Israel’s audacious attack targeting Hezbollah’s leader on Friday has rattled the group, delivering its most severe blow since its founding. This has led its Iranian backers to warn that Israel has entered a dangerous phase of the conflict by altering the rules of engagement.

As Tehran watches its most prized non-state ally take a beating, questions are mounting about how it may respond.

The Jewish state significantly escalated its yearlong conflict with the group after expanding its Gaza war objectives on September 17 to include its northern front with Hezbollah. The following day, thousands of pagers used by its members exploded simultaneously, with walkie-talkies targeted the day after that. Israel then began an air assault that killed several Hezbollah commanders and led to the highest number of casualties in Lebanon in almost two decades.

And on Friday, Israel struck what it said was Hezbollah’s headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut, targeting its leader Hassan Nasrallah. The Israeli military has claimed that Nasrallah has been killed, but Hezbollah is yet to comment on the matter.

How much has Hezbollah been degraded?

“Hezbollah has taken the biggest blow to its military infrastructure since its inception. In addition to losing weapon depots and facilities, the group has lost most of its senior commanders, and its communications network is broken,” said Hanin Ghaddar, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and author of “Hezbollahland.”

Despite its losses however, the group still retains skilled commanders and many of its most powerful assets, including precision-guided missiles and long-range missiles that could inflict significant damage to Israel’s military and civilian infrastructure, said Ghaddar. Most of those missiles haven’t been deployed yet.

Since Israel stepped up its campaign, Hezbollah’s military performance “has proven that it was able to absorb that shock and was able to bounce back and it has been striking hard at northern Israel for days now,” said Amal Saad, Hezbollah expert and lecturer in politics and international relations at Cardiff University in Wales.

On Wednesday, Israel intercepted a ballistic missile fired by Hezbollah near Tel Aviv, an unprecedented attack that reached deep into the country’s commercial heartland. Hezbollah said it targeted the headquarters of Israel’s intelligence agency.

While Nasrallah’s targeting is unlikely to disrupt the operational continuity of the movement it is “obviously a massive, massive demoralization amongst its ranks and supporters and absolute terror which will temporarily paralyze ordinary people” within the movement, said Saad.

“That doesn’t mean the organization is paralyzed,” she added. “Hezbollah is an organization that was built to absorb these types of shocks… it’s built to be resilient and outlast individual leaders.”

Few contenders for Hezbollah’s leadership can match Nasrallah’s popularity, said Ghaddar, as he is closely associated with the group’s “golden days,” including the end of Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000 and the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, both of which were viewed as major victories for the Lebanese group.

If the group’s leadership is truly dismantled and coordination between Iran and Hezbollah is disrupted, it could prompt Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to take the lead, according to Ghaddar.

“They (Iran) will have to find a way to do it themselves. But it’s not an easy option as they will (become) targets, and they don’t understand Lebanon.”

Under what circumstances would Iran intervene?

Ahead of the attempt on Nasrallah’s life, Iran’s official line was that Hezbollah is capable of defending itself, even as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei acknowledged on Wednesday that Israel’s killing of the group’s leaders was “definitely a loss.”

Following Friday’s attack however, Iran’s embassy in Lebanon indicated that Tehran’s calculations might now be shifting.

“There is no doubt that this reprehensible crime and reckless behavior represent a serious escalation that changes the rules of the game, and that its perpetrator will be punished and disciplined appropriately,” the embassy said on X.

Iran’s rationale for avoiding involvement in the conflict may no longer hold, said Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Washington DC-based Quincy Institute. “If it becomes clear (to Iran) that Hezbollah actually cannot defend itself following the bombing in Beirut, particularly if Nasrallah himself was killed, then the Iranian justification for staying out of the war has collapsed,” he said. “At that point, Iran’s credibility with the rest of its partners in the Axis will risk collapsing if Tehran does not react.”

Iran is likely “horrified by the effectiveness and efficiency” of Israel’s attacks but despite the targeting of Hezbollah’s top leadership, Tehran may still believe the group can defend itself and dictate the terms of an eventual ceasefire, which would help the group recover, according to  Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute.

