Top U.S. Envoy: Israeli War With Hezbollah Could Lead to Wide-scale Iranian Attack
Amos Hochstein sounded his warning during meetings Monday with a series of Israeli officials, including PM Netanyahu and his defense minister
U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein will arrive in Beirut on Tuesday after a day-long visit to Israel as part of his efforts to prevent the situation from deteriorating into all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Hochstein met in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Knesset opposition leader Yair Lapid and former minister Benny Gantz. In his meetings, he warned of the possibility that war with Hezbollah could lead to a wide-scale Iranian attack on Israel of a kind that would be difficult for Israel's defense systems to repel, in concert with possible wide-scale fire by Hezbollah from Lebanon.
Hochstein's visit coincides with the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, one of the most important in the Muslim world. Due to the holiday, no air-raid sirens sounded in northern Israel from Monday morning to evening. The U.S. envoy hopes to take advantage of the pause in the exchange of fire between Hezbollah and Israel to try to develop a framework for a future cease-fire agreement between the two sides, but he made it clear to everyone he met with in Israel that such an agreement could only be implemented after an official cease-fire is declared in Gaza. As long as the fighting in the Strip continues, it will not be possible to achieve a separate agreement between Israel and Hezbollah, he added. That has been Hezbollah's stance since Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel, and Biden administration officials don't believe that it is expected to change.
Hochstein is hoping that if the Israeli ground operation in Rafah is accomplished within two to three weeks, it would also make a lowering of the flames possible between Israel and Hezbollah in the north. Such a scenario wouldn't bring about an end to the fighting but it would prevent its spread into full war and make possible more significant progress it his efforts to outline a framework for a future agreement between the sides, including the demarcation of the an agreed upon land border between Israel and Lebanon.
Hochstein was also in Israel in March and in December. Both visits were also aimed at preventing a significant escalation in the fighting in the north and at examining the possibility of achieving an agreement that would restore quiet to the Israeli-Lebanese border. The senior Israelis who met with him on his previous visits heard similar assessments from him about the link between the war in Gaza and a possible end of the fighting in the north, but according to one of the Israelis, this time, Hochstein appears "more worried" about the possibility of a deterioration of the confrontation of the two sides into a full-scale war of a kind that would bring about huge destruction on both sides of the border.
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that France "is working a diplomatic track to try to lower the temperature on the border" at the same time that United States works on the issue. A senior French official told the newspaper that a cease-fire in Gaza is necessary to create what the paper described as "a favorable climate" for negotiations.
At the beginning of the war, Hochstein tried to examine the possibility of advancing a separate agreement between the parties, but he came to the conclusion that it was not possible.
At Hochstein's latest meeting with Netanyahu, he was joined by Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi, who have become members of the smaller decision-making forum that replaced the war cabinet following the resignation from the government of Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot. The smaller forum is aimed at preventing the involvement of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir in decisions relating to the war in Lebanon.
The leader of the opposition in the Knesset, Yair Lapid, issued a statement after meeting with Hochstein. "Residents of the north need to return to their homes," he wrote. "The international community cannot ignore an entire pat of the country that has been under attack for the past eight months. Israel needs to distance Hezbollah from the border either through a diplomatic arrangement or through military action. The abandonment of the north must stop," he wrote.