What will Iran, Hezbollah and Israel do next after Lebanon strikes?

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What will Iran, Hezbollah and ******* do next after Lebanon strikes?

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*******’s ************** of Hassan Nasrallah,

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–

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, is a major escalation in its war with the Lebanese militant group.

It has, potentially, brought the region one step closer to a much wider and even more damaging conflict, one that pulls in both Iran and the US.

So where is it likely to go from here?

That largely depends on three basic questions.

What will Hezbollah do?

Hezbollah is reeling from ***** after *****.

Its command structure has been decapitated, with

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. Its communications have been sabotaged with the shocking

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, and many of its weapons have been

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.

The US-based Middle East security analyst Mohammed Al-Basha says: “The loss of Hassan Nasrallah will have significant implications, potentially destabilising the group and altering its political and military strategies in the short term.”

But any expectation that this vehemently anti-******* organisation is going to suddenly give up and sue for peace on *******’s terms is likely to be misplaced.

Hezbollah has already vowed to continue the ******. It still has thousands of fighters, many of them recent veterans of combat in Syria, and they are demanding revenge.

It still has a substantial arsenal of missiles, many of them

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. There will be pressure within its ranks to use those soon, before they too get destroyed.

But if they do, in a mass ******* that overwhelms *******’s air defences and ****** civilians, then *******’s response is likely to be devastating, wreaking havoc on Lebanon’s infrastructure, or even extending to Iran.

What will Iran do?

This ************** is as much of a ***** to Iran as it is to Hezbollah. It’s already

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.

It’s also taken emergency precautions, hiding away its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, in case he too gets assassinated.

Iran has yet to retaliate for the humiliating

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in a Tehran guesthouse. What has happened now will be causing hardliners in the regime to contemplate some kind of response.

Iran has a whole galaxy of allied heavily-armed militias around the Middle East, the so-called “

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“.

As well as Hezbollah, it has the Houthis in Yemen, and numerous groups in Syria and Iraq. Iran could well ask these groups to step up their attacks on both ******* and US bases in the region.

But whatever response Iran chooses, it will likely calibrate it to be just short of triggering a war that it cannot hope to win.

What will ******* do?

If anyone was in any doubt before this **************, they won’t be now.

******* clearly has no intention of pausing its military campaign for the 21-day

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, including its closest ally, the ******* States.

Its military reckon they have Hezbollah on the back foot now, so it will want to press on with its offensive until the threat of those missiles is removed.

Short of a capitulation by Hezbollah – which is unlikely – it is hard to see how ******* can achieve its war aim of removing the threat of Hezbollah attacks without sending in troops on the ground.

The ******* Defense Forces have released footage of its infantry training close to the border for this very purpose.

But Hezbollah has also spent the last 18 years, since the end of the last war, training to ****** the next one. In his final public speech before his ******, Nasrallah told his followers that an ******** incursion into south Lebanon would be, in his words, “a historic opportunity”.

For the IDF, going into Lebanon would be relatively easy. But getting out could – like Gaza – take months.

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A man looks at the damaged caused by an ******** air strike south-east of Beirut

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#Iran #Hezbollah #******* #Lebanon #strikes

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