Tehran is most probably already helping Hezbollah rebuild its military command structure and providing tactical and operational advice to its leadership, he said. However, if the group nears collapse, it could “prompt a more assertive Iranian intervention,” potentially in the form of missile and drone strikes, as seen in April when Iran blamed Israel for attacking its diplomatic building in Damascus. Nadimi added that while a larger attack is unlikely, it’s not entirely out of the question.

Saad, the Hezbollah expert from Cardiff University, said an intervention by Iran would likely drag the United States into the war, noting that Tehran was “the weakest link” in the conflict.

“It’s the only member of the Axis that is an actual state. All the others are non-state or quasi-state actors. So, Iran has the most to lose if it participates,” she said.

“(Iran) is a conventional armed force, it would probably not fare anywhere near as well as Hezbollah would in a war because it’s a completely different military infrastructure,” Saad noted. “Hezbollah knows its terrain and adversary better than anyone else.”

Why Hezbollah matters to Iran

Since its inception 40 years ago, the Lebanese militant group has been the crown jewel of Tehran’s so-called Axis of Resistance, a group of mostly Shiite, Iran-allied Islamist militias spanning Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen that gives Iran strategic depth against its adversaries.

As a non-Arab, Shiite state, Iran sees itself as “strategically lonely” in the Middle East and therefore sees Shiites in the Sunni-dominated region “as the closest thing it has to natural allies,” Parsi said..

“From Tehran’s perspective, Hezbollah is central to the Axis because of its capabilities and discipline, its geographical placement, and its ideological and political proximity to Iran’s Islamic Republic,” Parsi added. “The destruction of Hezbollah is not in the cards in my assessment, but if it were to occur, that would be an existential blow to the Axis.”

The group is essential to “maintain a strong military component on the northern borders of Israel and keep Israel off-balance,” said Nadimi from the Washington Institute.

“It will be important to maintain Hezbollah as a viable and resilient actor and ally,” he said. “Iran has designed Hezbollah with resiliency in mind and believes they can take a lot more beating before Iran feels compelled to intervene directly.”

Iran looks to improve ties with the West

But Iran also has domestic considerations. The escalation between Hezbollah and Israel comes at a delicate time for Iran’s new reformist president, who campaigned on improving foreign relations to lift Tehran out of the isolation that has crippled its economy.

Just this week, President Masoud Pezeshkian said at the United Nations that his country is ready to engage with the West on its disputed nuclear program. He has named as his Vice President Javad Zarif, the seasoned, US-educated diplomat who became the face of Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers, abandoned by the administration of former US President Donald Trump in 2018.

Parsi, from the Quincy Institute, said the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7 and the subsequent escalation with Hezbollah “were very badly timed” for Tehran, since they “risked prematurely bringing forward a confrontation between Iran, Hezbollah and Israel at a time that is much more strategically suitable for Israel than the Axis.”

At home, Pezeshkian must navigate between his reformist constituency, which favors detente with the West, and hardline elements within the regime that want a show of force against Israel.

On Monday, the day nearly 500 Lebanese were killed in Israeli airstrikes, Pezeshkian stated in New York that Iran was ready to “lay down arms if Israel does the same.” The remark sparked intense backlash from hardliners at home for appearing weak in front of the enemy, according to reports. His statement, along with his offer to reconcile with the West in his speech to the UN General Assembly the following day, also drew criticism in some Lebanese media.

Given the “profound unhappiness of much of the Iranian public” with the regime, Pezeshkian’s priority is national reconciliation, said Parsi.

Still, if Hezbollah is seriously degraded, “Tehran may face a situation in which it will conclude that war is at its doorstep whether it chooses it or not and that it is, as a result, better off responding before Hezbollah is further weakened,” he said.

Wary of Israel’s ‘trap’

He said that both Iran and Hezbollah had exercised restraint in the face of Israeli attacks, “but now the Israelis are crossing the line, in my view, and there is every prospect of the war getting more difficult to contain.” Hezbollah was capable of defending itself, he added, but it was incumbent on the international community to step in before the situation gets “out of hand.”

Iran has yet to carry out the revenge it promised Israel after the assassination of Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.

