Escalating hostilities between Israel and the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah are sowing more chaos into the Middle East and have thrown a wrench into peace talks between the U.S. and Iran.

The renewal of aggression between Israel and the terrorist group began on March 2, soon after the U.S. began its strikes on Iran, with Hezbollah firing rockets into the Jewish state’s northern region. Israel’s sustained strikes in response have reportedly led to 1.2 million Lebanese evacuating their homes. The ongoing conflict has also reportedly led to thousands killed in Lebanon, including an unknown number of Hezbollah terrorists, along with the deaths of 26 Israeli soldiers and four civilians.

Following reports Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz had ordered strikes on the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, President Donald Trump attempted to halt the escalation by contacting Netanyahu and intermediaries for Hezbollah. Both sides agreed not to carry out attacks, and yet, Israel hit parts of southern Lebanon with airstrikes and artillery fire on Tuesday. “Israel’s military ordered residents of the city of Nabatiyeh, a major Hezbollah stronghold, to leave ahead of strikes,” Reuters reported. Hezbollah has returned fire on Israeli troops but has so far not carried out further cross-border attacks.

The latest skirmish follows a historic push from Israeli forces into southern Lebanon over the weekend, with troops reaching their furthest into Lebanese territory in 26 years and capturing Beaufort Castle, a strategic outpost that overlooks a large swath of southern Lebanon.

The ongoing conflict has gotten the attention of Iran, whose leaders announced Monday that they had halted indirect talks with the U.S. due to Israel’s military operation. Iran’s military issued a warning to Israelis in northern Israel that they should flee if the Jewish state attacked Beirut.

Experts on the ground in Israel like Chris Mitchell, who serves as CBN’s Middle East bureau chief, say that Netanyahu is in a difficult position of trying to balance the defense of his people with the wider strategy of helping the U.S. keep Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

“[I]t’s putting Prime Minister Netanyahu in an awkward position,” he observed during “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Monday. “… [H]e said, ‘Well, if the residents of northern Israel can’t be safe, well, the residents in Beirut in particular, Hezbollah, can’t be protected.’… [H]ere in Israel, soldiers are being killed, residents of the north are getting attacked. … Israel [wants] to make sure that they can not only see quiet in the north, but hopefully the end of Hezbollah as a threat to them in Lebanon.”

Mitchell went on to note that the threat that Iran poses to Israel goes beyond the Islamist regime’s nuclear ambitions but extends to its conventional ballistic missiles. “[T]here’s been a report that many of the ballistic missiles weren’t harmed, that Iran is right now digging out many of those underground facilities that had been buried by the Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion,” he pointed out. “So, to that point, that represents also an existential threat here to Israel.”

Mitchell further detailed that there are growing reports of a severely weakened Iranian regime desperately clinging to power. “[U.S. Treasury] Secretary [Scott] Bessent said that maybe within days they’re going to be out of money,” he related. “And the experts I’ve been talking to — Iranian experts that are in touch with people on the ground — [say] that the regime is the weakest now it has been in 47 years. They may put on a projected strength, they may bluster, but they are failing inside, and they may not be able to pay those mercenaries they’ve hired to be able to control the streets.”

As for what the optimal outcome would be for Israel and the U.S., Mitchell concluded by emphasizing that the fall of the Iranian regime would mean not only renewed freedom for Israelis and the Lebanese people, but also for the Iranian people.

“[T]he Iranians are negotiators par excellence,” he explained. “Even President Trump said years ago that they’ve never won a war but never lost a negotiation. So I think Israelis would rather see a regime change, the elimination of Iran’s nuclear program, a new government, freedom for the Iranian people, and also freedom for the Lebanese people who have been kept hostage by this major proxy of Iran, Hezbollah. And I think that would be the ideal outcome for the people of Israel and [for] the people of Iran.”