The Middle East is perilously close to all-out war. In the year since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, millions of people have been displaced from their homes in Gaza, Israel, the West Bank and now Lebanon, and tens of thousands killed.
After Israel killed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah, Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles against Israel on October 1. As the world waits to see how Israel will retaliate, Israel’s military continues to attack Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and in Beirut.
In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to two experts from the Middle East, Mireille Rebeiz and Amnon Aran, to get a sense of the strategic calculations being made by both Israel and its neighbours at this frightening moment for the region.
Mireille Rebeiz is the chair of Middle East studies at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania in the US and an expert on Hezbollah. She says that since launching its manifesto in 1985 Hezbollah has always positioned itself “in opposition to the existence of the state of Israel”.
It affirmed the dedication to the Palestinian cause. It affirmed its commitment to the Iranian revolution and the Shi’ite ideology.
Rebeiz says Iran’s military goals are completely aligned with Hezbollah’s and traces them back to the US’s destabilisation of Iraq.
When Iraq fell into a full chaos and war (it) allowed for Iran to meddle into Iraq and gave a big voice to the Shiite conservative voices.
Then followed the 2011 Syrian civil war, in which Hezbollah stepped in to defend the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
It’s a domino effect – it’s expansion from Iran to Iraq to Syria to Lebanon. And this is clearly visible in Iran’s military goals, which is ultimately the expansion of the Iranian ideology in the region. Honestly, at this point, I would say there is an attempt to hide behind the Palestinian cause to achieve that goal.
Israel’s choices
Amnon Aran is a professor of international relations at City St George’s, University of London, in the UK, and an expert in Israeli foreign policy. Aran says that for Israel, the past 12 months have been described as an “existential moment”, which has informed the war in the Gaza Strip and now Lebanon.
When the question came about how to respond to this existential threat, it was very much from the prism of what I called elsewhere, a form of entrenchment, which really means that Israel only makes peace in exchange for peace. Any diplomatic arrangement has to be dependent upon and subordinate to a military advantageous balance of power towards Israel and that the Palestinians in the West Bank, and now in the Gaza Strip, would remain under Israeli occupation for the foreseeable future.
Aran says there is fierce debate in Israel about what to do now. One side follows the line of thinking of the former Israeli prime minister, Nafthali Bennett, who took to X in early October to say that: “Israel now has its greatest opportunity in 50 years to change the face of the Middle East.” This camp is arguing that with Hezbollah weakened, this is the moment to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
On the other side, Aran says, are those in the military establishment arguing against attacking Israel’s nuclear facilities and instead focus on weakening Hezbollah as much as possible. This camp’s reasoning is that:
After a year of being in a prolonged and very difficult conflict, the next question is you are actually starting a war presumably on five or six fronts, including a very vast country, 90 million people, Iran, with a very rich history, and you are actually entering into a very new phase, which could become very prolonged.
To hear the full interviews with Mireille Rebeiz and Amnon Aran, listen to The Conversation Weekly podcast.
This episode of The Conversation Weekly was produced by Mend Mariwany. Sound design was by Michelle Macklem, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. Gemma Ware is the executive producer.
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