This week however, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned that his country would not remain “indifferent” if a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah erupted in Lebanon.

“We stand with the people of Lebanon with all means,” he said at a news conference in New York ahead of a UN Security Council meeting.

After Hezbollah confirmed the death of its leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli strike, what – if anything – can it do next?

The next 72 hours are likely to be full of Hezbollah’s remaining commanders assessing who is left, how safe it is to communicate and meet, and exactly what level of pain tolerance it retains as it tries to formulate a response.

What we don’t know is how much disruption has been done to the group’s rocket inventory by the wave of Israeli airstrikes over the past two weeks.

Israel appears to have very accurate information as to the whereabouts of Hezbollah leadership in real time, and so that is likely mirrored in what it knows about where Hezbollah has kept its munitions.

So far, we have yet to see a barrage of rockets from Hezbollah that has caused significant (and known) damage to Israeli targets. That may still come if Hezbollah’s remaining leadership decides that it has to project some kind of military strength to try to salvage morale and relevance in the region. But if it tries to project strength and fails, owing to Israeli interceptions, that will just compound its loss of face.

What is unknown at this point is how fervently Iran feels it needs to be dragged into this.

It has shown an extraordinarily high threshold for pain over the past months and may have a longer view in hand. The West and Israel should be mindful over the apparent change in tempo of Iran’s uranium enrichment and be petrified of losing the wider war of non proliferation in a region unable to step back from the brink.

Yet most profoundly, it is Israel’s next steps that matter most. It has shown that it has the intelligence advantage, military might, and tolerance for international condemnation of civilian casualties to continue to strike at will. But this risks turning a fortnight of brutal strikes into another longer term loss to Israeli prestige.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a defining choice to make. Does the past fortnight salvage his domestic reputation for security and leave him better placed to face the music of the cases against him? Or does he again calculate that an ongoing war without clear strategic direction is his best way forward?

Ultimately a wider field of vision must win out. Lebanon’s civilians – and its southern neighbors – need political accommodation and a ceasefire now, regardless of what it means for the fate of Israel’s current political elite.

One was a koala. The other was a husky. Both were arguably out of place on a warm August night in subtropical Brisbane, the capital of Queensland in Australia’s northeast.

Home security video captured the moment they locked eyes in a suburban backyard surrounded by a high metal fence.

With deep rumbling growls, the koala advanced towards the retreating dog, for a moment appearing as the aggressor in an encounter that typically ends with a dead marsupial.

But not this time.

From the street, neighbor Sophia Windsor heard growling and barking and raced to the backyard to see the dog shaking the koala by the belly, then the koala grabbing the dog around the neck.

“I wasn’t even really thinking, and I just pried the koala off this poor dog, who was now yelping, and then kind of wrapped up the koala then ran back out the front to the driveway where my daughter was waiting,” said Windsor.

“And she’s like, ‘You’re carrying a wild koala.’”

Koalas are very hard to see at night.

Their gray fur blurs with the bitumen on dimly lit roads, and they move deceptively quickly for a marsupial often seen languidly munching on leaves high in trees.

But for an endangered species whose population numbers are said to be unreliable due to their elusive nature, koala sightings are becoming all too common during breeding season in some areas in and around Brisbane. And not just in trees.

Day and night, they’re spotted close to busy roads, on fences, up power poles, in backyards, near swimming pools, in schools – places they aren’t safe.

Some are on the ground, having been hit by cars or attacked by dogs. Others are clearly sick, with dirty eyes and behinds – telltale signs of chlamydia, an infectious disease that spreads quickly in stressed populations.

And koalas in Queensland are stressed.

Experts believe the population declines that saw them listed as endangered in 2022 have not reversed.

And some fear that by the time Brisbane hosts the Olympic Games in 2032, the only koalas left in the “world’s koala capital” will be in forests far outside the city.

Rescued twice in 24 hours

After Windsor grabbed the koala off the dog, she stood with the injured marsupial tucked under one arm and desperately fumbled with her phone to call for help.

“I was running on adrenaline. I actually paused as I was doing it, and went, ‘Oh my God. They’re really soft and cuddly, like a real teddy bear.’ And that was whilst he was biting my hand.”

