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Israel Strikes Hezbollah in Lebanon After Rocket Attacks Amid Iran Conflict

Israel Strikes Hezbollah in Lebanon After Rocket Attacks Amid Iran Conflict
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Israel pounded Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon overnight, including Beirut’s southern suburbs, after the Iran‑backed group fired rockets and drones into northern Israel in what it called revenge for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei in joint U.S.-Israeli strikes last week.theguardian +1 The Israeli army ordered residents of dozens of villages in southern and eastern Lebanon to evacuate, raising fears of a new full‑scale war on a front that had been largely quiet since a ceasefire took hold in late 2024.theguardian +1

The latest exchange marked a sharp widening of the U.S.-Israel confrontation with Iran, which erupted into open war after strikes that Tehran says killed more than 200 people nationwide and left hundreds wounded, including at least 108 dead in a blast at a girls’ school in southern Iran.france24 Hezbollah said it was acting in response to the “criminal American and Zionist aggression” that killed Khamenei and vowed to “fulfil our duty in confronting aggression,” while Israel’s military declared the group “fully responsible for any escalation.”aljazeera +1

How the Lebanon Front Blew Open

Hezbollah’s cross‑border barrage began late Sunday into Monday, with rockets and drones launched from southern Lebanon toward Israeli targets including the city of Haifa, according to Israeli and Lebanese reports.theguardian +1 Israel responded within hours, striking what it described as Hezbollah command centers, weapons depots and launch sites in Beirut’s densely populated Dahiyeh suburb, as well as in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.theguardian +1

The attacks shattered a fragile calm that had held since a November 2024 ceasefire ended more than a year of low‑intensity war in which Israeli strikes killed about 400 people in Lebanon and severely degraded Hezbollah’s leadership, including the assassinations of longtime chief Hassan Nasrallah and senior commander Haytham Ali Tabatabai.timesofisrael +1 Lebanese officials said Israel had repeatedly warned in recent days that any Hezbollah involvement in a U.S.-Iran war would trigger massive strikes on Lebanon’s infrastructure, including Beirut’s airport.timesofisrael

Lebanon’s Fragility and the Risk of Regional Spiral

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam appealed to Hezbollah not to drag the country into “another adventure,” stressing that decisions of war and peace rest with the Lebanese state.timesofisrael Yet the group’s fire on Israel and the scale of the Israeli response underscored how limited Beirut’s leverage is over a militia that is both a dominant political actor at home and a pillar of Iran’s regional network of allies.

The United States ordered non‑essential staff to leave its embassy in Beirut as European governments urged “maximum restraint” and warned of catastrophic humanitarian consequences if fighting in Lebanon escalates.aljazeera +1 Analysts say a sustained Hezbollah‑Israel war, layered onto U.S.-Israeli operations against Iran and Iranian retaliation across the Gulf, could ignite multiple fronts from Iraq to Yemen and disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, through which around 20% of global oil exports pass.reuters Oil prices have already jumped more than 10% since the first strikes on Iran, reflecting investor fears of a prolonged regional conflict.cnn

The Bigger Picture

The sudden collapse of the Lebanon ceasefire has turned the Israel‑Iran showdown from a largely bilateral clash into a multi‑front crisis with major implications for global security and the economy. With Khamenei’s death, U.S. and Israeli leaders insisting they will keep hitting Iranian capabilities, and Hezbollah now openly engaged, the central question is whether diplomacy can catch up with events before the region slides into the kind of all‑out war that governments in Beirut, European capitals and the Gulf say they are desperate to avoid.aljazeera +2