Will Hezbollah ignite Israel’s northern front?

If the war in Gaza isn’t horrific enough, the world also has to worry about its possible expansion. The one theater that could prove to be the most lethal and devastating to the entire region is Lebanon-Israel. There, Israel would have to deal with Hezbollah, a foe with capabilities far more significant than Hamas’s, and which many view as the world’s most powerful non-state militant actor.

So, will Hezbollah join the fight and turn this into a regional war to aid its Palestinian partner?

To answer that question, it’s important first to challenge three bits of conventional wisdom.

The first conventional wisdom, which has held for many years, is that Hezbollah is too valuable for its patron Iran to be used in a fight with Israel because the group’s key strategic worth for Tehran is in deterring an Israeli attack against Iranian nuclear infrastructure.

If Harvey Dent was the Joker’s “ace in the hole” in “Batman,” Hezbollah is precisely that for Iran. That’s why when Hezbollah and Israel fought for more than a month in 2006, Iran put limits on its Lebanese ally’s military operations to preserve its extended deterrent power.

The second conventional wisdom is that Hezbollah is deterred from intervening in the Gaza war because the memories of that 2006 confrontation are still too fresh in the hearts and minds of Hezbollah’s constituency in southern Lebanon. The group’s followers, like most Lebanese, are reeling from a historic economic crisis in the country, and the last thing they want to experience is a return to arms with Israel that will cause significant death and destruction and the flattening of towns, villages and the southern suburbs of Beirut like in 2006 (and possibly worse).

Then, Iran had to spend tons of its own cash to help reconstruct southern Lebanon and its ally reconcile with its support base. This time around, an economically hurt Iran does not have that kind of money, and Hezbollah knows it.

The third conventional wisdom is that Hezbollah is apprehensive about getting involved militarily because the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has learned lessons from the 2006 conflict, and it will perform better and show no restraint. Unlike what just happened with Hamas’s attack, there will be no element of strategic surprise on Israel’s northern front because the IDF’s readiness level is high. Indeed, the IDF has developed a clear operational plan for the north. (Whether it will execute it successfully is a separate matter, of course.)

These three bits of conventional wisdom suggest that, minus a few symbolic or limited moves, Hezbollah will sit this one out. That would be a wrong interpretation, however, for three reasons that speak directly to these three assumptions.

First, it’s plausible that Iran and its proxy network in the region see this as a historic moment that will be incredibly hard to replicate. This just might be the perfect opportunity, especially given the success of Hamas’s operation, to bleed and destabilize Israel as much as possible and on multiple fronts — their dream scenario all along, which now looks more real than ever.

This still begs the question of to what end. It’s not clear that the Iran-led axis has practical objectives other than releasing Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. But it may be enough to exact revenge on Israel for its continued occupation of Palestinian land and ruthless subjugation of the Palestinian people. The axis just wants to see Israel burn and ultimately destroyed.

Second, just like the IDF learned lessons from the 2006 war, Hezbollah did, too. The Hezbollah of today is very different from the Hezbollah of 17 years ago. It is battle-hardened because of its costly but ultimately successful intervention in Syria in 2012-2013 to save the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and it is far better equipped with sophisticated and long-range arms that can hit any target inside Israel. Deterrence here works both ways. Hezbollah genuinely and perhaps arrogantly believes that it is Israel that should be worried about a new fight, not the other way around.

Third, Iran today might not fear an Israeli strike against its nuclear program as much because it already reached nuclear latency and has positioned itself on the nuclear threshold, which means that it has more leeway to use Hezbollah for purposes beyond deterrence that include warfighting.

Last but not least, never underestimate the psychological effects of a confrontation with the Jewish state for this radical axis. Because of their extremist ideology, they see the world in messianic terms. They’ve shown they’re perfectly capable of pragmatism, but this just might be a moment of religious and ideological significance that Westerners will find hard to understand.

Of course, none of this means it’s inevitable that Hezbollah will attack. It could, along with Iran, ignite the Syrian front instead, given the considerable military assets it has positioned there – precision weapons, most importantly — and it could decide to put the Lebanese front on hold for now given its domestic political challenges.

Hamas’s operation was a colossal Israeli intelligence failure. But more importantly, it was a failure of imagination and interpretation of information that was available to the Israelis. Israel underestimated Hamas and refused to believe that its enemy was willing and able to pull off something so deadly and spectacular.

It better not make the same mistake with Hezbollah because even if Iran decides not to escalate, even a limited exchange of blows along the Israeli-Lebanese border could easily lead to a war. That’s exactly what happened in 2006. Neither party wanted a war, yet they both got it.

Bilal Y. Saab is senior fellow and director of the Defense and Security Program at the Middle East Institute.