“They have a really, really strong bite.”

She called a friend, who phoned John Knights, a veteran koala rescuer from the United Kingdom who’s caught more wild koalas than most Australians see in their lifetime.

Knights, 74, answers calls around the clock, jumping into a utility vehicle loaded with custom-made koala-catching paraphernalia: traps, cages, warning signs, poles, nets and countless tools.

He’s responded to more than 100 emergencies in two months – twice as many as last year – which he puts down to two strong rainy seasons that have led to a koala boom in Brisbane’s southern suburbs.

Knights says he’s not sure how much longer he can keep doing this – his pension doesn’t cover his rent and no one’s paying for this service.

However, before he had time to answer Windsor’s cries for help, she walked to a nearby tree and released the koala.

Big mistake.

Koalas have small brains that don’t cope well with being shaken.

Knights was concerned that after scurrying 20 meters (66 feet) up a tree, high on adrenaline, the koala might slowly deteriorate and die on the branch or be attacked again after climbing down.

So, an expert climber was called to catch it, but a rescue would have to wait until the morning.

Murray Chambers stood on the street, near passing traffic, observing the challenges that lay ahead of him.

“Everything,” he nervously laughed. “You’ve got power lines, which is a no-no for starters. Trees are interlocking, so he can jump from one tree to another.”

What about the height? “Been higher than that,” he said.

Chambers, from Koala Rescue Queensland, has been climbing trees to catch koalas for 20 years.

Now he receives fewer calls each week – sometimes five, sometimes none.

“We’re losing them, so there’s less cases,” he said.

Before long, Chambers inched his way up the tree and after several hushed minutes from onlookers, he caught the koala in a net as it tried to jump between branches.

Every koala transported to the RSPCA Wildlife Hospital for medical help gets a name and a numbered tag. Windsor’s finger-biting wild koala was assigned number 1561 and called “Trent,” after a nearby street.

Knights does not recommend people attempt to catch a koala.

As Windsor found out, they have a fearsome bite and sharp claws that can easily rip skin.

National rescue effort underway

Koalas mostly live down Australia’s eastern coast, and they’re endangered in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, as well as Queensland.

In 2022, a 10-year national recovery plan was launched to stop the decline in numbers and improve the size, quality and connectivity of koala habitat in the listed areas.

Millions of dollars have been spent on restoring koala habitat, but two years on, listed populations are still declining, and the long-term survival prospects for wild koalas remain “poor,” according to the annual report released in May.

The Queensland government had already introduced what it calls the “strongest koala habitat protections ever seen” in the state – with some payoff, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Environment, Science and Innovation (DESI).

Koala populations have stabilized in forests outside cities, but not in urban and semi-rural areas due to “human activity and domestic dogs,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

In the last six years, the RSPCA’s two wildlife hospitals in South East Queensland have treated more than 5,000 diseased and injured koalas.

With a euthanasia rate of 66%, most don’t make it.

Veterinarian Tim Portas says the animals are put to sleep if they’re unlikely to recover enough to survive on their own in the wild.

“I think within 20 or 30 years, if things don’t change, they’ll be gone in southeast Queensland,” Portas said.

“I often think, ‘Am I sitting here, seeing the last of Queensland koalas filtering through, as I work with them?’”

One of three subspecies, Queensland koalas are smaller and grayer than their southern cousins, and are the kind often seen in photos with celebrities and foreign dignitaries.

Habitat loss

As part of the national recovery plan, the federal government committed 76 million Australian dollars ($52 million) to the Saving Koalas Fund over four years to “support the recovery and long-term conservation of the koala and its habitats.”

The Queensland government added another 31 million Australian dollars ($21 million) for koala conservation in its latest budget, and says that, of more than 714,000 hectares of mapped koala habitat in the southeast, about half is exempt from any type of development.

Furthermore, the state has set “an ambitious target to commence rehabilitation to restore 10,000 hectares of koala habitat in South East Queensland by 2025,” the spokesperson said in the statement.

But conservationists say it’s nowhere near ambitious enough, given the scale of deforestation that’s occurring elsewhere.

