few injuries and limited destruction of property. Importantly, Israel’s Iron Dome has proven capable of intercepting the rockets that are calculated to pose a threat to people or important infrastructure.

But the Iron Dome isn’t designed to intercept every rocket that Hezbollah fires, and in keeping with its intended role, it’s instead allowed non-threatening rockets to crash down in areas where they won’t do much harm. Unfortunately for Israel, that system does create an inconvenient by-product; downed rockets or rockets that are deemed harmless will frequently cause brush fires when they crash down. Those fires occasionally destroy civilian infrastructure and will typically occupy the attention of local responders, including military personnel.

Of the attacks that have come against Israel, one in particular stands out—specifically, because it didn’t come from Hezbollah. In an October 4 incident, the IDF confirms, a pair of Israeli soldiers were killed in a drone strike after two drones were launched from northern Iraq. The group that claimed credit, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, is a long-time Hezbollah ally that’s frequently tried to strike Israel, with varying degrees of success.

The two killed soldiers were stationed at a military base in northern Israel, where twenty-three others were wounded. Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes have increasingly targeted the city of Beirut, a place where both the city proper and its outlying suburbs had previously been mostly immune from Israel-Hezbollah violence. Israeli strikes rain down across the Beirut metropolitan area each night, taking a psychological toll on those who live there and sometimes hitting areas where Israel had given no notice of an impending strike and where civilians had thought they had no reason to leave.

Those strikes have taken place predominantly in the Beirut suburb of Dahieh, a cluster of neighborhoods where Hezbollah is believed to exert a dominant influence. It was in Dahieh that Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an airstrike that flattened six residential buildings, and where follow-up strikes attempted to eliminate Hashem Safieddine. One other notable set of airstrikes crashed down near the main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria, cutting off a critical escape route for tens of thousands of fleeing people, and destroying a large part of a nearby highway.

According to Israel, the site was where a secret Hezbollah tunnel was used to funnel weapons from other nations into Lebanon, via the porous and chaotic Syrian state.

Strikes on Medical Infrastructure and Targeted Killings

One defining characteristic of Israel’s air campaign has been its willingness to strike medical facilities, infrastructure, and personnel, despite international condemnation and the clear risk to innocent bystanders. On Friday, the fourth, four Lebanese hospitals announced that they would have to suspend their work due to Israeli strikes, adding to a total of 37 Lebanese facilities, at least, that have had to shut down since mid-September. Israel has accused Hezbollah of using medical vehicles to transport fighters and weapons, but has made little secret of its low threshold for verification, acknowledging that it will strike any vehicle suspected of being used for military purposes.

In one incident, two ambulances were destroyed outside the Marjayoun governmental hospital, killing and injuring paramedics. The same, apparently, is true for static targets in medical buildings; take, for example, a direct hit on the Saint Therese Hospital in southern Beirut. In yet another such instance, Israel struck a building housing a Hezbollah-affiliated health center just a few meters away from the Lebanese parliament.

There, nine people were killed, and fourteen injured. Still another airstrike, in Dahieh, destroyed a women’s clinic. And in a stunning statement on October 3, the World Health Organization disclosed that at least twenty-eight on-duty medics had been killed in just a 24-hour period across Lebanon.

Many of those medics do swear allegiance to, or at least work with Hezbollah, but Hezbollah is a very different organization than what most people think of when they imagine a terror group. Unlike, say, an al-Qaeda or Islamic State foot soldier who might happen to have some medical training, so-called “Hezbollah medics” often swear allegiance to the group only because Hezbollah runs medical infrastructure where they work, and because that’s the price of admission to do their jobs. Meanwhile, a range of other Israeli strikes have struck targets that most of the world would probably agree are more clearly justified.

A September 30 airstrike killed one Fatah Sharif, leader of the Hamas organization’s presence in Lebanon, although Hamas attested that Sharif’s family was killed alongside him. Sharif’s killing would make him a lightning rod for international criticism, as it turned out that the United Nations agency that manages Palestinian refugees had employed him for years before suspending him earlier this year. In the Kola district of Beirut, Israel killed the head of the Lebanon branch of an organization called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP, plus an important PFLP deputy.

On Monday, September 30th, Israel carried out an airstrike on a suburb of Damascus, in Syria, killing a consultant working with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, along with three civilians. Days later, Israel struck again in Syria, destroying an ammunition warehouse right next to a large Russian airbase in the country, in an incident where Russia purportedly shot down incoming Israeli cruise missiles, but could not stop the destruction of a warehouse used by Syria and Iran. Russia has stayed quiet on the incident.

Elsewhere, Israel’s strikes have killed senior Hezbollah officials, including Mohammed Anisi, who guided the group in using precision-guided missiles; Mohammed Rashid Sakafi, head of Hezbollah communications; and Khider al-Shaebia, the local commander who oversaw a rocket attack that killed twelve Israeli Druze children in the Golan Heights back in July. On October the fourth, Israel destroyed the headquarters of Hezbollah’s intelligence network, a site they’ve hit again in the days since.

