Over the past six months, tensions along Israel’s border with Lebanon have escalated dramatically. Israel has now deployed 100,000 troops to its north to confront the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, and the fighting there has steadily intensified. Nearly 400 Lebanese—including around 70 civilians and three journalists—have been killed, 90,000 Lebanese civilians have been displaced from around 100 towns and villages along the Israeli-Lebanese border, and Lebanese villages and olive groves have incurred widespread damage from phosphorus bombs. Hezbollah, meanwhile, has attempted to demonstrate its support for Hamas, now under siege from Israel in Gaza after its October 7 attack, by firing rockets almost daily at Israeli towns and military targets, displacing nearly 80,000 Israelis and killing a half dozen civilians.
Then, on April 1, Israel bombed Iran’s consulate in Damascus, killing senior officers in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. Two weeks later, Iran launched an unprecedented missile attack on Israeli soil, and Israel retaliated with a strike on Iran. Both Israel’s attack and Iran’s response were unexpected. Iran, in particular, has a long history of muted responses to Israeli provocations, simply because a war with Israel or its main ally, the United States, is not in Tehran’s interest.
But Israel’s attack and Iran’s response upended this uneasy status quo and broke with decades of precedent. Although the world’s focus has now turned to Iran, the heightened tensions between Iran and Israel dramatically increase the odds of conflict—or even a full-blown war—between Israel and Hezbollah. Indeed, on April 21, Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s emergency war cabinet, declared that Israel’s border with Lebanon now constitutes its “operative front” and its “greatest and most urgent challenge.”
A special envoy appointed by U.S. President Joe Biden had been attempting to broker a deal between Israel and Hezbollah to demarcate the long-contested border. Since Israel’s attack in Damascus and Iran’s response, these negotiations seem to have slipped to a second priority. But to prevent a regional escalation, the United States—as well as France, which has recently merged its own diplomatic initiatives with U.S. endeavors—must redouble its diplomatic efforts to freeze Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah. These efforts, however, must first focus on pressing for an end to the conflict in Gaza.
Since October 7, Tehran has sought to reap strategic benefits from Israel’s operations in Gaza. Iran has tried to expand its support—and that of its partners—among Sunni Arabs angry at the destruction and catastrophic loss of Palestinian lives in Gaza and exert greater influence over the political outcome of the Gaza conflict. It has also sought to deepen its cooperation with Russia in Syria, where Israel’s attacks against Iranian positions have intensified.
But Tehran’s actions also appeared to have been carefully calibrated to prevent an all-out war. For decades, Iran has been building its influence across the Middle East by establishing its so-called axis of resistance, a group of proxy forces and partners in a number of countries in the region. In theory, this strategy stressed that if Israel attacked one member of the axis, the others would come to its defense.
But the experience of the past decade suggested that after Hamas’s assault on Israel on October 7 and Israel’s subsequent devastating attacks on Gaza, Iran would aim to avoid serious escalation. Since 2017, Israel has struck Iranian-backed forces in Syria and mounted cyberattacks and assassinations........