“It’s an incredibly low ambition and woefully inadequate,” said Natalie Frost, from the Queensland Conservation Council.

In Queensland, over 320,000 hectares of “woody vegetation” was cleared during the 2021-22 financial year, according to government figures.

Of that, 88% was cleared for pasture, mostly for cattle grazing, while 1% was for development.

Greenpeace said most of the clearing required no permission.

“What we know from Queensland deforestation data is each year, 70-80% of all deforestation requires no state level approval or oversight. On top of this, the majority of deforestation is never sent to the federal government for approval,” said Gemma Plesman, senior campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific.

“Aussies would be horrified to know that we are bulldozing koala habitat at the rate that we are,” she said.

Most of the clearing was carried out in the Brigalow Belt, north of Brisbane, and in the Mulga Lands, to the southwest – areas identified as having the state’s highest koala population estimates, according to the 2022 conservation advice.

Climate change is also making the state’s inland areas drier and hotter, depleting nutrients in the leaves that koalas rely on to survive.

“A lot of the population modeling suggests that koalas will be shifting eastward and southward … and so along the east coast where we’re getting increased pressures from urban development,” said Frost.

Koala habitat squeezed in cities

With a human population of 2.5 million, Brisbane is one of Australia’s fastest-growing capital cities.

On the city’s outskirts, land is being cleared for new housing developments and amenities to service expanding suburbs.

Jo Murray has been living in Lawnton, a 40-minute drive north of Brisbane’s city center, in the Moreton Bay region, for 40 years.

When she first moved in, she was surrounded by dozens of koalas living in eucalyptus trees, their main source of shelter and food.

“If you went out for a walk early morning or evening, you would be almost sure to see a koala,” Murray said.

Over time, blocks have been cleared for housing and, earlier this month, woodcutters arrived next door and cut down towering Eucalyptus tereticornis trees, known as forest red gums, up to 28 meters (over 90 feet) tall, to make way for another prospective residential development.

Landowners are able to clear 500 square meters – about the size of an NBA basketball court – without formal permission. Separate exemptions exist for firebreaks and road access, among other reasons.

Garth Nolah, from Nolah Property Developments, who advised residents of the tree-clearing, said a development application would be submitted soon and declined to comment further.

She said she has saved local koalas Beau and Louis multiple times over the years and can’t face having to do it again.

“Once those trees all go, Beau and Louis are not going to be with us,” she said. “I don’t want to be the one who picks either of them up.”

Months earlier, when Murray learned that the neighboring lot had been advertised for sale, she started a petition and wrote emails to the state government pleading for something to be done to protect the trees.

Murray said the lack of response to her emails – and the subsequent loss of the trees – had made her question Queensland’s commitment to protecting urban koalas.

“If they’ve decided that they don’t want koalas in urban areas, and they’re not prepared to protect them, then they should just tell us,” she said.

Declining numbers

Most of the ambition for vast tracts of new koala habitat in Queensland lies outside Brisbane’s established inner-city suburbs.

Creating corridors within older residential areas requires much more inventive measures, according to Dr Bill Ellis, an expert in koala ecology from the University of Queensland.

Fences have been built with log climbers that offer escape routes from busy roads, and two years ago Brisbane City Council built a bridge over a thoroughfare near a wildlife reserve.

The bridge has helped many possums cross the road, and at least one koala, based on footage from a wildlife camera from the last eight months.

“Brisbane is the koala capital of the world and we are committed to making sure it stays that way,” Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner said in a statement.

Ellis said the bridge is a promising start, but that “some relatively dramatic interventions” are required to ensure koalas survive in suburban Brisbane.

“It may be that we need a whole lot of those bridges, and we’ll get a whole lot of movement, I’m not sure,” he said.

“But the capacity to move koalas from one side of a road to the other is not beyond us. It’s just a question of willpower and money.”

He hopes that koalas will survive in suburban Brisbane long enough for international visitors coming to the Olympics to see them in 2032.

“Either we change what we’re doing in southeast Queensland, or we’re going to be sending people well out of the city and well out of our suburbs in order for them to see a koala,” he said.