Iran’s Ballistic Missile Barrage Against Israel

On the nighttime hours of Tuesday, October 1st, a barrage of ballistic missiles came Israel’s way by way of the nation of Iran. The attack came all at once, using ballistic missiles that arc high into the sky, and then crash down to Earth in a way that gives only moments to successfully intercept them. Although Iran’s missiles aren’t truly hypersonic, since they cannot maneuver at hypersonic speeds, they nonetheless crashed down at well over five times the speed of sound, in an attack that the Iron Dome was simply too slow to intercept.

Instead, the attack was handled by an Israeli air defense apparatus called the Arrow, but it wasn’t handled effortlessly. Air raid sirens sounded all across Israel, and the entire nation’s population were forced into bomb shelters, with numerous missiles spotted over, and heard crashing down upon, the cities of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Numerous hits occurred in both central and southern Israel, including hits to multiple Israeli airbases.

Commercial satellite imagery of Israel’s Nevatim airbase has revealed over thirty impact craters, including damaged hangars, buildings, and taxiways, although Israel insists that none of its aircraft were destroyed in the attack, and all its airbases remained operational. The headquarters of Israel’s foreign intelligence service, Mossad, was also targeted, although no direct hits have been reported. During the strikes, a few people were treated for shrapnel injuries and injuries sustained during falls while trying to get to shelter.

One person was killed, a Palestinian man named Sameh al-Asali, who was killed by a falling missile fragment in the West Bank city of Jericho. Notably, Iran’s ballistic missile assault on Israel wasn’t the only harrowing moment for Israel and its leaders on the evening of October 1st. That day, just minutes before Iran began launching missiles, a pair of gunmen opened fire in the Jaffa area of Tel Aviv, using firearms and a knife to kill seven people on a rail carriage and platform, and injure several more.

The attackers, a pair of Palestinian residents of the West Bank, did not appear to have advance warning of Iran’s missile attack, although their timing was more than enough to put the nation even more on-edge. After the fact, the IDF claimed that Iran had used 201 ballistic missiles in the barrage. A majority of those missiles were intercepted by Israel’s Arrow system, although US Naval destroyers in the area took down about a dozen more, and successful air intercepts were spotted over the nation of Jordan as well.

Both Israel and the United States would ultimately deem the attack as having been ineffective, but that’s only half the story. The large number of apparent strikes around Nevatim airbase suggests that either the Arrow system was ineffective in stopping the ballistic missiles, or perhaps held in reserve to protect population centers like Tel Aviv, thus exposing Nevatim to direct hits. For Iran’s part, the nation has insisted that it targeted exclusively military installations.

Iran’s Missile Capabilities and the Looming Israeli Retaliation

Even if the Arrow system was never fired at Nevatim, the idea that it would have needed to be held in reserve is a problem, for one key reason. Back in April, when Iran launched a combined wave of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles at Israel, it gained very detailed information about Israel’s air defense capabilities, in an attack that was seemingly intended to carry mostly symbolic value. This time, using about 200 projectiles and choosing exclusively Iran’s far more dangerous ballistic missiles for the job, Iran was able to push the Arrow system to its apparent limits, one way or another.

The trouble for Israel is, Iran has way more than 200 ballistic missiles, suggesting that follow-up strikes of, say, three to four hundred missiles, or even a thousand, could cause major damage if Iran picked its targets wisely. Immediately following the attack, Prime Minister Netanyahu vowed swift retribution against Iran. Experts on the conflict have been awash in speculation about the targets Israel might choose for a retaliatory attack, and particularly, whether Israel would take the risk of attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.

It’s an open question whether Israel can successfully pull off an attack on Iran’s well-protected facilities without US assistance, which America has indicated would not be forthcoming against nuclear or energy-related targets. But to deliver a blow to Iran’s nuclear facilities may be a symbol that Israel’s leadership is loath to leave on the table. According to US intelligence sources, Israel may begin its retaliation by going after military bases and intelligence sites, saving the option to strike nuclear facilities as a backup in case Iran decides to retaliate in response to Israel’s retaliation.

Hardliners in Israel, however, are putting increased pressure on Israel’s government to use the opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, while an excuse to do so is so conveniently presented to Israel’s leaders. Said hardline former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on social media, quote: “Israel now has its greatest opportunity in 50 years, to change the face of the Middle East. […] We have the justification.

We have the tools. Now that Hezbollah and Hamas are paralyzed, Iran stands exposed.” Meanwhile, American hopes for restraint by Israel have been undercut by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has strongly advocated a direct strike against Iran’s nuclear interests.

Also on the table are potential strikes against Iranian oil, particularly its Kharg oil terminal, responsible for 90 percent of Iran’s exports of crude oil. When Israel does launch its seemingly inevitable retaliatory strike, it will be up to Iran to decide whether the exchange will be viewed as a now-complete tit-for-tat, or the start of a wider escalation.

