Iran-Israel Proxy Conflict

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      Death of Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s Leader, Pushes Mideast Conflict Into New Territory

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      Tehran is faced with deciding how, or whether, to retaliate after the death of the leader of Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militia and Iranian proxy.Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia, on Saturday confirmed the death of Hassan Nasrallah, its longtime leader, in a strike marking a major escalation of Israel’s campaign against Iran’s proxies in the Middle East.The death of Mr. Nasrallah, after Israeli bombs flattened three apartment buildings shielding what it said were Hezbollah’s underground headquarters, pushed Israel’s war against Iran-backed forces into new territory. Iran has long sought to have the proxies — Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen — serve as the front line in its fight with Israel.But if one of its most important military assets, Hezbollah, has been substantially weakened, it could leave Israel feeling less threatened and put pressure on Iran to decide whether to respond.While fiercely condemning the attack, Iran’s leaders have not taken any direct steps in retaliation, nor have they punished Israel for the killing last month of the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. That inaction has led some analysts to conclude that the Iranians do not want to risk a direct confrontation with Israel.Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, released a statement on Saturday saying, “All the resistance forces in the region stand with and support Hezbollah.”Iranians at an anti-Israeli gathering in support of Hezbollah in Tehran on Saturday.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As Hezbollah Threat Loomed, Israel Built Up Its Spy Agencies

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      In the immediate days after the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, Israeli intelligence officials feared a pre-emptive strike was imminent from another longtime enemy, Hezbollah. They frantically prepared to stop it with plans to strike and kill Hassan Nasrallah, the powerful Hezbollah leader who the Israelis knew would be in a bunker in Beirut.But when Israel informed the White House of its plans, alarmed administration officials discounted the imminent Hezbollah strike. President Biden called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told him that killing Mr. Nasrallah would set off a regional war and asked him to hold his fire, current and former senior American and Israeli officials said.On Saturday, Israel announced that it had killed Mr. Nasrallah after warplanes dropped more than 80 bombs on four apartment buildings in Lebanon, where the Hezbollah leader of more than three decades had gone to meet his top lieutenants. Mr. Biden was not informed ahead of time, aggravating the White House.Smoke rose over buildings in Beirut after Israeli airstrikes on Saturday.Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York TimesBut the more salient outcome for both Israel and the United States was how successfully Israeli intelligence had pinpointed Mr. Nasrallah’s location and penetrated Hezbollah’s inner circle. In a matter of weeks, Israel has decimated the senior and midlevel ranks of Hezbollah and left the group reeling.That success is a direct result of the country’s decision to devote far more intelligence resources in targeting Hezbollah after its 2006 war with the Iran-backed terrorist group. It was a defining moment for Israeli intelligence. The Israeli army and the intelligence agencies failed to score a decisive victory in that 34-day conflict, which ended with a U.N.-brokered cease-fire and allowed Hezbollah, despite heavy losses, to regroup and prepare for the next war with Israel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israel Bombs Residential Site in Effort to Kill Hezbollah Leader

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      The strike came barely an hour after the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, delivered a fiery address to the U.N. General Assembly.The Israeli military bombed residential buildings south of Beirut on Friday that it said stood over the central headquarters of Hezbollah, barely an hour after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a combative address to the United Nations in which he vowed to defeat the group and other Iranian-backed militias.A huge blast shook the Dahiya, an area south of Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway, and thick black smoke began rising above the skyline, in what appeared to have been the most intense bombing in the area since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah began last October.The strike targeted Hassan Nasrallah, the cleric who since 1992 has led Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese armed group and political party, according to Israeli and American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Nasrallah was killed, though there were growing concerns in Tehran that he was in the buildings when they were hit, three Iranian officials said.Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said the bombing had caused the “complete decimation” of four to six residential buildings. At least six people were killed and more than 90 others injured, the Health Ministry said, although Mr. Abiad warned that the toll was likely to rise.“They are residential buildings. They were filled with people,” Mr. Abiad told The New York Times. “Whoever is in those buildings is now under the rubble.”An injured person being helped at the scene of the bombing.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In U.N. Speech, Netanyahu Declares That Israel Is ‘Winning’

