Middle East Crisis in the Middle East: A Q&A with Perry World House Visiting Fellow Hussein "Huss" Banai

Crisis in the Middle East

A Q&A with Perry World House Visiting Fellow Hussein “Huss” Banai

On September 28, Israel launched an air strike which is confirmed to have killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader and one of the founding members of Hezbollah, classified by the U.S. Department of State and others as a terrorist organization with strong ties to Iran. Israel has continued its assaults on Hezbollah leadership in Lebanon, striking in southern Lebanon as well as in the Lebanese capital of Beirut. In retaliation for the death of Nasrallah and the ongoing Israeli strikes against Hezbollah, Iran launched a series of missiles aimed at Israel—including the major city of Tel Aviv—on October 1, though most were intercepted with assistance from the U.S. military. 

Perry World House Visiting Fellow Hussein “Huss” Banai, an associate professor of international studies at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, answered questions about the ongoing crises in the Middle East, why hostilities have flared in Lebanon, Iran’s role in the situation, and what we might expect to see from the international community moving forward.

Q: Israel recently launched an attack in Lebanon and has also started a ground invasion of the country. In retaliation, Iran fired a series of missiles aimed at Israel. What precipitated this conflict? How and why have hostilities expanded to Lebanon?

A: The recent escalation of violence between Israel, Hezbollah, and Iran can be understood in two temporal contexts. First, as a continuation of Israel’s attempt at “reestablishing deterrence” after the October 7, 2023, attack and hostage-taking by Hamas. Since those events, Israel has been engaged in cross-border skirmishes against Hezbollah, Iran’s main proxy in southern Lebanon. But the conflict entered a new, more intense phase over the last two months as Israel carried out assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in Tehran and Beirut, respectively. These targeted killings not only signaled a new phase in the war against Hamas and Hezbollah, but more importantly have now also shifted the burden of deterrence away from Israel and placed it on Iran. It is the Islamic Republic of Iran that now looks exposed and bereft of its deterrent proxies in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories (also note that Israel has been carrying out strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen who are backed by Iran). Iran’s missile attacks against Israel proper speak directly to Tehran’s desperate attempt at mitigating its over-exposed vulnerabilities now that Hezbollah and Hamas have been severely weakened. The recent expansion of the conflict into Lebanon – and now involving Iran – then must be seen in the larger context of the decades-long balance of power struggle between Israel and the Islamic Republic. This second (and longer) temporal context that reaches back to at least the changed geostrategic landscape in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq is key to understanding the outbreak of direct confrontation between Israel and Iran today.

Q: How is this new front connected to Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas?

A: To Israeli leaders the strikes against Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi, and Iranian targets are all part and parcel of the same broader war on networks of terror encircling Israel. But of course, the neutralization of Hamas in Gaza and the prosecution of the war in the Palestinian territories requires vastly different tactics and strategies as it does elsewhere in the region. Israel would risk overextension and overexposure of its military forces if it undertakes a prolonged ground invasion of Lebanon, for instance. All indications are that the Israel targeting of Hezbollah leadership and top military command, along with the systematic destruction of key rocket depots across southern Lebanon, have severely weakened the organization and disrupted its coordination capacities with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Tehran. Neutralizing Hezbollah also affords Israel more resources to systematically uproot Hamas in Gaza, which is an urgent priority for the Israeli public and especially the families of remaining hostages.

Q: Why did Netanyahu decide to attack Hezbollah/expand the war now?

A: The only major power with meaningful leverage on Israel’s military calculations is the United States, and with the American elections mere weeks away, the window of opportunity for effective strikes against Israel’s regional foes was simply too great to pass up. Netanyahu is an astute observer of the American political scene, and he calculated (correctly) that any American constraints on the expansion of war into Lebanon and against Iranian targets would be limited in the weeks leading up to the U.S. presidential elections (and perhaps even up to the inauguration of a new President in January 2025). It is hard to think of any other reason for this timeline since there really was no change in the strategic picture vis-à-vis Hezbollah’s military capabilities or actions in Lebanon.

Q: What should the international community’s response be to the newest developments? What should be the response to Iran? What should be the response to Israel?

A: The international community is constrained in what it can meaningfully do to compel either Israel and Iran to deescalate, given the high likelihood of American, Russian, and/or Chinese vetoes against either side at the UN Security Council. Of course, major powers could individually place pressures on either side to deescalate but, as mentioned above, Israel’s strategic advantage in the overall conflict means that only the United States would be able to restrain its actions, which the American elections timeline all but renders an impossibility now. Iran’s actions indicate that it does not wish to go beyond responding to the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, so there is less of an impetus for international constraints on Iran. Additionally, Iranian leaders – especially the newly-elected moderate president, Masoud Pezeshkian – do not wish to risk further economic sanctions and would much sooner return to a diplomatic agreement with Western powers over Iran’s nuclear program so that existing sanctions are lifted. So they are more than incentivized to stop here.

Q: What do you think will be the repercussions for the broader Middle East? Will other countries be brought into the fight, either as proxies or as an official ally of either Iran or Israel?

A: I do not think so. It is important to note that the escalation in violence and expansion of war into new territories has also underlined a major geopolitical reality – that Israeli military and intelligence apparatus are magnitudes more powerful and exacting than that of Iran’s. They have badly damaged Hezbollah, all but decapitated Hamas and control all of Gaza, and Mossad has shown that it has more than a few high-profile assets in the IRGC and perhaps even in the Iranian leadership. Whether Netanyahu will be satisfied with this new formidable deterrence precedent is anyone’s guess, but all indications are Tehran desperately hopes he stops here.