Israel invades Lebanon and Iran retaliates in major escalation of regional conflict

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Louise Thomas

Editor

Iran on Tuesday evening retaliated to the invasion and bombing of Lebanon by firing a salvo of ballistic missiles into Israel. Tehran’s Revolutionary Guards said that 90 per cent of its missiles hit their target. The group said it used its hypersonic Fattah missiles, the first time they have been used against Israel.

The Revolutionary Guards said they had fired the volley of missiles in response to the assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, Ismail Haniyeh and Hassan Nasrallah. “If [Israel] responds to the operation,” they warned, “it will face crushing actions”.

Hundreds of flashes could be seen over the cities of Tel Aviv, Ashdod and Jerusalem as the Iron Dome system attempted to intercept the Iranian rockets. Just before the missile assault on Israel six people were killed in a shooting attack in Tel Aviv. Police said two suspects opened fire on a boulevard in the Jaffa neighbourhood in southern Tel Aviv. TV footage showed gunmen getting off at a light rail station and opening fire. The two suspects were shot dead by a civilian and a police officer.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was rushed into a security meeting in a secure bunker near Jerusalem as they worked up a response to the massive onslaught, officials said. US president Joe Biden announced it had directed the US military to aid Israel’s defence.

Mr Biden and US vice-president Kamala Harris were monitoring the attack from the White House situation room and receiving regular updates, officials added.

“This attack will have consequences,” vowed Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari. “We have plans, and we will operate at the place and time we decide.”

Images showed parents clinging onto their children as they huddled in bomb shelters across Israel. Other images showed civilians crying as they fled from the orange flashes of air defences colliding with the Iranian missiles overhead.

Hezbollah had already fired at Tel Aviv earlier on Tuesday as senior White House officials warned that an Iranian attack was “imminent”. Those attacks caused limited damage but forced Israel to announce new restrictions on public gatherings and closed beaches, reducing the number of people that can meet to 30 outdoors and 300 indoors.

The Iranian attack ended a day of significant escalation as the Israeli military said it carried out “targeted” raids against dozens of Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon, the area of the country controlled by the group, as part of what it described as the “next phase” of its war aimed at neutralising the Iran-backed group.

Israel’s incursion into Lebanon is the first since the month-long all-out war with Hezbollah in 2006, and the fourth time they have invaded their neighbour since Israel’s creation more than 75 years ago.

Columns of Israeli tanks and infantry fighting vehicles were seen positioned on its northern border on Tuesday as airstrikes smashed into the hilly landscape of Lebanon’s southern region and the suburbs of Beirut.

While in other times Hezbollah would have been all around the city offering assistance to the displaced, now every aspect of the party seems to have gone underground.

On Tuesday afternoon, new strikes hit a building in a residential neighbourhood of Beirut. Judy, a resident and shopkeeper in a Sunni neighbourhood of Beirut, said she was worried about the coming Israeli incursion and about the situation in Beirut if this war will continue. “There is no security or stability in our lives. Every house and room is taken by families,” she said. “There is a huge pressure on everything, whether for food, drinks, and so on. It is much worse than before.

“Everyone is scared, the young and the old. What can we do to protect us if the [Israeli] army enters and occupies our land? There is nowhere to go. Only God can protect us.”

More than 1,000 people in Lebanon, from the southwestern city of Tyre, up to the capital of Beirut further north and across the country in the Bekaa Valley, have already been killed during a fortnight of Israeli airstrikes that ultimately presaged their invasion. More than a million citizens have also been displaced as they fled the inbound Israeli troops.

Israeli military spokespeople said the attacks were limited to within only a few miles inside Lebanon and would not involve an assault on Beirut, though at least four additional brigades were mobilised to the north ahead of future cross-border incursions.

They added, in a declassified report, that Israeli special forces had already conducted dozens of raids into Lebanon over the past year to destroy Hezbollah capabilities.

Rear Admiral Hagari, who posted the report on X, formerly Twitter, added that the United Nations Security Council resolution that ended the last Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006 had not been enforced and that southern Lebanon was now “swarming with Hezbollah terrorists and weapons”.

Among the hundreds of sites the special forces raided, Israeli military officials said they discovered stores of heavy weaponry, including RPGs, anti-tank missiles and assault rifles.

Hezbollah started its military campaign after Israel launched its offensive in Gaza following the 7 October attack by Hamas which killed roughly 1,000 people and led to 251 more being taken hostage, around half of which remain in Gaza.

Israel’s retaliatory air and ground assault in Gaza has killed at least 41,600 people, according to the latest update from the local Hamas-run health ministry, and led to more than 90 per cent of the enclave’s population being displaced. In the latest round of strikes, at least 37 people were killed after the Israeli military said it had been targeting command centres used by Hamas. They included a refugee camp in the centre of the enclave and a school in the northern Gaza City.

More than 60,000 Israeli residents in its northern territories were evacuated in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack last year. As Hezbollah vowed to attack Israel until it ceased its operation in Gaza, in what it claims is a solidarity act with its ally Hamas and the Palestinian people, the northern residents have been unable to return.

But last week, while Israeli missiles and rockets rained down on Lebanon, Israel added the return of those citizens to its core war aims. It says its latest invasion is key to achieving that objective.

It had been hoped that US, Qatar and Egypt-led efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas could stave off the possibility of an escalated conflict in Lebanon. Mr Biden and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron also attempted to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon last week.