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      The Israeli prime minister castigated Israel’s critics and the United Nations itself during his visit to New York for the U.N. General Assembly.When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel arrived in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly, he seemed to be entering a lion’s den.Speaker after speaker at the annual gathering of world leaders had portrayed Israel as a global villain. Police arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who called Mr. Netanyahu a war criminal. His public rebuttal of a Biden administration plan to pause the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah raised tensions between the two governments.But Mr. Netanyahu bulldozed his way through his visit, castigating Israel’s critics and the United Nations itself, offering no diplomatic concessions, and ordering an airstrike in Beirut that may have killed Israel’s long hunted archnemesis, the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.The strike landed even as Mr. Netanyahu delivered defiant remarks to a U.N. General Assembly hall — largely emptied after dozens of diplomats walked out in protest — in which he triumphantly declared of Israel’s multiple conflicts: “We are winning.”It is an assessment some U.S. officials say could reflect short-term truth while skirting past the risk of a larger conflict that could be devastating for all involved.Hours later, senior Israeli officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military operation, expressed remarkable confidence about their military and sabotage campaign against Hezbollah. Their blows against the group over the past two weeks and Mr. Nasrallah’s possible death could be a turning point, they said, in their ongoing struggle with Iran, which arms and funds Hezbollah, Hamas and other proxy forces in what the officials portrayed as a plan to destroy Israel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israel and Hezbollah Threaten to Hit Harder, Raising Fears of All-Out War

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      A leader of the Iranian-backed militia said its latest barrage was “just the beginning,” and an Israeli military official said, “Our strikes will intensify.”Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and a top Hezbollah leader vowed on Sunday to increase the intensity of their cross-border attacks, raising fears that the renewed conflict could escalate into all-out war.The Hezbollah official, the deputy secretary-general Naim Qassem, said the Lebanese militia had entered “a new stage” of open warfare against Israel, while Mr. Netanyahu said his nation would take “whatever action is necessary” to diminish the threat posed by its adversary.The statements came after a tumultuous week of hostilities.Early on Sunday, Hezbollah launched about 150 rockets, cruise missiles and drones, according to the Israeli military, targeting what appeared to be the deepest areas it has hit in Israel since the group began firing on it in October, a day after Hamas-led forces attacked southern Israel. Since then, Israel and Hezbollah have been engaging in tit-for-tat attacks. Hezbollah fired more than 100 rockets, drones and missiles into Israeli territory on Sunday morning. The attack came in response to strikes on militia members in Lebanon last week.Shir Torem/ReutersIsrael’s military said that its air defenses had intercepted most of the projectiles fired from Lebanon. One hit Kiryat Bialik, a town of 45,000 just north of Haifa. At least four people were wounded by shrapnel in northern Israel on Sunday, according to Magen David Adom, an Israeli emergency rescue service.Referring to the strikes, Mr. Qassem said that “what happened last night is just the beginning.”“We will kill them and fight them from where they expect and from where they do not expect,” the militant leader told thousands of people gathered in Dahiya, the Hezbollah-dominated neighborhood in southern Beirut, for the funeral of two Hezbollah commanders killed in an Israeli airstrike on Friday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israeli Attacks in Lebanon Mark a Sharp Strategic Shift

