By Matt Bradley, Dan De Luce and Ziad Jaber — NBC News
As Israeli forces expand their ground operations in southern Gaza, international concern is growing that they may try to expand the war into a regional conflict.
Yet despite belligerent rhetoric from all sides since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack and the escalation by members of the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance, few officials leading Israel's northern neighbor believe Iran and its partners want an all-out war. That axis includes Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as the powerful Iraqi Shiite militias and the Houthis in Yemen.
The anxiety in Lebanon is instead centered on a wild card: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu's political insecurity, sparked by the Gaza crisis and growing unpopularity at home, has many fearing that he could bring the cross-border war to a boiling point, spreading it to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and even burning U.S. naval assets in the Mediterranean Sea.
A man walks through the rubble after an Israeli attack on the southern Lebanese border village of Mais el-Jabal on December 6, 2023.Hansan Fneich / AFP - Getty Images
Many Lebanese officials — NBC News spoke to a dozen diplomats, military chiefs and leaders of militant organizations for this article — fear that Netanyahu will turn his personal problems into a regional nightmare.
"Rationality has nothing to do with it," explained a Western diplomat based in Lebanon, referring to Israel's reactions to the Hamas attack in October. The official added his conviction that Iran and its proxies will do everything possible to avoid starting a war with Israel despite its recent stance. "The Israeli government needs to prove that it won at the end of the day."
Meanwhile, Netanyahu and Israel's top military leaders have been harshly criticized since the Oct. 7 attacks. And Netanyahu's handling of the crisis has made matters worse: Only 27% of Israelis believe he is the best person to lead the government, according to a poll conducted in early November.
For weeks, Netanyahu and other senior Israeli security officials have threatened to declare war on Iran and Hezbollah, a militant group and political party based in southern Lebanon. Just last week, Netanyahu warned once again that "if Hezbollah makes a mistake and enters a full-blown war, it will have destroyed Lebanon with its own hands," according to The Times of Israel.
In response to a request for comment for this story, a senior Israeli official told NBC News, "It is the Iranian regime that foments terror and instability in the Middle East and beyond, either directly or through its proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. The international community realizes that the tyrants in Tehran are the world's leading sponsor of terrorism."
Smoke from an Israeli bombardment on the horizon along the hills of southern Lebanon on December 10, 2023Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images
To many in the region, that language smacks of a dangerous kind of weakness rather than strength. Netanyahu looks like a "wounded animal," said Ali Hamdan, an influential adviser to the Hezbollah-aligned Lebanese speaker of parliament, far more dangerous in his weakness than in his strength.
Netanyahu faces pressure from all sides, caught between a public furious over his handling of the crisis and fraud charges that could land him in jail if he is ousted from office.
"Netanyahu, on a personal level, needs to do something. If this war stops tomorrow, he could be held accountable," said Abbas Ibrahim, a hostage negotiator who led Lebanon's intelligence agency for more than a decade until March. "If he defeats Hamas and Hezbollah, he could be a hero by the end of this year, to protect himself, not his people."
Netanyahu has an incentive to possibly prolong the Israeli military offensive in Gaza to try to safeguard his political survival, according to a person familiar with U.S. intelligence on Israel.
But there is no indication at this point that he or his government is considering launching a major campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the person said.
Nearly a year before the latest round of fighting, Netanyahu's proposed judicial reform bill, which many Israelis saw as an effort to bring the country's legal system to its knees, sparked unprecedented protests and turned the nation against itself.
Many of Netanyahu's opponents had openly suggested that his proposals were themselves an attempt to limit the power of a legal system that had accused him of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate cases. Netanyahu has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
The prime minister's unpopularity pushes him into a corner.
If Netanyahu hopes to show his constituents that Israel is winning in Gaza, a concern in Washington and the Middle East is that the definition of an Israeli "victory" in the Palestinian enclave remains unclear: U.S. and Western officials say Israel has no coherent political plan once its military campaign is complete.
Washington has also struggled to outline Gaza's future. Israel's stated goal of toppling Hamas could leave a dangerous power vacuum that few Palestinian politicians or groups could hope to fill.
But even if regional concerns center on Netanyahu, Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed power groups have barely shied away from a fight.
Since the day after the Hamas terror attacks, Hezbollah has been firing rockets and other projectiles regularly into northern Israel, forcing tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate. Israeli retaliatory fire has killed 100 Hezbollah fighters, at least 18 Lebanese civilians and forced more than 30,000 Lebanese residents from their homes.
However, fighting on Israel's border with Lebanon has remained relatively limited, obeying unspoken rules of engagement that emerged from Israel's month-long war with Hezbollah in 2006.
Other Iranian proxies across the region, who constitute the loosely connected and hostile "axis of resistance" toward Israel, the West and the wealthy Sunni Muslim Arab kingdoms of the Gulf, have also been taking the offensive. Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq have fired dozens of projectiles at U.S. bases, Iranian-sponsored battle groups in Syria have done the same at U.S. military installations, and Houthi rebels in Yemen have attacked ships in the Red Sea.
Still, the U.S. intelligence community believes Iran is not seeking a direct war with the United States, but is seeking to increase pressure on Israel and Washington through its proxies, two congressional aides and a defense official recently told NBC News.
Western policymakers in Washington also believe that Iran is relatively satisfied with the most limited outcome of the war so far: Hamas's attacks seriously undermined diplomacy aimed at normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. In addition, Israel is facing an international outcry over its bombardment of Gaza and the plight of Palestinian civilians that have sparked mass demonstrations, particularly in Western cities.
It is also the first time Iran has been able to see its axis of resistance behave like true allies by launching limited combat operations against each other.
While a ruinous war across the region could only tarnish Hezbollah's modest gains, several officials said Iran and Hezbollah would only take the first steps toward an all-out war if Israel completes its goal of completely destroying Hamas.
"The red line for Hezbollah would be the total destruction of the resistance in Gaza," said Ahmed Abdul Hadi, Hamas' representative in Beirut.
But even that remains a vague eventuality. Hamas could suffer huge losses before it ceases operations entirely. And Hezbollah has refused to offer its own "red line" for when it might resort to a full-blown war.
Hadi and others say that Hezbollah will know how to enter the fight when it is finally invited.
"Hezbollah will not allow Israel to eliminate Hamas," said Ibrahim, a former Lebanese intelligence chief and hostage negotiator, adding that he remains in contact with Hezbollah, Hamas and U.S. officials on an almost daily basis. "It's not Hezbollah that will decide. It's Hamas. They need to ask for help."