Tel Aviv, Israel — A rising fear in Washington and other Western capitals is that Israel’s bombardment could spark a wider regional conflict including Iran, a regional powerhouse, or its proxy forces, as concern over the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip grows.
According to Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Israel has “crossed the red lines, which may force everyone to take action,” as he stated on X on Sunday.
Many analysts think both Washington and Tehran have little interest in a regional war. The ferocity of Israel’s shelling of Gaza, which has killed over 8,000 people, including thousands of civilians and children, according to Palestinian health officials, presents a significant risk of miscalculation and may quickly send the situation spiraling out of control.
“A genuine possibility of intensification exists,” stated Sanam Vakil, who oversees the Middle East and North Africa division at Chatham House, a think tank located in London.
Hezbollah militants supported by Tehran have been exchanging rocket fire with Israel over its northern border with Lebanon ever since Hamas began its terrorist attacks. According to both sides, around 40 Hezbollah fighters and seven Israeli soldiers have died in the last three weeks.
Additionally, Iran issued a warning last week that if Israel’s military proceeds with a full-scale ground operation into Gaza, it may fire a missile toward the northern port city of Haifa.
Further away, two carrier groups have been sent by the United States to the Mediterranean Sea in response to a slew of drone and rocket strikes on American military bases in Syria and Iraq by militants with ties to Iran. Additionally, on Friday, it ordered two F-16 fighter jets to target Syrian ammunition and weaponry installations.
On social media, Iranian President Hassan Raisi remarked, “Washington asks us to not do anything, but they keep giving widespread support to Israel.” Iran’s proxies are known as the “Axis of Resistance,” and the United States “sent messages to them,” but “received a clear response on the battlefield.”
According to Vakil, Iran and Hezbollah are more likely to be threatening war in order to prevent a full-scale Israeli ground invasion than they are to want a bigger war.
However, she added, another degree of uncertainty exists because the Iranian-sponsored militias function somewhat independently of Tehran. Iran, which also supports Hamas, declared its support for the strike on October 7 even though it was not the cause of the outburst.
Fears across borders
There are concerns of a repeat of the 2006 conflict, which claimed the lives of hundreds of Israeli soldiers, more than 1,500 Lebanese citizens (the majority of whom were civilians), and significant portions of Lebanon’s economic infrastructure. These concerns are shared by both sides of the border.
Efrat and Yhonatan Bitton said they left their house in Shtula, a little farming community called a moshav, which is comparable to a kibbutz, less than a mile from the Israeli border, together with their three children, aged 10, 9, and 8. A few days later, a local builder was killed, three others were injured, and their neighbors’ windows were smashed by a Hezbollah anti-tank missile that had fallen onto their street.
Yhonatan, 43, a forest guide, observed, “There was a silence before we left that made you feel like something was going to happen every moment.” “We told our children a little bit about what’s happened, and they said: ‘Why do you tell us?'” his 32-year-old business administrator wife continued. We are terrified now. We can’t sleep at night, so we don’t want to hear about that.
Less than three miles away in the town of Rmaych on the Lebanese side, 43-year-old Hiba Andrawos is stranded in her house with her three daughters, who are 11 and 9 years old.
“I still feel afraid. Andrawos, who briefly brought her family to the capital city of Beirut but was forced to return home due to a shortage of funds and space, said, “Even right now, I’m very, very scared.” She stated her children are so nervous that they hardly communicate, and she is undergoing tests after chemo and surgery for breast cancer.
Referring to the battle in 2006, Andrawos remarked, “Every time I hear bombing, I start thinking I’m going to have to relive the July War.” “To be honest, I’m terrified.”
Potential for attack
Hezbollah has an arsenal far larger than that of Hamas, the other violent group supported by Iran. According to former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Hezbollah had “far more rockets and missiles than most governments” in 2010, and that number has only increased.
A study published eight years later by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank referred to the Shiite Muslim organization as “the world’s most-heavily armed non-state actor, with a large and diverse stockpile of ballistic, anti-air, anti-tank, and anti-ship missiles, as well as unguided artillery rockets.”
Only a small portion of that arsenal has been utilized thus far, and that too inside a small region that Israel and Lebanon have been at war over for decades.
Iran’s longtime foes, the United States and Israel, are united in their fear that Tehran may develop a nuclear weapon. Proliferation specialists concur that Israel possesses nuclear weapons already, even if it hasn’t and probably won’t confirm their presence.
Subterranean travel
People were “on the edge of our seats” about an attack, according to spokesperson David Ratner at Rambam Hospital in Haifa, which is located barely 20 miles from the Lebanese border.
The world’s largest guarded underground hospital would be the site of a laborious, hour-long relocation for its 1,500 doctors and up to 2,000 patients in the event that missiles, as they did in the 2006 war, manage to reach the hospital.
It is an enormous engineering achievement: It needed the removal of 10 million cubic feet of dirt, or enough to fill 100 Olympic-sized swimming pools, and cost 450 million shekels, or about $110 million. Due to the hospital’s location directly on the port, during the two and a half years of construction, about 70 billion gallons of water had to be refilled into the neighboring sea, making way for the installation of 7,000 tons of steel and 3 million cubic feet of concrete suitable for a bomb shelter.
In the event that Hezbollah launched missiles at Haifa as part of a larger regional conflict, the hospital would initiate a carefully thought-out evacuation procedure. In the hopes that Israel’s Iron Dome would withstand a volley of rockets that would take 90 seconds to reach the city, that would still require four hours.
“We anticipate having several hours to prepare,” stated Dr. Michael Halberthal, the director of the hospital. “We’ll have to do it with rockets falling all around us if not.”