“And I think that’d be pretty sad.”

Trent’s second chance

In some ways Trent was lucky – the husky who shook him was a pleasant pet called Nine Nine who, at 12 years old, was not a natural predator for a lost koala.

According to the vet’s notes, Trent suffered superficial wounds to his chin, some chest trauma and mild abdominal bleeding.

“Stress attributed to hospital environment, ready to go back out there,” the notes added.

So, five days after the dog attack, Knights chose a tree several meters off the track on Mount Gravatt Outlook Reserve in Brisbane’s southern suburbs where Trent could feel more at home.

He was accompanied by some members of an eclectic and growing team of volunteers, who come together when called to hold a torch, carry a net, or “tree-sit” – sometimes through the night – to stop koalas from wandering into traffic.

The group includes a midwife, tattoo artist, public servant, automotive spray painter, student, speech pathologist, software engineer and at least one retiree – all local residents who are desperately concerned for the welfare of an Australian national icon.

Releasing koalas is one of the rewards of what can be a heartbreaking task.

So far this year, they’ve counted at least 52 dead koalas within a six-kilometer radius of nearby Whites Hill Reserve. Another 26 are assumed to have been euthanized by wildlife vets due to injury.

Having received a tetanus shot for her koala bite – a rare injury even in Australia – Windsor watched as Knights opened the cage and Trent bounded up a tree.

“That was amazing. That was worth every bite one thousand times!” Windsor said.

Knights reckons he’s saved thousands of koalas during his 10 years of service.

He says they need more trees to be able to move safely through urban areas and rejects any suggestion that koalas have become urbanized or accustomed to navigating suburban streets.

“They’re frightened. They’re lost,” he said.

“If they were urbanized, they wouldn’t be running into the traffic, they wouldn’t be turning up in backyards, they wouldn’t be falling into swimming pools. They’re not urbanized at all,” he said.

“They’re looking for somewhere to live.”

The last 48 hours in the Middle East – in which Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and continued to bombard the Iran-backed group across Lebanon – have once more ratcheted up fears that this long-running conflict could spiral into a wider regional war.

Nasrallah’s killing, in a huge set of Israeli airstrikes on his underground headquarters in Beirut on Friday, marks a significant escalation in the conflict between Israel and the Lebanon-based militant group, which has been firing on Israel since the start of its war against Hamas in Gaza.

It is also the latest in a string of major blows to Hezbollah, which has now lost multiple commanders and was already reeling after pagers and walkie-talkies owned by its members exploded earlier this month, killing dozens and maiming thousands.

Israel has warned that a “new era” of war was beginning with its “center of gravity” moving north, in a reference to the Lebanon border. One of its stated war aims is to return tens of thousands of its own civilians displaced by cross-border fighting.

Hundreds of thousands have been displaced within Lebanon due to the recent fighting, while more than a thousand have been killed since the airstrikes escalated last week, according to Lebanese government officials.

Israel has raised the possibility of a ground incursion into Lebanon, which, if undertaken, would be the fourth Israeli invasion of the country in the past 50 years.

Hezbollah has vowed that it will “continue its fight to confront the enemy,” while Iran, which backs the group as part of its network of regional proxies, has given an assurance of its solidarity.

Here’s what we know so far and where things might go next.

Escalating conflict

Israel has pounded what it says are Hezbollah targets in the Lebanese capital of Beirut and elsewhere in the country on Friday and Saturday, including the attack on the capital’s southern suburbs that killed Nasrallah.

Some of the strikes have come in densely populated areas, flattening residential buildings. Israel has said Hezbollah stores weapons in civilian buildings, which the group denies, and accuses Hezbollah of using residents as “human shields.”

Lebanese civilians say they cannot heed warnings from Israel’s military to avoid places where Hezbollah is operating, because the group is highly secretive. The warnings also often come just minutes before a building is struck.

Residents from Beirut’s southern suburbs have been fleeing to escape Israeli bombardment, with many seen sleeping in public places with no space left in makeshift shelters.

The latest attacks come after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brushed off a ceasefire proposal brokered by the United States and France that called for a 21-day pause in fighting across the Israel-Lebanon border.

