The escalation that long felt inevitable arrived in a blaze of cross-border attacks over the weekend, but a Middle East on edge woke Monday having escaped all-out war — for now at least.
The intense exchange between Israel and Hezbollah followed weeks of threats that stoked fears a wider regional conflict.
And on Sunday the U.S. ally launched what it said were pre-emptive strikes on southern Lebanon after detecting preparations for a “large-scale” attack by the Iran-backed militant group.
Hezbollah then launched hundreds of rockets and drones and claimed to have hit a military intelligence base near Tel Aviv — revenge, it said, for the assassination of a senior commander last month in Beirut.
It was the heaviest fire the two sides have traded in ten months of simmering conflict.
But both Israel and Hezbollah quickly signaled they were happy to leave things there, for now. Tehran, reiterating its own vow of “definitive” retaliation against Israel, touted the Hezbollah attacks as a success. And Washington voiced continued hope for efforts to secure a cease-fire in Gaza.
“The exchange of fire alongside the Israeli-Lebanese border … and the post-strike messages from both Israel and Hezbollah seemingly indicate neither is interested in an all-out war,” Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official and negotiator, said in an analysis shared with NBC News on Sunday.
He said the round of violence could bring some “calm to the region” and “bring an end to the anxious period of waiting for rounds of retaliatory strikes that could very well have led to an all-out war.”
The escalation came amid ongoing talks in Egypt’s capital, Cairo, to negotiate a deal between Israel and Hamas that would end the fighting in Gaza and secure the release of hostages held by Hamas in the Palestinian enclave.
The high-level talks in Cairo ended on Sunday without any final agreement, though they’re expected to continue at lower levels over the coming days in an effort to close remaining gaps in the negotiations. The talks “have been constructive and were conducted in a spirit on all sides to reach a final and implementable agreement,” a U.S. official told NBC News.
In an address to Lebanese civilians on Sunday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said the group had delayed its response to commander Fuad Shukr’s assassination in order to allow negotiations to continue, and had no intention of targeting civilian infrastructure.
Now, Nasrallah said, “Lebanon can rest.” But he warned that if the results of Sunday’s operation were “not sufficient, we reserve the right to respond.”
Hezbollah, which has the largest missile arsenal of any non-state actor in the world according to weapons watchdogs, has previously said it would halt its attacks on Israel if a cease-fire deal is struck.
Israel Defense Forces spokesman Nadav Shoshani said Hezbollah’s attack might have appeared more subdued due to what Israel has described as its pre-emptive strike carried out by dozens of fighter jets.
“That’s part of why their attack seemed smaller than what it was and our readiness in our aerial defense systems,” Shoshani told NBC News.
Hezbollah said it ultimately fired around 320 Katyusha rockets toward 11 Israeli bases and military sites.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned at the beginning of a cabinet meeting in Tel Aviv that Sunday’s hostilities were “not the end,” however,
Iran, which has vowed its own retaliation against Israel for the assassinations of Shukr and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, has yet to act.
Israel, which typically remains silent on targeted assassinations, has not publicly claimed responsibility for the killings, but is widely believed to have carried them out.
The country’s new foreign minister, Abbas Aragchi, said late Sunday that Iran’s response “is definitive and will be measured and calculated.” And early Monday his spokesman praised the Hezbollah attack as highlighting that Israel has lost its “deterrence power.”
“Despite the comprehensive support of states like the United States, Israel could not predict the time and place of a limited and managed response by the resistance,” foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani wrote on X.