The missile war in northern Israel shows no sign of abating, as Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets early Wednesday, including a longer-range projectile that set off air-raid sirens in Tel Aviv. Israel responded with 280 airstrikes of its own, which the Lebanon health minister said killed 51 people and injured 223. Meanwhile, Iran vowed to retaliate against Israel after a senior Hamas leader was assassinated in Tehran on July 31 but has not acted on its threat for nearly two months.

Israel’s Big Stick

The exchange of fire in northern Israel and southern Lebanon extends days of lopsided aerial combat. Hezbollah’s rocket barrages on Monday and Tuesday were mostly intercepted, while Israel pummeled over 1,600 Hezbollah targets, killing 564 and injuring more than 1,800, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

Last week, as Hezbollah peppered northern Israel with hundreds of rocket attacks daily, Israel detonated the terrorist group’s pagers on Wednesday, followed by its handheld radios, and reportedly other electronic devices, on Thursday, which killed three dozen and injured more than 3,000 Hezbollah operatives in the most precise and extensive military operation to date (Israel has not confirmed its involvement). On Friday, as Hezbollah commanders met under a residential house to plot an October 7-style invasion of Israel, an Israeli airstrike killed at least a dozen attendees, including one responsible for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 300 people.

“In the current conflict, Israel has said it is targeting Hezbollah fighters and weapons storage, while Lebanese officials say it has targeted civilian sites,” reported the Associated Press, which displayed a curious lack of curiosity about whether both claims are correct. The AP’s reporting failed to mention that Hezbollah attacks consistently target civilian areas in Israel, which do not double as military hideouts or secret weapons caches. They also failed to mention that Israel issued warnings for civilians to evacuate before the airstrikes, which also gave Hezbollah an opportunity to evacuate.

Iran’s Dovish Response

As Israel bombs its adversary back to the 7th century — well, besides the rockets — Hezbollah is frantically appealing to its patron Iran for help. “Hezbollah has been agitating … for a more forceful Iranian response. And that has not come,” noted retired Captain Brent Sadler, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, on “Washington Watch” Tuesday. “I don’t think it’s going to be in the cards in the near future either.”

According to Israeli reporter Barak Ravid, Iranian officials told Hezbollah that “the timing isn’t right” to attack Israel because Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is currently at the United Nations General Assembly, taking place this week in New York City. Of course, the timing wasn’t right for a strike on Israel last week, or the week before that, or any time in the last two months.

While in New York, Pezeshkian has made statements suggesting that Hezbollah is on its own, said Sadler. On Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said that Iran is seeking to “establish stability in the region,” not escalate tensions. Has the radical regime committed to obtaining a nuclear weapon and annihilating Israel suddenly turned peacenik?

If Iran were really interested in not escalating regional tensions, it should have acted to prevent its proxy Hamas from invading Israel last October 7, killing, raping, burning, and taking hostages. It should have acted to prevent its other terrorist proxies in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria from joining in the attack against Israel. That would have given it credibility to claim that it wanted to establish stability in the region.

The reality is, for years Iran has cultivated a network of terrorist proxies it uses to attack Israel. “First and foremost was Hamas, [the] proxy based in Gaza which launched the barbarous attacks of October 7, which triggered this current cycle of violence,” Sadler began. “Then there [are] the Houthis,” based in Yemen, who “followed up … with a series of cruise and drone and ballistic missile attacks directly against Israel.” In addition to attacks on Israel, the Houthis have also launched “an enduring attack against international shipping in the Red Sea,” he added. “Most timely is the Hezbollah terrorist organization based out of Lebanon that’s been launching cross-border attacks for many months now, starting from the day after that October 7 attack.”

Iran also controls smaller Islamist militias in Syria, Iraq, and Judea and Samaria — not to mention the missiles Iran launched against Israel from its own territory earlier this year.

Military analysts have asked whether “the increased hostilities have the Middle East approaching a full-scale war between Israel and up to five regional enemies led by Iran,” summarized Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. But the reality is that the regional war is already here. “It’s been a regional war,” declared Caroline Glick, senior contributing editor of the Jewish News Syndicate. “It’s been a seven-front war that Iran has been waging against Israel through all of its proxies: in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Judea and Samaria, in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen, and from Iran itself.”