The Fate of Iran’s Quds Force Commander and International Evacuations

One loose thread, still unresolved, doesn’t portend well for the future. That would be the fate of the leader of Iran’s Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, who traveled to Lebanon after the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, but who has not been heard from since the strike that targeted Nasrallah’s successor, Hashem Safieddine. Just to give an idea of how important Qaani is, his predecessor was one Qasem Soleimani, who was assassinated by the United States back in 2020, and who Iran is still trying to take revenge for, in ongoing plots and attempts to assassinate the ex-president who ordered Soleimani’s killing, Donald Trump, as well as select Trump associates.

Esmail Qaani’s deputy has publicly claimed that he’s alive and well, but there is no hard data to indicate Qaani’s survival. Notably, his deputy claimed he was alive at an event in Tehran meant to show solidarity with Palestinian children and teenagers—something that Iran’s Supreme Leader would likely regard as neither the time, nor the place, to acknowledge Qaani’s demise. Although Qaani isn’t as high-profile as Soleimani was, his death at Israel’s hands would likely carry a similar weight, and may be enough to push Iran into further escalation.

In another international development, evacuation efforts are now underway all across Lebanon, as world nations work hard to get their citizens out amidst fears that they may get caught up in Israeli airstrikes. The United States has chartered flights to get Americans out of the country, and directed citizens to additional commercial airline seats that they can use to flee. The United Kingdom has chartered several flights, and so has Spain, while German military flights extracted 130 citizens deemed, quote, “particularly vulnerable” after dropping off several tons of humanitarian aid.

Canada and Australia have arranged for hundreds of their citizens to get out on commercial airlines, while Russia used a government plane to get some fifty people out of the country. Brazil is sending an Air Force jet to make two shuttle flights out of the country each week, while China has evacuated some 200 of its nationals, and South Korea has gotten nearly 100 more. Meanwhile, Israel’s other priorities abroad have included picking a fight with the United Nations, which it did on October the second when it banned UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres from entering the country.

The reason for the ban was Guterres’ failure to, quote, “unequivocally” condemn Iran’s missile strike against Israel, something Guterres would do shortly afterward. And around that same time, the United States committed to sending several thousand additional troops to the Middle East to deter any explosion of violence that may come from a further Israel-Iran exchange. Those deployments included three fighter and attack jet squadrons, bolstering squadrons of hyper-advanced F-22s and F-35s already in the region.

As of the time of writing, it is Israel that will decide this conflict’s next step. That’s true whether it concerns its escalating ground offensive, its anticipated retaliatory strikes against Iran, or its ongoing air campaign over Lebanon. The prospect of any peaceful resolution remains slim, while the risk of escalation into an all-out war across the Middle East appears higher than ever.

The innocent people caught in the middle of this conflict lack any level of agency to prevent or escape what may come next.

Frequently Asked Questions

What were Israel’s stated objectives in the ground invasion of Lebanon?

Israel’s IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari stated that the operation was limited to focused action against Hezbollah’s fighters and infrastructure in southern Lebanon, specifically targeting villages near the border. Israel’s broader goal was to push Hezbollah far enough back and destroy its capabilities thoroughly enough that northern Israeli communities, displaced since Hezbollah began rocket attacks, could return home safely.

What happened during Iran’s ballistic missile barrage on October 1, 2024?

Iran launched 201 ballistic missiles at Israel on the evening of October 1. The attack was handled by Israel’s Arrow air defense system, with additional intercepts by U.S. naval destroyers and Jordanian air assets. Satellite imagery of Nevatim airbase showed over thirty impact craters including damaged hangars and taxiways, though Israel insisted all airbases remained operational. One person was killed by a falling missile fragment in the West Bank.

What was the significance of the targeting of Hashem Safieddine on October 3?

Safieddine was the presumed successor of assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Israel struck a meeting of Hezbollah’s senior leadership where Safieddine was believed present, with shockwaves felt 24 kilometers away. His survival could not be confirmed by Israel, and Hezbollah acknowledged that search-and-rescue operations were ongoing. His death would have marked the second loss of Hezbollah’s overall leader in as many weeks.

What did Lebanon’s Foreign Minister reveal about a ceasefire agreement?

Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib told CNN on October 3 that Hezbollah leader Nasrallah had agreed to a 21-day ceasefire brokered by the United States and France just days before he was killed in an Israeli airstrike. Bou Habib alleged that Israeli PM Netanyahu had also agreed to the settlement, though the U.S. publicly contradicted his account and neither Israel nor Hezbollah ever accepted the proposal publicly.

How did Israel justify striking medical facilities during the air campaign?

Israel accused Hezbollah of using medical vehicles to transport fighters and weapons, and acknowledged a low threshold for verification, stating it would strike any vehicle suspected of military use. By October 4, at least 37 Lebanese medical facilities had been forced to shut down, and the World Health Organization disclosed that at least 28 on-duty medics were killed in a single 24-hour period. Israel also struck areas directly adjacent to hospitals, including a building housing a Hezbollah-affiliated health center just meters from the Lebanese parliament.

Sources

1. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-forces-have-carried-out-raids-lebanon-months-military-says-2024-10-01/
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