The White House has said it had “no knowledge of or participation in” Israel’s Friday attack on Beirut, with US President Joe Biden describing Nasrallah’s death as a “measure of justice for his many victims,” including Americans, while calling for de-escalation in conflicts across the Middle East.

Earlier Saturday, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Peter Lerner said the military was preparing for the possibility of a ground incursion, but it was only one option being considered.

What will Hezbollah – or Iran – do?

In the wake of Nasrallah’s killing – and the attack on pagers and walkie-talkies – Hezbollah’s remaining leaders are likely to be assessing how to meet, communicate and respond.

Some of the factors that will impact that response – such as the extent to which Israeli strikes have reduced the group’s munitions – remain unknown. But analysts say the setbacks faced by the group are unlikely to leave it completely weakened.

“Hezbollah has taken the biggest blow to its military infrastructure since its inception,” said Hanin Ghaddar, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and author of “Hezbollahland.”

The group, however, still retains skilled commanders, as well as many of its most powerful assets – including precision-guided missiles and long-range missiles that could inflict significant damage to Israel’s military and civilian infrastructure, said Ghaddar.

So far, there has not been a major barrage of rockets from Hezbollah that has caused significant, known damage to Israeli targets. And even in the wake of Nasrallah’s killing the group has yet to launch a major retaliation at the level that could see Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system overwhelmed and its power grid affected.

But the latest development raises the potential for a shift.

Another key question is the extent to which Iran could get involved.

The state has appeared wary of moving into direct conflict with Israel, even as their long-standing shadow war has been pushed further into the open in recent months – and observers say direct Iranian retaliation could also draw the US further into the conflict.

A senior US official said the US believes Iran will intervene in the conflict if they judge that they are about to “lose” Hezbollah. The combined effects of Israel’s operations against Hezbollah had already taken hundreds of fighters off the battlefield, according to that official and another person familiar with the intelligence.

Iran’s embassy in Lebanon in a social media post Friday called Nasrallah’s killing a “serious escalation that changes the rules of the game,” and said its perpetrator “will be punished and disciplined appropriately.”

The Iranian envoy to the United Nations on Saturday also requested an emergency meeting of the Security Council to “condemn Israel’s actions in the strongest possible terms.”

But the space for diplomacy seems limited, especially as months of work on a ceasefire deal for the war in Gaza have seen little lasting progress.

“At best, it’s a question of deterrence, management and maybe, if Hezbollah, the Israelis and the Iranians are open to it… agreements that will contain conflict,” he said.

When pagers exploded across Lebanon last week, the year-long war with Hezbollah was not at the top of the Israeli political agenda.

Instead, the political class was convulsed with speculation that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to fire Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and replace him with a military neophyte, Gideon Sa’ar, to shore up his domestic power. National security heavyweights were scathing. “It’ll take him months on end to train for the job,” said Gadi Eisenkot, a highly respected former Israeli military chief and member of the opposition.

The pager and subsequent walkie-talkie explosions – which together killed dozens, maimed thousands, and rattled Lebanese nerves – put paid to that scheme, for now. The suddenly heightened tensions with Hezbollah gave Gallant a lifeline. Reports in the Israeli press suggest that the stay on Gallant’s dismissal is only temporary, and that Netanyahu still intends to fire him.

Policy and domestic politics are impossible to separate in any democracy, but especially in Netanyahu’s Israel – and especially now.

Political imperatives

The Israeli government says it needed to ramp up the war with Hezbollah to return 60,000 displaced civilians to their homes in northern Israel. Since the day after the October 7 attacks by Hamas, Hezbollah has been firing on Israel in solidarity with the militant group and Palestinians in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands have also been forced from their homes by Israeli bombardment in Lebanon.

Returning the northern residents home is a political imperative in Israel. And since the cabinet formally added the goal to its war aims, it’s a policy one too. But the heightened war with Hezbollah also stands in the way of Netanyahu’s desire to fire Gallant.

