Middle East Conflict Spirals Toward Catastrophe as Israel and Iran Trade Blows
The war in the Middle East is continuing to spiral toward catastrophe: Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles against Israel Tuesday, targeting what it said were three military bases around Tel Aviv. Only moments before, two attackers fired on a crowd of train passengers in the same city, killing seven before being themselves killed by armed members of the public.
The attacks followed a major escalation in Lebanon by Israel, which has been targeting leaders of Hezbollah — which experts describe as “the crown jewel” in Iran’s network of regional proxies. Israel now is pledging a forceful response.
“Iran made a big mistake tonight — and it will pay for it,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a security cabinet briefing in Jerusalem.
In turn, Iranian state media carried a statement from the military vowing “vast destruction” if Israel retaliates.
As Israel and Iran exchange blows, some experts see a doomed project of diplomacy to quell the crisis, and an inevitable escalation into regional war. They also see the United States getting sucked ever deeper into the mire of conflict, even as Washington continues to believe military deterrence can contain the crisis.
The key question is whether Israel will now carry out large-scale direct strikes on Iran.
“I’m interested in how the Israelis respond now. They might try to use this as an opportunity to take out the Iranian nuclear program,” says Colin P. Clarke, the director of research at the Soufan Group, a global security and intelligence consultancy. “With the U.S. election looming, they view the Biden administration as a lame duck. The Israelis may believe they can strike Iran’s territory, and avoid a major backlash from Washington.”
The Israeli strike last week that killed Hassan Nasrallah, the decades-long leader of the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, came after a swiftly brutal campaign to methodically eliminate not just the top echelon of the group’s leadership, but pick apart its command and control structure, down to company-level commanders and administrative staff.
And while history suggests new leaders will arise to replace the fallen, the group will not find it easy to replace virtually its entire leadership cadre. As far as Israel is concerned, that fight is nearly over — and it is winning.
“A new path has been charted and the balances of power and deterrence have shifted throughout the region in Israel’s favor,” says Avi Melamed, a former official in Israeli intelligence and Arab affairs specialist. “On the operational side, Iran, long seen as a destabilizer, has had the most important arms of its ‘Axis of Resistance’ and defiance brought to its knees, and Israel has proven itself to be the most valuable partner” against the Iranian regime.
Hezbollah has been decapitated, but it has not been destroyed. And Israel is not letting up the pressure. On Monday, it announced it was sending ground forces into Lebanon, following weeks of sustained air and artillery strikes and regular cross-border firefights and incursions.
“In Lebanon, they call it a ‘limited’ ground operation. In Ukraine, they call it a ‘Special Military Operation.’ What’s the difference? It’s an invasion,” says Sami Zoughaib, research manager at The Policy Initiative, an independent non-profit think tank in Beirut.
As Israel continues conducting “targeted strikes” against surviving Hezbollah commanders, it has also hunted weapons and personnel tied to Iran and its proxies in Syria and Yemen.
The strikes in Yemen are intended not only to stop the Houthis from launching missiles against Israel, “but also to send a reminder to Iran that Israel maintains long-distance capabilities.”
“Tonight’s Iranian strike against Israel appears to be an attempt to reestablish its deterrence and possibly a desperate move to disrupt Israel’s advances against its key ally, Hezbollah,” Melamed shared. “However, the scale of the launches has likely escalated tensions to the brink of a regional conflict that Iran may struggle to win. Israel’s response this time will likely be broader and less restrained than it was in the wake of Iran’s unprecedented direct strike in April.”
That strike was in response to Israel’s attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria. At that time, Iran sent hundreds of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles at Israel, saying it was targeting airbases. According to Israeli officials, “99 percent” of the incoming munitions were intercepted by Israeli air defenses — and also American, British, French and Jordanian fighter jets.
Unlike the attack in April, on Tuesday, Iran appeared to use medium-range ballistic missiles exclusively, including some of its most advanced weapons. While Israel does have a sophisticated air defense system, known as Iron Dome, intended to intercept short-range rockets and missiles, it relies on different systems — David’s Sling and Arrow — for ballistic missile defense.
Ballistic missiles are difficult to intercept due to their speed and steep terminal trajectory: Defenders have mere seconds to respond. By launching hundreds of missiles in a short timeframe, Iran sought to saturate and penetrate Israel’s defenses. The extent of damage and number of casualties is unclear, but videos show a large number impacting on the ground.
The U.S., whose “unwavering commitment” to Israel guarantees it the shotgun seat in Netanyahu’s war machine, continues to provide cover — despite White House officials limply protesting they had no specific knowledge about Israel’s plans to dismantle Hezbollah and invade Lebanon.
“At my direction, the United States military actively supported the defense of Israel, and we’re still assessing the impact,” President Joe Biden said in a televised briefing. “But based on what we know now, the attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective.”
With 40,000 troops and hundreds of aircraft and ships already in the region, Washington announced it is sending even more firepower. Squadrons of fighter jets and an aircraft carrier battle group sent to relieve units nearing the end of their deployments will instead simply join them, the Pentagon says.
“The forces due to rotate into theater to replace them will now instead augment the in-place forces already in the region,” Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said in a briefing on Monday, adding that the purpose of the build-up is “to further enhance the defense posture of U.S. forces in the Middle East region to deter aggression and reduce the risk of a broader regional war.”
Whether or not regional war can be avoided, regional upheaval has already been accomplished.
Daily life in Lebanon has been upended, with hundreds killed in Israeli strikes and nearly a million people on the move, fleeing violence in the south.
The Lebanese government remains weak, and cannot match Israel’s military might — withdrawing the Lebanese Army from the border with Israel hours before the invasion began, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, Israel issued warnings for civilians to evacuate far beyond the U.N.-mandated buffer zone created in the wake of Israel’s war against Hezbollah in 2006.