This leaves an unanswered question: what explains the demure turn in Iran’s recent rhetoric? One possibility is that Iran lacks the will or resources for a more vigorous response to Israel. The longer it waits to respond, the more Iran risks appearing weak.

However, Sadler suggested another dynamic that could affect Iran’s decision-making — diplomatic pressure from Russia and China. “It’s very telling that, after the assassination of [Hamas leader Ismail] Haniyeh in Tehran, very soon, within the next 48 hours, 72 hours, you had [former Russia defense minister Sergei] Shoigu flying from Moscow on behest of President Putin.” The purpose of Shoigu’s trip was “to assure Tehran that delivery of S-400 missile systems (air defense) were forthcoming,” he suggested, “but … to also argue for, I guess, restraint.”

Likewise, China also has a reason to tamp down the war in the Middle East, continued Sadler. “China, too, wants to see at least a limit geographically on the scope of this war,” he said, “because they rely on oil from the Arabian Gulf. And Iran getting embroiled into a regional war with Israel and the United States potentially would put in jeopardy a lot of their interest in the region.”

An Israel v. Hezbollah Duel

If stronger members of the anti-American coalition have effectively benched Iran from participating too directly in a war against Israel, that would leave Israel and Hezbollah locked in a duel to the death. Sadler sees “nothing that would indicate that Israel is going to be able to adjust its trajectory [away from] an incursion into southern Lebanon.” In fact, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the top Israel Defense Forces (IDF) commander, told Israeli forces on Wednesday to prepare for a ground invasion.

That could spell trouble for Hezbollah, “if Iran does not come to their aid,” said Perkins. “I don’t see Israel pulling back at this point until the threat has been eliminated.” Sadler agreed, adding that Hezbollah is “not widely liked by the wider Lebanese population.” So, while “they have their own support base … without Iran’s continued money and facilitation of arms transfers, their ability to coerce and to intimidate the other power bases in Lebanon starts to evaporate, and we could see the end of days for Hezbollah.”

Hezbollah does hold one “trump card,” said Sadler, which has deterred an Israel ground invasion in the past. “Israel’s greatest vulnerability” is Hezbollah’s stockpile of “well over 150,000 ballistic missiles,” enough to “overwhelm their missile and air defense systems. So, [by Hezbollah] simply just launching wave after wave after wave, eventually, Israel [would run] out of defenses, and those rockets [would] start to hit home,” he said.

This is one reason why Israel preceded what looks to be a planned ground invasion with days of aerial bombardment. “As long as Israel continues to degrade their launching systems and their command and control, it becomes less and less likely that Hezbollah can actually deliver on that threat,” said Sadler.

“That appears exactly what Israel is doing in these first few days,” Perkins added. Of course, by exploding Hezbollah’s electronic devices, Israel rattled the terrorist group in a most creative and unexpected way. “Of course, Israel has not acknowledged any responsibility there, but the terrorists have been terrorized by that event,” said Perkins. “They’re probably afraid to use the toaster for Pop-Tarts.”

“Certainly, the psychological impact on Hezbollah shouldn’t be diminished,” Sadler concurred. “No one should underestimate the psychological impact of having what you would thought would have been a benign, tiny electronic device turning into a deadly one that’s right next to you on your nightstand.”

Hezbollah may be down, but they aren’t out quite yet, “looking at what they’re able to still do,” warned Sadler. “They were able to launch a fairly sizable missile barrage into Israel just recently, in the last 24 hours. So, they’re able to still mount attacks. … They’re fairly limited in scale and scope … but they’re still able to operate. Again, they still have the will to fight. They still seem to have some tactical operational control.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, another world leader has been conspicuously circumspect about Israel’s intensified confrontation with Hezbollah. “We’ve seen or we’ve heard very little in the last couple of weeks from the Biden administration that had been repeatedly kind of throttling back the Israeli response in Gaza,” Perkins noticed.

Sadler responded, “At this point, with this administration, I’m not so sure [that] having this White House [be] silent is a bad thing.”