US officials work feverishly to stop Israel-Hezbollah confrontation ‘spiraling to a regional war’

By CNN Newsource

Published September 23, 2024 9:00 PM

By Natasha Bertrand, Oren Liebermann and Jennifer Hansler, CNN

(CNN) — The US believes Israel has significantly weakened Hezbollah in strikes over the last week but is still working feverishly behind the scenes to try to convince it not to escalate further and launch a ground incursion into Lebanon over concerns the intensified fighting could spark a broader conflict engulfing the wider Middle East, officials told CNN.

“We are the closest we’ve been to spiraling to a regional war” since Hamas’ October 7 attack, one of the officials said.

Hezbollah began launching drone and rocket attacks against Israel one day later, sparking months of hostilities across what had been Israel’s quietest border for years. The situation escalated last week when Israel carried out covert attacks that detonated Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies. Israel followed up by pounding Beirut and southern Lebanon with airstrikes that have killed hundreds of civilians and Hezbollah leaders in recent days. The group has responded with rocket attacks targeting Israeli sites including Ramat David air base east of Haifa.

The US assesses that neither Israel nor Hezbollah are interested in a full-scale war, officials said. But a senior State Department official expressed skepticism to reporters Monday about Israel’s “escalate to de-escalate” strategy.

“I can’t recall, at least in recent memory, a period in which an escalation or intensification led to a fundamental de-escalation and led to profound stabilization of the situation,” the State Department official told reporters Monday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

The biggest concern right now is that Iran, which is a key backer of Hezbollah, will get involved, the first official said. Tehran has not intervened yet, but they will if they believe they are about to lose their most powerful proxy force, Hezbollah, the official added.

On Monday, Nasser Kanaani, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, warned of “dangerous consequences” following Israel’s strikes.

Israel has already seriously degraded the militant group over the last week, the first official said, killing several senior commanders and significantly impacting Hezbollah’s command and control structure, multiple officials said.

“They’ve probably been taken 20 years backwards,” another official said of the combined effects of Israel’s operations against Hezbollah.

The Pentagon announced Monday that the US is deploying more troops to the Middle East “out of an abundance of caution” as tensions have continued to rise in the region.

The crisis increases the stakes of President Joe Biden’s speech to General Assembly on Tuesday, but expectations he can ratchet down tensions are likely to be low, especially considering the US efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas have floundered.

Allies scrambling for ‘concrete ideas’

Allies at the global gathering in New York are scrambling to come up with “concrete ideas” to de-escalate the situation that threatens to destabilize the region. The senior State Department official did not say if the US expects Israel to carry out a ground incursion in Lebanon if those de-escalation efforts fail but noted that it is “important for everyone to take Israeli preparations seriously.”

“I would not infer from the pace or intensity of Israeli strikes on a given day, the success or failure of our efforts to get them to act with a degree of restraint,” the State Department official added.

On Monday, Israel carried out strikes against 1,600 Hezbollah targets, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said, going after long-range cruise missiles and heavy rockets capable of hitting deep within Israel. Hagari said the weapons were hidden “at the heart of the villages, within civilian homes.”

The massive aerial bombardment left at least 492 dead in Lebanon, according to the country’s health ministry, including 35 children and 58 women. At least 1,645 people were injured, the ministry said.

The single-day death toll made it the deadliest 24 hours of conflict in the country since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

The IDF said Hezbollah fired more than 200 rockets toward Israel on Monday, some of which were intercepted over Haifa, the third largest city in the country and the largest city in northern Israel.

Israel has told the US that a full-scale war is not the intent of its strikes, according to an Israeli official. Instead, Israel’s goal is to return 70,000 citizens, displaced since Hezbollah began launching rockets and drones on October 8, to their homes near the border with Lebanon. The goal is a diplomatic solution through escalation, the Israeli official said.

But the IDF would not rule out the possibility of a ground incursion, an enormous operation that would likely require the call up a significant number of reserves and the relocation of Israeli forces to the border with Lebanon.

“Is the army prepared?” Hagari asked rhetorically at a press briefing Monday. “Yes, the army is in full readiness and we will do whatever is necessary to bring back home all our citizens to the northern border safely.”

The operation which caused the pagers and walkie-talkies to explode, carried out by the Mossad and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), rattled Hezbollah’s ability to communicate, officials said, especially after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah urged the militant organization in February to avoid cell phones.

But even after suffering a major blow, Hezbollah remains a more formidable foe to Israel than Hamas in Gaza, with a pre-war arsenal estimated at 150,000 rockets and missiles, a stockpile built and improved with the help of Iran.

Israel’s cabinet declared a “special situation” across the entire country, allowing it to impose drastic restrictions on civilian life. Those restrictions, including school closures and limits on public gatherings, are currently limited to northern Israel and near Gaza. In a sign of how seriously the government views the situation, hospitals in northern Israel were ordered to move their patients to fortified areas.

Meanwhile, officials are waiting to see how Iran will react. Tehran is yet to respond militarily to the July assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian promised Monday that his country would still seek revenge.

“Ismail Haniyeh was our guest. It was the day that I became the president,” Pezeshkian said at the UN. “Israel came and hit and made him a so-called martyr in order to expand the war in the region and create instability in the region.”