“Lebanon has always been a country that has sustained severe damage from the Israeli state — throughout the 1950s, during the 1982 invasion, in 2006 and now again. It’s not because — as things are often framed — the people of Lebanon hate the Jews,” Zoughaib tells Rolling Stone. “We get a very bad rap. We are thought to be warmongering lunatics — chasing endless war with the West, with each other, and with Israel. But I really think it’s Israeli society that has mutated.”
For the first time in decades, some observers find themselves contemplating a political future for Lebanon without Hezbollah. To Zoughaib, such “white savior” daydreaming misses the point.
“Israel has really done Hezbollah a service,” he says. “Beginning with the protests in 2019, there was a lot of opposition to Hezbollah, a lot of domestic pressure against them.”
“But now that the threat is Israel, pressuring Lebanon under the weight of bombs, there is a lot of solidarity so far,” Zoughaib observes. “But I think this will subside. War might spill over into increased violence between different groups, along the rifts that shape Lebanese society. It all depends on how protracted the war is going to be.”
Clarke from the Soufan Group believes the character of the invasion will determine its outcome.
“The thing that is going to be really important about the ground invasion is to not stay too long,” he says. “International opinion will turn against Israel even more. They lose their advantages if they stay, and get bogged down in counterinsurgency. Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah offers a far more complex insurgent organization, playing on its home turf with better weapons and greater support.”
The effects of Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah are also being felt in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad relies on Iranian support as one of the pillars propping up his regime.
Syrian rebels in northern Syria celebrated as news of Nasrallah’s death spread, believing that with Hezbollah weakened, Assad’s rule will become more tenuous. But the fractured Syrian resistance lacks the coordination and resources to take advantage of the situation.
“The question I’m more interested in is whether Israel would expel Hezbollah’s forces from southern Syria. That was always the looming threat for Israel,” says Dr. Nicole Grajewski, a fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, with expertise in Iran. She is watching closely to see if there is any evidence of Israeli ground operations in Syria. But, she adds, “I don’t think Israel would benefit from a complete destabilization.”
Israel has carried out strikes targeting some facilities and personnel in Syria, but there is limited information about the nature of those strikes.
“Israel has gone after mostly targets of opportunity, those affiliated with Hezbollah or IRGC forces,” Grajewski tells Rolling Stone. “Iran’s two main tools for responding to Israel are its Axis of Resistance, and its missiles. Those have been shown to be not effective. The Axis of Resistance is not as robust as it seemed.”
Iran will likely continue to use proxy forces in Iraq, Yemen, and Syria to opportunistically strike at Israel. But none of these groups are a replacement for Hezbollah.
“They got shellacked, far beyond what any analyst thought could happen. Even with Iranian help, it’ll take some time for them to rebuild,” Clarke says. “But it’s a force of 30,000 people. They’re part of the social fabric of Lebanon.”
Hezbollah began firing thousands of rockets into northern Israel in “solidarity” with Hamas, after the Palestinian Sunni Islamist group carried out a brazen raid from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed more than 1,100 Israelis and took around 250 hostages.
Many believed the security failure of Oct. 7 was the beginning of the end for Netanyahu. But it hasn’t worked out that way.
Instead, Netanyahu has presided over an enduring and brutal war in Gaza that has already reportedly claimed more than 40,000 Palestinian lives. Netanyahu also evidently saw an opportunity to carry the fight against Hezbollah ever deeper into Lebanon. Now Israel’s hardliners appear on the brink of accomplishing nearly everything they wanted.
“Netanyahu is enjoying a euphoric regaining of traction in the government,” Melamed says, pointing out a speech the Israeli prime minister gave in which he appealed to the “the noble Persian people,” saying that freedom from their oppressive regime “will come a lot sooner than people think.”
The speech was intended for a domestic audience as much as anything else, Melamed believes: “His message today to the ‘people of Iran’ was more targeted towards Likud’s mainstream supporters who previously doubted him, and it is likely he will seek to leverage his crushing of Hezbollah to continue his political career and legacy.”
Over the past several months, Israel has also conducted massive military operations against what it says are Palestinian militants in the West Bank. But many Palestinians say that these operations provide cover for Israeli settlers to wave the bloody shirt of Oct. 7 to justify a land grab, fulfilling the long-standing dreams of religious extremists.
In the Palestinian Territories, where Israeli airstrikes and raids targeting Hamas continue, any hope that the world would step in and end the Israeli onslaught has evaporated.
So too, has hope of establishing an independent Palestinian state, and securing peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
“Thirty years of efforts to convince people that peace was possible — this Israeli government killed it,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said in a press conference at the U.N. Security Council. “[Netanyahu] simply does not want a two-state solution. And if he does not want a two-state solution, can you ask Israeli officials, what is their end game — other than just wars, and wars, and wars?”
Israel has achieved tactical success in Gaza and against Hezbollah. But it hasn’t solved the bigger problem.
“The question is, what is Israel’s ultimate objective?” says Zoughaib. “At present, none is apparent beyond the fever dream of ‘changing the Middle East.’”
Looming in the background is Iran’s nuclear program.
“Iran is Israel’s most formidable threat, its most constant enemy in the region,” Grajewski says. “I think we will see an Israeli retaliation, but I’m wondering what Iran is going to do with its nuclear program. Will it accelerate? Will there be a decision to progress with weaponization? That’s going to be the decisive factor in how this plays out.”
As the missiles fly and the war spreads, the U.S. now finds itself standing on familiar ground: deploying its military in the middle of a multilayered sectarian conflict in the Middle East, with no clear strategy, no simple solutions… and no end in sight.
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