A version of this story appeared in the Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each Wednesday.
The Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah launched at least five anti-tank guided missiles into northern Israel on Sunday, a day after Iranian officials warned that the Lebanon-based group was poised to aid Hamas by opening a second front against Israel.
The attacks marked the latest escalation of skirmishes on Israel’s border with Lebanon. They ratcheted up fears of a widening Israel-Hezbollah clash in the north and the prospect of a major war between Iran and Israel.
Israel responded to the strikes by shelling Hezbollah sites inside Lebanon. Backed by a growing deployment of U.S. warships, Israeli forces prepared for a much-anticipated ground invasion to rout Hamas from Gaza in the south.
With a humanitarian crisis growing in Gaza and escalation concerns mounting, the Biden administration scrambled through the weekend to try to calm regional nerves while attempting to deter Iran and Hezbollah from further provocations.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken spent Saturday and Sunday in shuttle diplomacy among several Arab nations: Qatar, Jordan, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
SEE ALSO: World crises sound alarm, but Biden’s foreign policy delivers shaky response
“There’s a determination in every country I went to to make sure that this conflict doesn’t spread,” Mr. Blinken told reporters in Cairo on Sunday before heading for meetings in Israel on Monday.
“President Biden has been very clear about this, and you’ve heard him repeatedly say to anyone, state or non-state, that is thinking of taking advantage of this situation: Don’t do it,” Mr. Blinken said. “We’ve backed up those words with concrete actions, including the deployment now of our two largest aircraft carrier battle groups to the region.
“That’s not meant as a provocation. It’s meant as a deterrent,” he said. “It’s meant to make clear that no one should do anything that could add fuel to the fire.”
Israeli forces continued drills along the border of Gaza, which is governed by the Iran-supported Islamist group Hamas. On Oct. 7, Hamas launched a terrorist assault that killed more than 1,300 Israelis and at least 27 Americans.
About 150 people, including some U.S. citizens, were taken hostage.
A week of Israeli airstrikes demolished entire neighborhoods in Gaza but failed to stem barrages of rocket fire.
SEE ALSO: National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says ‘fog of war’ is complicating Gaza evacuation
Palestinians began fleeing from northern Gaza on Friday after the Israeli military told some 1 million people to evacuate to the southern part of the besieged territory ahead of an expected ground offensive.
Medics in Gaza warned Sunday that thousands could die as packed hospitals ran desperately low on fuel and other basic supplies. Palestinians in the besieged coastal enclave were reportedly struggling to find food and water.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 2,329 Palestinians had been killed since the fighting erupted. That exceeds the death toll from the 2014 Gaza war, which lasted more than six weeks.
Pope Francis called for establishing humanitarian corridors to help Palestinians caught in the crossfire of the Israel-Hamas war.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said it’s “absolutely critical” that Israel “embrace the rule of law and the laws of war.”
Israeli forces have blocked supplies from entering Gaza and prevented Palestinians from leaving the 25-mile-long territory. Gaza’s sole power plant has been shut down because of a lack of fuel.
U.N. under attack
The United Nations has roundly criticized Israel’s actions despite reports of a possible Hamas rocket attack Sunday that hit the headquarters of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon.
The mission in the coastal town of Naqoura said no one was hurt, and it did not specify the source of the rocket.
Local Lebanese media reported that the rocket was fired from Hamas militant positions in southern Lebanon but fell short of its intended target in Israel.
The Washington Times could not confirm those reports.
The United Nations has warned that Israel’s blockade of Gaza and airstrikes on civilian areas could amount to war crimes.
Mr. Sullivan sought to address the situation during an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” but said he would not “react to or comment on every report that we see.”
“There’s a lot of fog of war,” the national security adviser said.
“What we will say is the protection of civilians and the protection of those people who are trying to get to safety, as well as their ability to access food, water, medicine, shelter, these things should be respected and should very much be a central focus of everyone involved in this, including ourselves, the Israelis, the United Nations and the regional countries,” he said.
Mr. Sullivan added that the U.S. is working with Israel, the U.N., Egypt, Jordan and other countries “to do all that we can to ensure the protection of civilians and that those civilians have access to the basic necessities of food and water, of shelter, of medicine.”
Hundreds of American citizens are thought to be trapped in Gaza, and U.S. officials are frantically trying to find them safe passage.
The Biden administration has named David Satterfield, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, as special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues.
Wider war worries
Fears of escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, which could lead to a direct Israel-Iran war, continue to rise.
Hezbollah, an ally of Gaza’s Hamas rulers and an archenemy of Israel, said in a statement that it had fired rockets toward an Israeli military position in the northern border town Shtula in retaliation for shelling that killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah on Friday and two Lebanese civilians on Saturday.
The Times of Israel reported that Hezbollah had launched at least five anti-tank guided missiles and that one civilian was killed and three wounded when a missile struck a construction site in Shtula.
The publication also cited the Israeli military as saying it was restricting an area more than 2 miles wide along the Lebanon border and ordering civilians not to enter.
Hezbollah spokeswoman Rana Sahili said the increased intensity of exchanges did not indicate that Hezbollah had decided to fully enter the Hamas-Israel war.
The fighting on the border is “only skirmishes” and represents a “warning,” she said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told reporters on Friday that he had met with Hezbollah leaders and heard firsthand about the group’s readiness to fight Israel.
He urged the Jewish state to halt its military operations in Gaza immediately.
“I know about the scenarios that Hezbollah has put in place,” Mr. Amirabdollahian said, according to English-language media accounts of his remarks. “Any step the resistance will take will cause a huge earthquake in the Zionist entity.
“I want to warn the war criminals and those who support this entity before it’s too late to stop the crimes against civilians in Gaza because it might be too late in a few hours,” the foreign minister said.
Although Hamas surprised military and foreign policy analysts with the scope and precision of its surprise terrorist attack against Israel, the Gaza-based group’s strength as a legitimate fighting force pales in comparison with Lebanon-based Hezbollah.
“The Israeli nightmare scenario is that the first punch is from Gaza and then the uppercut comes from Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is much more powerful by orders of magnitude,” Michael Doran, senior fellow and director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute, told The Washington Times last week.
Should it join the fight, Hezbollah would bring considerable capabilities. The group claims to have more than 100,000 trained fighters, though most outside estimates put the number at 25,000 to 50,000.
Hezbollah receives significant funding and material backing from Iran, as Hamas does. Yet analysts say its fighters are better trained, have more effective weapons and far more rockets, and are more battle-tested as a major ground-fighting force.
Top U.S. military officials have warned Iran, Hezbollah and all other actors to stay out of the conflict.
“For any country, for any group or anyone thinking about trying to take advantage of this atrocity to try to widen the conflict or to spill more blood, we have just one word: Don’t,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Friday during a visit to Israel. “The world is watching, and so are we, and we aren’t going anywhere.”
• Ramsey Touchberry contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.