As the sun dipped below the horizon on the evening of 30 July, an explosion thundered across the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Within seconds a plume of smoke rose above the cityscape, leaving behind an apartment building reduced mostly to rubble.
Israel claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed the senior Hezbollah commander, Fouad Shukur, who Israel blames for orchestrating a 27 July strike in the Israel-occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 children and teenagers.
The Israeli airstrike was more severe than some expected. In targeting densely populated Beirut, Israel disregarded the advice of its number one backer, the US. It marks the second time since 7 October Israel has hit Beirut’s southern Dahieh suburb, where Hezbollah has political and security operations, but which is also filled with bustling markets and vibrant communities. . At least four civilians died in the attack, including two women and two young children, and some 68 people were injured, according to Lebanon’s public health ministry.
Then, just hours later before the run rose, an airstrike killed Hamas’s top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, the capital of Israel’s bitter rival, Iran. The strike was announced by the militant group, who blamed Israel for the strike. Haniyeh — who was playing a leading role in ongoing ceasefire and hostage negotiations — is the highest-profile member of Hamas to be killed during Israel’s war in Gaza.
The back-to-back incidents threaten to ignite the region, which has been teetering on the edge of all-out war since Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October. The strikes hit Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah at the same time — risking a coordinated retaliation from all of Israel’s enemies united under Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance, a military alliance built over four decades to oppose Israeli and American power in the Middle East.
“There are lots of ways this could go, depending on how Iran and Hezbollah respond, but this is uncharted territory that could change the paradigm we’ve been in,” Mairav Zonszein, the International Crisis Groups (ICG)’s senior Israel-Palestine analyst, told me. “It’s an inflection point where we can’t go back.”
“We believe it is our duty to take revenge,” Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a statement on his official website following Haniyeh’s assassination. Khamenei said Israel had “prepared the ground for its severe punishment” by killing “a dear guest in our territory”. Hamas’s armed wing, al-Qassam Brigades, also said in a statement that Haniyeh’s killing would “take the battle to new dimensions and have major repercussions”.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Nasser Kanaani, said it was “a clear violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty” and added that Hezbollah and Lebanon had the right to retaliate.
Hezbollah — considered Iran’s most powerful proxy with an estimated stockpile of 130,000 rockets and missiles — joined Hamas’s fight against Israel in Gaza on 8 October and has since been trading near-daily attacks with Israel across Lebanon’s southern border. The armed group has also allowed multiple Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades, to launch their own strikes on Israel from Lebanese soil. Although the attacks have been steadily escalating over the past ten months, they have mostly been concentrated within a few-kilometre radius of the border, with both sides attempting to avoid the conflict spiralling.
However, the near simultaneous targeting of Iran and Hezbollah has thrown the conflict into a “different ballgame”, Mohanad Hage Ali, a Beirut-based fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, said. “Iran and Hezbollah want to avoid an all-out war,” he said, “but now, all-out war is knocking on their door.”
He pointed out that following the attack on Tehran, Iran can no longer be asked to help contain Hezbollah’s response, as they have in the past. “Iran and Hezbollah can’t dodge this bullet—they have to respond.”
Israel and Iran have been on the brink before. After Israel hit Iran’s embassy in Syria in April, the regime retaliated, launching nearly 300 drones and missiles at Israel. Most of the missiles were intercepted, and international efforts managed to contain the attack volley before it spiralled out of control.
This also isn’t the first time in this conflict we’ve seen strikes in Beirut. In early January, Israel assassinated the deputy political leader of Hamas, Saleh Arouri, along with two other Hamas military commanders and four other members, in an airstrike in the Dahieh suburb. Then, Hezbollah responded by launching 62 rockets toward an Israeli air surveillance base in northern Israel and army posts near the border. Considering Israel’s latest strike targeted a Hezbollah commander, the militant group is likely preparing a stronger retaliation than it did in January.
“It was a very painful, precise, and surprising attack [by Israel],” Orna Mizrahi, a senior researcher with the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), told me. Mizrahi, who formerly worked in Israel’s National Security Council and led strategic planning as a specialist in Hezbollah’s activities, said that Shukur was “number two” within Hezbollah, working directly with leader Hassan Nasrallah where he supervised Hezbollah’s advanced weapons stockpiles. “For Nasrallah, it’s a really painful action,” she said.
Mizrahi said Hezbollah may target Israel’s cities of Haifa or Tel Aviv in retaliation, but suggested the attack would likely remain small-scale. “The Israeli operation [in Beirut] is a kind of operation [that elicits] a reaction from Hezbollah that Israel can contain,” Mizrahi said. Israel doesn’t “want a full-scale, multiple front war”.
However, Hage Ali said that if Hezbollah were to retaliate on major Israeli cities, it would likely provoke an immediate escalatory response from Israel, with the backing of the US.
Iran and its allies have made clear that the dual assassinations warrant retaliation – and claimed that they are not to blame in the event of an all-out regional war. In a statement released on 31 July to the UN Security Council, Iran’s UN ambassador said that the US was responsible for Israel’s “horrific crime” as “[t]his act could not have occurred without the authorization and intelligence support of the US”.
Israel is meanwhile blaming Iran and its allies for instigating escalations. Soon after Israel attacked Beirut, Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant posted on X that, “Hezbollah crossed the red line”, referencing the accusations that Hezbollah targeted civilians in the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights days earlier.
Hezbollah has denied the Majdal Shams attack — a rare move for the group, which normally does not refrain from claiming responsibility. Hage Ali told me that it is unlikely Hezbollah targeted the Druze village, where most residents see themselves as citizens of Syria and only 20 per cent have accepted Israeli citizenship. Weapons experts interviewed by the Associated Press raised the possibility that the hit on civilians was an accident. One expert interviewed said that a Hezbollah rocket aimed at the Israeli military position on Mount Hermon may have overshot its target, landing in Majdal Shams.
No matter if the Majdal Shams attack was a mistake or not, it highlights how easily a miscalculation can lead to rapid escalation. “It was clear something like this was going to happen,” Zonszein, from the ICG, said. “With the heavy weapons [being exchanged] back and forth, it was just a matter of time.” She added that the Majdal Shams incident only “reinforced for Israelis how much the situation continues to be unsafe and uncertain and that they’re not protected… and that there’s no end in sight”, which likely encouraged Israel’s strong face-saving retaliation.
Meanwhile, the war in Gaza continues. Qatar and Egypt — mediators in the ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas — expressed concern on 31 July that the killing of Haniyeh could jeopardise efforts to secure a truce in Gaza. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said on X: “Political assassinations and continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on [the] other side?”
An all-out war might be avoided “if Israel doesn’t respond with wider attacks” to the likely forthcoming Hezbollah and Israeli retaliations,” Hage Ali said. But so long as the war on Gaza continues, the region remains on the brink. In the Lebanese capital on Tuesday evening, dozens gathered outside the site of the strike in protest of Israel’s aggression and occupation. One man held up a piece of paper that read: “We will not abandon Palestine”.
[See also: Israel can prevent a regional war]
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