CHATHAM HOUSE Could Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah open the way to a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities? - Expert comment Published 24 September 2024

 CHATHAM  HOUSE 

Could Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah open the way to a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities?

Tel Aviv may believe now is the time to neutralize all immediate threats to its border, as a preliminary to long-sought strikes on Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Expert comment

Published 24 September 2024 3 minute READ

Bronwen Maddox

Director and Chief Executive

As Israel’s strikes in Lebanon increase, the question of its strategic intentions become more pressing.  

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen to escalate the conflict with Hezbollah on its northern border, even though there is no resolution to the war with Hamas in Gaza, and at a time when violence in the West Bank, including from Israeli settlers, is rising.

Why is Israel doing this? Most explanations point to tactical objectives, dealing with individual threats as they emerge. There is no indication of an underlying strategy for securing peace.  

Instead, some analysts worry that Israel’s intention may be to create conditions for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Weakening Hezbollah

Israeli ministers justify the attacks on Lebanon by invoking an urgent desire to address the situation in northern Israel. Around 60,000 Israelis have been displaced from their homes in the border region, due to Hezbollah rocket attacks as well as their fears of an invasion and abductions like those of 7 October.

It is possible to take this explanation at face value, to some extent. Political pressure to resolve the problem of the displaced residents of the north has been rising within Israel, even if the issue is far less visible to those outside the country. It is growing in intensity as the first anniversary of 7 October approaches. Ministers say that it is ‘intolerable’ for a country to be forced to surrender the use of its land like this.

Yet it is hard to see how the residents of northern Israel could be confident enough to return to their homes without military action to drive Hezbollah forces a considerable way back from the border.

Military commanders talk with confidence of a quick incursion to push back Hezbollah. But such plans do not always remain neat, as Israel’s previous moves into southern Lebanon have shown.

Last week’s dramatic exploding pager attacks in Lebanon and Syria, which saw key Hezbollah commanders killed and wounded, will have destroyed much of the group’s communications. 

But its forces remain embedded in villages near the border and an Israeli military operation into Lebanon will be no easy matter. Missile strikes alone are unlikely to secure the territory and will provoke Hezbollah missiles in return – as is now happening.

Political calculations

Beyond the wish to degrade Hezbollah, other commentators suggest that short-term political factors may lie behind the attacks. Netanyahu remains under pressure from court cases for corruption. A state of perpetual conflict is convenient for him, many think, allowing him to continue in power and keep demands to give testimony at bay.

The sense of enemies on all sides also gives the more extreme members of his cabinet – particularly Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir – cover to push ahead with the expansion of settlements and roads in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich…has authorized the public funding of 70 illegal outposts.

Since 7 October, Israel’s cabinet has authorized a rapid expansion of these settlements, which are illegal under international law. It has approved five new settlements, while more than 25 new outposts have been established, according to the Settlement Watch group of Peace Now, an Israeli NGO. Smotrich has authorized the public funding of 70 illegal outposts, connecting them to water, electricity and paving roads.

On Sunday, during a discussion with Chatham House at the Labour Party conference, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said that the UK was talking with the EU about the possibility of sanctions against Smotrich and Ben-Gvir.

It would be controversial for the UK and EU, supporters of Israel, to sanction ministers of a democratically elected government. But their concern is that Israel is using the war in Gaza and now with Hezbollah to distract international attention from its incursions into the West Bank.

Attacking Iran

But there may be a wider strategic intention behind Israel’s new attacks: moving directly against Iran, the leader of the so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’ which includes Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen.

Israel has long petitioned US administrations to carry out strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities or support an Israeli attack – only to receive a chilly response.

Since US President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the JPCOA, the pact under which Tehran agreed to restrain its nuclear programme, Iran has made itself essentially a threshold nuclear weapon state.

Israel has long petitioned US administrations to carry out strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities or support an Israeli attack – only to receive a chilly response from Washington.

On Sunday Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, described Iran as an ‘empire of evil’. Speaking to Sky television, he said that his country’s forces would ‘remove any threats that are existential to the state of Israel ’. From Herzog, a moderate who is no great supporter of Netanyahu, this was strikingly emphatic talk.

For countries working to avoid a regional war, the concern is that Israel’s government may be using the Lebanon attacks as a way to create the option of a future attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Israel might decide to strike regardless of the US election outcome, hoping for support from Trump…but willing to tolerate censure from a Harris administration.

By taking out Hezbollah communications through the exploding pagers, Israel has weakened the group’s coherence as a fighting force and could choose to further degrade the group, through an attack into Lebanon or otherwise. Israel may hope that by neutralizing Hezbollah sufficiently in the coming months, it can act against Iran without the need to worry about its northern border.  

Analysts are concerned that Israel might decide to strike regardless of the US election outcome, hoping for support from a Trump presidency but willing to tolerate censure from a Harris administration if necessary.

However, such a strategy would be extremely risky. Escalating conflict to the north – or east – will not bring Israel a resolution to the conflict in Gaza. 

Talks with Hamas on a ceasefire and hostage release deal are not progressing well, Western officials suggest. Each side has recently added new conditions: Israel wants to retain control of the ‘Philedelphi corridor’ along the Gaza-Egypt border, and Hamas wants additional prisoner releases from Israeli jails.

Without a ceasefire, and then agreement on a pathway to a state for Palestinians, Israel risks losing ever more international support. What is more, by expanding the conflict it will have no way to access the diplomatic prize that still dangles in front of it: normalized relations with Saudi Arabia, and through that, help from its neighbours in containing the threat from Iran.