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      The events of this week seem to indicate that Israel’s leaders have decided they can no longer live with the threat of Hezbollah on their northern border, analysts say.The death toll from a devastating Israeli airstrike on central Beirut rose to at least 37 on Saturday, with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah confirming that two of its senior commanders were among those killed. Dozens more were wounded in the strikes, which leveled two apartment buildings and plunged Lebanon into further chaos days after pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members exploded en masse.The attacks have left Hezbollah, Lebanon’s most sophisticated political and military force, in deep disarray and appeared to hail a stark shift in the calculations that had long governed the decades-old conflict between Israel and the militant group.After a hugely destructive war in 2006, Hezbollah’s leaders spent years building military capacity they thought could counter and perhaps deter Israeli attacks. And until last week, Israel had refrained from launching the kind of attacks that its leaders had previously feared could provoke retaliatory strikes on critical infrastructure or incursions by Hezbollah commandos. However, events of the past few days have suggested that Hezbollah grossly underestimated its adversary, as Israel dashed across what had been unofficially considered red lines.The region was on edge Saturday in anticipation of a Hezbollah counterattack, with President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, telling reporters that the fighting posed an “acute” risk of escalation. Hezbollah issued calls for vengeance on Saturday and fired rocket salvos into northern Israel, but those reactions are routine. Meanwhile, Israeli fighter jets continued to pummel Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, including, its military said, hundreds of Hezbollah rocket launchers.“Eighteen years of mutual deterrence has now given way to a new phase of one-sided superiority on the part of Israel,” said Lina Khatib, an associate fellow at Chatham House, a London-based research organization. “The facade that Hezbollah had been presenting to the world of it being an impenetrable organization is shattered, and Israel has displayed with flair how much of an upper hand it has in this equation vis-à-vis Hezbollah.”People in Beirut mourning Hezbollah fighters on Thursday.Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Week of Chaos Pushes Lebanon’s Doctors to the Limit

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      Dr. Dania El-Hallak was already exhausted. After wireless devices exploded across Lebanon, there had been little time to process what she had seen — the hundreds of wounded, many of their faces disfigured beyond recognition.“I am hoping that it was all just a bad dream,” Dr. El-Hallak said, still struggling to take stock of the carnage on Friday.Then, without warning, Israeli fighter jets ripped through the skies above Lebanon’s capital.“There are strikes in Dahiya?” she said in disbelief, using the Arabic name for Beirut’s southern suburbs.Her nightmare had only just begun.The attacks on Hezbollah’s communication devices this week — widely attributed to Israel — wounded thousands of people, leaving many of them permanently disabled and in need of long-term rehabilitative care. The Israeli airstrike just miles from downtown Beirut on Friday, which killed at least 37 people and injured dozens more, has only added to the toll. Others are still presumed trapped in the debris.Lebanon’s ailing health system — already embattled by a crippling economic collapse — has been sent into overdrive.Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta at his home in London in December. He volunteered last year at a burn unit in Gaza and now believes war will come to Lebanon. Mary Turner for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      For Families of Those Missing After Israeli Strike in Beirut, an Agonizing Wait

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      After a nightlong vigil, with an untold number of hours of waiting still ahead, Najwa Qubaisi pushed away every relative who tried to coax her from the concrete skeleton of the building that had once been home to her grandson and his family.“How can I leave? I can’t,” she said, her eyes puffy from hours of crying. “I want to stay until I get some kind of news.”A day after an Israeli strike razed two buildings in an attack that killed members of its regional foe, Hezbollah, in suburban Beirut, the relatives of those who lived there were anxiously waiting on Saturday to learn the fate of dozens of loved ones still unaccounted for.Desperate, dazed-looking family members huddled in crowds just beyond the remains of sidewalks that had been ripped away and torn apart by the force of the blast. The occasional screeches of ambulance sirens were audible as rescuers brought in heavy equipment to remove tons of concrete in search of the missing.The blasts on Friday were not only a painful military blow to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group that lost two top commanders and over a dozen members in what Israel described as a strike on a meeting held after a string of Israeli attacks this past week. They were also devastating to the largely Shiite Muslim community of Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has long held sway.The toll of the blast has risen to 37, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, with three children among the dead. And sorrow and rage emanated from those still awaiting news.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More