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Aris Messinis

Fears that the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/israel-hamas-war/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Gaza war</a> could trigger a wider and more devastating Middle East war are growing as clashes with Iranian-backed Hezbollah intensify along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon and Israel presses ahead with its plans for a ground incursion into Gaza aimed at destroying Hamas.

The fears spiked on Tuesday following a strike on a Gaza hospital that appears to have killed hundreds of people, triggering angry denunciations and calls for vengeance across the region. Demonstrators took to the streets in the West Bank, marched to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, and converged on Israeli diplomatic missions in Turkey and Jordan, blaming the strike on Israel, which has denied responsibility.

The bloodshed fueled already rising tensions between Israel and Iran, which backs Hamas along with an array of allied militias and proxies. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian warned before the strike that Iran’s militia allies in the “resistance front” could take what he called “preemptive action” to deter an Israeli ground offensive, and the risk is high that an incident such as this could prompt escalatory attacks in revenge. “We have to retaliate from Lebanon,” the demonstrators chanted in Beirut.

But Iran and its allies are also confronting a dilemma that could determine whether the conflict is contained to Gaza or triggers a multi-front war, analysts said.

Over the past decade, Iran has built up a formidable array of militias and proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen in addition to Hamas, and all or any of them could be called on to open up new fronts. Iran also has to calculate whether it can afford to expend the considerable military leverage it derives from these allies in a potentially ruinous conflict for the purpose of defending one of them, Hamas, in Gaza.

Washington has positioned two aircraft carrier groups in the Eastern Mediterranean to deter Hezbollah, and could also be drawn into the fight if Hezbollah launches a full-scale assault on Israel. Iranian-backed fighters in Syria, including Hezbollah forces there, would almost certainly join in; there have already been exchanges of fire along the Syrian border, and activists report that Iranian-allied fighters have been relocating to southern Syria from the east of the country.

Iranian-backed groups in Iraq have warned that they will attack American interests in the country if the United States gets involved, and the Houthis in Yemen, another of Tehran’s allies, have also made threats.

“If this starts going bad, it could go bad in a lot of places simultaneously and very quickly,” said Jon Alterman, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “We are absolutely heading into a big unknown.”

The biggest concern, however, is the well-armed, battle-trained and highly disciplined Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, said Michael Horowitz, director of intelligence at Le Beck security consultancy. Hezbollah has amassed between 130,000 and 150,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israel, some of which could reach deep into Israeli cities or be used to deliver precision strikes against Israeli military facilities such as air bases, curtailing Israel’s fighting capabilities.

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A full-scale war with Lebanon would turn Gaza “into a sideshow,” said Firas Maksad, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, bringing a level of destruction and bloodshed to Israeli civilians unseen in all of the country’s wars. “What Hezbollah has in military hardware and capability dwarfs Hamas in Gaza.”

But Israel probably would also inflict massive damage on Lebanon, as it did in the 2006 war and the 1982 invasion of the country. On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Lebanon that “the price you will pay will be far heavier” than in any previous war.

As Secretary of State Antony Blinken shuttled among Middle East capitals, the Iranian foreign minister was visiting Tehran’s allies in Syria, Lebanon and Qatar. In Beirut, where he met with Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah, as well as senior Hamas figures, he threatened Israel with a “huge earthquake” should the attacks on Gaza continue.

The diplomacy aimed at averting a second front, however, has brought signs that neither side is interested in a wider war, despite the heated public statements.

It appears the Iranians do not want an escalation and are keen to find ways to avoid one, according to a regional diplomat familiar with some of the Iranian conversations with that nation’s allies who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. While making it clear that their allies are prepared to fight, Iran and Hezbollah have not publicly set red lines for what scenario in Gaza would trigger their involvement — which could range from continued attacks on Gaza, the launch of a ground invasion or only in the event that Hamas is at risk of being completely defeated, the diplomat said.

Iran’s intentions can’t be independently confirmed, but if its caution is real, it seems likely that Hamas’s assault was not part of a broader plan to draw Israel into a wider war, said Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

A senior Hamas official, speaking from Beirut, insisted that Iran was not involved in the Hamas assault, in which at least 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed and nearly 200 taken hostage. He said Hamas had not anticipated the scale and speed of the collapse of Israel’s defenses and that Hamas was caught off guard also by the ferocity of Israel’s response; over 3,000 Palestinians have died in Israeli airstrikes, according to Palestinian authorities.

“Of course the Iranians help us and train us and give us support, but this operation specifically was very confidential and secret,” said Ali Barakah, who heads Hamas’s international relations department. He described what he said was intended as a “limited operation” to trade Israeli hostages for Hamas prisoners and said the expectation was that Israel would conduct limited airstrikes against Gaza before embarking on negotiations.

“The collapse of the Israeli army surprised us, and this is how it got so big,” he said.

Iranian Foreign Ministry/Handout

The real moment of choice for Iran would come if Hamas were on the brink of annihilation, putting Iran’s entire “ring of fire” regional strategy on the line, Maksad said.

Built up over decades since the creation of Hezbollah in 1982, the strategy aims to position enough militia firepower on Israel’s borders to deter an Israeli attack on Iran, a long-standing fear that has grown in recent years as Iran has accelerated its nuclear program. The Palestinian cause is central to the strategy and to Iran’s identity as a revolutionary Islamic state.

Over the past two years, Iran has sought to reinforce the strategy with a concept known as “unity of fronts,” under which Hezbollah, Hamas and other regional allies have pledged closer cooperation and mutual defense, said Mohanad Hage Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center. Hezbollah and Hamas have set up a joint coordination center in Beirut with a view to collaborating in ways that further deter Israel from attacks on any one of them.

“It’s a sort of NATO for these non-state actors,” Hage Ali said. “This is a big-time test of it.”

Iran almost certainly doesn’t want to risk undermining Hezbollah’s deterrent capabilities for the sake of Gaza, but at the same time it can’t afford to be seen as abandoning its allies if the deterrence is to survive, Knights said.

“You can’t just be seen to dump your allies,” he said. “But Iran doesn’t want attacks on mainland Iran, and it doesn’t want to spend Hezbollah. We seem to have reluctant escalators here.”

Suzan Haidamous in Washington contributed to this report.

2013, Citation, Overseas Press Club

2003, George Polk Award 

2003, Chicago Journalists Association, Daniel Pearl Award  

1996, Overseas Press Club Madeline Dane Ross Award

1996, National Association of Black Journalists International Reporter of the Year

1996, Clarion Award

1995, National Association of Black Journalists International Reporter of the Year

Cambridge University, BA and MA in history

Liz Sly is a correspondent-at-large covering global affairs. She has spent more than 17 years covering the Middle East, including the first and second Iraq wars. Other postings include Washington, Africa, China, Afghanistan and Italy.

Liz Sly

Mideast teeters on brink of wider conflict as Iran ponders its options

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