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  • Israel’s Next Front? Iran, Hezbollah, and the Coming War in Lebanon

    Over the past six months, tensions along Israel’s border with Lebanon have escalated dramatically. Israel has now deployed 100,000 troops to its north to confront the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, and the fighting there has steadily intensified. Nearly 400 Lebanese—including around 70 civilians and three journalists—have been killed, 90,000 Lebanese civilians have been displaced from around 100 towns and villages along the Israeli-Lebanese border, and Lebanese villages and olive groves have incurred widespread damage from phosphorus bombs.

  • Iran-Israel conflict poses an existential risk for Lebanon, unless Biden can intervene

    Iran's failed attack on Israel may have sealed Lebanon's fate. Israel undoubtedly has come out the winner in the latest exchange, having killed several key commanders who are said to have played a role in directing Iran's regional network of Arab militias to help Hamas fight Israel in Gaza and help Hezbollah prepare for a potential Israeli attack.

    Israel suffered no fatalities, few injuries and very little damage in the Iranian barrage of over 300 projectiles aimed at military facilities. The US estimates about 140 of the drones and missiles failed due to malfunctions. US forces downed most of the remaining 160 projectiles, with the UK, France, Jordan and Israel's own Iron Dome antimissile system also involved.

  • France proposes Hezbollah withdrawal, border talks for Israel-Lebanon truce

    France has delivered a written proposal to Beirut aimed at ending hostilities with Israel and settling the disputed Lebanon-Israel frontier, according to a document seen by Reuters that calls for fighters including Hezbollah's elite unit to withdraw 10 km (6 miles) from the border. The plan aims to end fighting between the Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel at the border. The hostilities have run in parallel to the Gaza war and are fueling concern of a ruinous, all-out confrontation.

  • Lebanon Ill-Equipped for Further Instability

    Gallup finished its surveys in Lebanon on Sept. 9 last year, less than a month before the Israel-Hamas conflict erupted. Since then, tensions and death tolls have risen along Lebanon’s border with Israel, where the militant group Hezbollah has a strong presence. On Monday, Israel killed a top Hezbollah commander in south Lebanon. If the war between Israel and Hamas spills into Lebanon, it could further destabilize a country that Gallup surveys showed was still struggling -- on multiple fronts -- to emerge from years of crippling economic and political crises.

  • Blinken urges diplomacy to calm Israel Lebanon border as Israel pulls some troops from northern Gaza

    But in a sign of Israeli political leaders’ apparent reluctance to be perceived by the Israeli public as reducing the intensity of military operations in Gaza before Hamas is destroyed, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not hold a joint press conference with Blinken, as they’d done on Blinken’s earlier trips. And the pullout of some Israeli reserve units from northern Gaza has been communicated, somewhat obliquely, by Israeli military officials, mostly to western media, rather than by Israeli political leaders to the Israeli public. (“The war must not be stopped until we achieve all of its goals,” Netanyahu said in his usual maximalist rhetoric at a cabinet meeting Sunday. “We must continue until total victory.”)

  • From Lebanon to the Red Sea, a Broader Conflict With Iran Looms

    Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of Israel and Israel’s tough response have changed all that. Now American and Israeli officials, and a dozen countries working in concert to keep commerce flowing in the Red Sea, are confronting a newly aggressive Iran. After launching scores of attacks, from Lebanon to the Red Sea to Iraq, the proxy groups have come into direct conflict with U.S. forces twice in the past week, and Washington is openly threatening airstrikes if the violence does not abate.

  • Israel, Hezbollah trade fire across Lebanon border amid alarm over Gaza war spillover

    Air raid sirens sounded across northern Israel on Saturday as Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hezbollah group said it fired rockets at Israel, and Israel said it struck a "terrorist cell" in retaliation, as top U.S. and EU diplomats visited the region seeking to keep the war from spreading.

    Fighting raged on inside Gaza, especially in and near the southern city of Khan Younis, where the Israeli military said it had killed three members of the militant Palestinian Hamas group that rules the densely populated coastal strip.

  • Israel sharpens warning to Lebanon as cross-border hostilities spike

    Israel said it was poised to impose quiet on the Lebanese front as hostilities spiked on Sunday, with Hezbollah wounding civilians in a cross-border missile attack and the Israeli air force bombing sites linked to the Iranian-backed group.

    The chief Israeli military spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, described Hezbollah as "the defender of Hamas-ISIS", in reference to the Islamist Palestinian faction whose cross-border rampage against Israel on Oct. 7 sparked a devastating Gaza war.

  • Egypt’s economy freefalls as experts look to lessons from Lebanon’s crisis

    As Egypt’s economic crisis deepens, many analysts have begun drawing comparisons to Lebanon’s slide into economic meltdown in recent years. However, economists emphasise that Egypt’s challenges, while serious, may not necessarily indicate an identical path if reforms are carried out swiftly and decisively. Egypt’s economy is facing severe headwinds, with worsening debt and foreign exchange shortage issues exacerbating a bruising crisis. The country’s external loans have ballooned to over $160 billion in recent years, weighing on fiscal stability, while foreign exchange shortages have driven pound devaluations and restrictions on offshore debit card use.

  • Saudi embassy in Beirut calls on Saudi citizens in Lebanon to leave immediately

    Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Beirut on Wednesday called on its citizens in Lebanon to leave the country immediately. “The Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the Republic of Lebanon is closely following the developments of the current events in the southern Lebanon region, calling on all citizens to adhere to the travel ban and to leave Lebanese territory immediately for those who are currently in Lebanon,” the embassy posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.