Israel carried out a complex operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon over two consecutive days on September 18 and 19, targeting the group’s command structure via its pagers and walkie-talkies. The attack was unprecedented in the history of the conflict between Israel and its adversaries. Given the complexity of the operation, involving elements in Lebanon and beyond, it was evident that the planning had taken months, if not years.

The attack has upended the rules of engagement between Israel and Hezbollah, sweeping away the deterrence that the Shiite movement had established during their last full-scale war in July 2006. This presents Hezbollah and its Iranian patron with a stark choice: either carry out a major attack to restore that deterrence, or continue to roll with Israel’s punches. This is now the subject of intense discussions within the party, even as it carries out investigations to establish how its security was so dramatically breached.

The Operation and its Repercussions

The Israeli operation wounded or killed large numbers of Hezbollah fighters and field commanders. Its damage to the movement would have been even greater had it coincided with the start of an Israeli ground operation, sowing confusion among combat groups and favoring an Israeli advance.

In the event, that ground invasion did not take place. Yet the attack remains a heavy blow to Hezbollah and its standing with its base, coming after months of steadily escalating Israeli bombardment and corresponding Hezbollah operations against northern Israel. So far, the Lebanese movement has typically responded to Israeli strikes in a relatively measured manner, taking into account regional and international realities.

But this time, the party’s constituency felt the direct impact of the operation, presenting Hezbollah with a binary choice: either abandon its policy of calculated and measured responses and opt for a full and strong retaliation, or roll back its involvement in the war through a tactical retreat.

The operation has also shifted the international and regional agenda on Lebanon, as Israel has started following through on its threats to expand its operations, possibly to the point of a ground invasion. Foreign actors have treated the communications attack as the latest step, albeit a very dangerous one, in a string of reciprocal attacks between Israel and Hezbollah. Despite their condemnation of the scale and nature of the operation, they see it as somewhere on the scale between a campaign of assassinations and the threshold of a full-scale war.

It is important to examine the nature of the operation in order to understand the the evolution of the military situation. Israel and Hezbollah have both developed their responses and their technological and military capabilities in a manner reminiscent to the early days of the Ukrainian-Russian war, in which both sides employed new weapons and techniques that differed from traditional wars.

Therefore, external players are continuing to see the operation as within the rules of engagement, it being understood that the party’s decision to engage in any comprehensive war is contingent upon Iran—especially as Tehran remains deeply reluctant to expand the conflict due to its own domestic and foreign policy challenges and its potential understandings with Washington on the eve of U.S. presidential elections.

U.S. and European officials also appear keen to leverage the attack in order to rein in the Lebanese crisis and avoid a total collapse and a slide into the abyss.

Israel’s Motives

As the U.S. and other world players scramble to prevent the war from expanding into a region-wide conflict, Israel’s operation raised questions about its aims. There are two main explanations for Israel’s motives.

The first relates to Israel’s ongoing attempts, since the beginning of the war on Gaza and clashes with other “axis of resistance” players, primarily Hezbollah, to drag the Lebanese movement into the war. Israel has sought to place the movement in a situation where it is obliged, in the eyes of its constituency and its allies, to opt for a strong and violent response—even if this includes attacks on Israeli civilians, providing Israel also acts accordingly. Such a situation would give Israel a pretext, vis-à-vis Western and particularly U.S. public opinion, to launch an open war on Lebanon.

Washington has applied major pressure to prevent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from going to war with Lebanon, especially since with the visit of its envoy Amos J. Hochstein to Israel in mid-September. The administration of President Joe Biden has come to realize that one of Netanyahu’s goals is to drag the U.S. into the quagmire of a regional war, right on the eve of U.S. elections.

If Israel were to suffer a painful attack by Hezbollah, Washington would be forced to go along with an Israeli military onslaught and to protect its own interests and presence in the region, confronting Iran and its allies in Yemen, Iraq and Syria. This is precisely Netanyahu’s aim in his attempts to push Hezbollah into war.

The second motivation behind Israel’s complex operation was to deal a painful blow to Hezbollah’s internal structure, the first step in a long-running effort to broaden the confrontation. Netanyahu said as much in recent days, saying the campaign would unfold over the course of several weeks. Those wounded by the booby-trapped pagers included senior field commanders. The fact that Iranian ambassador Mojtaba Amani had one of the devices reflects the high importance Iran and Hezbollah placed on the communications network.

Thus, Lebanon may have entered a new and dangerous phase, especially since Netanyahu officially added securing the the return of displaced residents of northern Israel to their homes to Israel’s list of war aims. This helps explain why Israel transferred its 98th assault division from the Gaza Strip to the border with Lebanon, to join the Paratroopers Division and the 36th Division which have been deployed along the northern border since the beginning of the war.

World Powers and the Rules of Engagement

World powers rushed to rein in the impact of the attack, with calls by American envoys, French President Emmanuel Macron, and the heads of government and parliament, to calm the situation on the ground as fears grew of a rapid escalation.

These effects coincided with a meeting in Paris between French, American and British officials aimed at applying pressure to prevent the war expanding, and to study all possible options in the event that it does indeed break out, including how to deal with foreign nationals trapped in Lebanon and the possibility of a new exodus of people seeking refuge in Europe via the Mediterranean.

Washington, which wants to prevent the war from expanding, appears close to reaching an understanding with Tehran to prevent any escalation. This is echoed in Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s remarks that it is permissible to negotiate with the enemy. President Massoud Pezeshkian, for his part, has used conciliatory language towards the United States, as well as announcing that the Iranian economy needs $100 billion in investment.

Given the context both in Lebanon and internationally, Hezbollah has little option but to respond to the pager attack. However, it could still do so within the current rules of engagement, as determined by the Iranian-American negotiations—just as it did in response to other attacks including the assassination of senior official Foud Shukr.