Just this week, after giving the green light to a US-backed mediation effort with Lebanon, the prime minister faced withering criticism from his right-wing allies, who say only a military conflict will remove Hezbollah from the border. Ben Gvir’s party held an urgent consultation – implicitly threatening to upend the coalition. The criticism forced Netanyahu to release a statement rejecting the idea of an imminent ceasefire. When he later put out another statement saying that he was engaging in the process with the United States, he only released it in English, not Hebrew.

In attacking Hezbollah, the Israeli government is trying to “decouple” Lebanon from Gaza. Hezbollah says that it’s attacking Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza; Israel wants to get Hezbollah to stop firing even without a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal. And yet there is a widespread assumption among the national security class in Israel that Netanyahu is prolonging the war in Gaza because he knows that as soon as it is over, he will face enormous pressure to call an election.

The families of the 101 people still held hostage in Gaza regularly accuse the prime minister of playing for time and putting his political survival above the national interest.

“If Netanyahu wanted to end it, he could. So I guess that’s not his intention at this point.”

Long-running tensions

The prime minister and Gallant have long had strained relations, despite a period of unity following Hamas’ October 7 attack.

The two have often disagreed over the war in Gaza. In August, Gallant told a closed-door Knesset committee that Netanyahu’s goal of “absolute victory” in Gaza was “nonsense,” according to Israeli media. Netanyahu took the extraordinary step of releasing a press statement accusing Gallant of adopting an “anti-Israel narrative.”

Gallant was also highly critical of Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israeli control of a strip of territory along the Gaza-Egypt border, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, calling it a “moral disgrace.” In cabinet, he voted against continued occupation there, seeing it as a hinderance to a ceasefire and hostage deal. “If we want the hostages alive, we don’t have time,” he said.

With both the Philadelphi Corridor and Hezbollah, Netanyahu’s critics have questioned why, if they were so critical, he waited months to raise the stakes over those issues. Netanyahu has said in response that it was a “progression of military advancement.”

Indeed, when the prime minister previously attempted to dismiss Gallant, in March last year, it was over the defense minister’s opposition to Netanyahu’s proposed judicial overhaul – an issue that had the potential to bring down the government.

The idea that Gallant might be fired over the judicial reforms led immediately to mass protests that came to be known in Israel as the “Night of Gallant.” Ultimately, Netanyahu did not follow through. One of the factors weighing on Netanyahu in his hesitance to fire him now has been fear of a second such night.

The exemption question

Behind the headlines of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, Netanyahu’s ability to govern has long been threatened by a seemingly back-burner issue: the Israeli military’s recruitment of ultra-Orthodox Israelis, known in Hebrew as Haredim.

“The danger to the coalition connected to the draft law for the Haredim is very high,” Malach said. “So (Netanyahu) would do the things that will help him keep the coalition. And if Gallant is in his way to keep the coalition, he will do whatever he can to remove him from the office.”

The issue of ultra-Orthodox military service has long plagued Israel. Ultra-Orthodox Jews had since Israel’s founding been exempt from mandatory service, because they viewed Torah study as the highest calling. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court said that the exemption violated equal protection principles and mandated the IDF to start drafting.

Ever since, the ultra-Orthodox parties on whom Netanyahu relies to govern have been trying to draft legislation to enshrine a new exemption in law. Up until now, they have been notably unwilling to follow through on threats to leave the coalition – rarely have they had so much power. But their unhappiness with the IDF’s current mandate to recruit ultra-Orthodox men remains a sword of Damocles.

Gallant is a thorn in Netanyahu’s side, pushing him not to give in to the ultra-Orthodox desire for an exemption. He, like many military leaders, thinks that all Jewish Israelis should share the burden of military service – and has said he won’t support any law that doesn’t have broad political support.

Sa’ar, whom Netanyahu wanted to replace Gallant, was said to have much better relations with the ultra-Orthodox parties.

Eisenkot, the former IDF chief of the General Staff, said the ultra-Orthodox issue was central to Netanyahu’s desire to get rid of the defense minister.

“Firing Gallant – and I’m not a fan of Gallant – is meant to serve political needs, to pass the conscription law, consequently damaging the IDF,” he said. “This is more of Netanyahu’s cynical policy.”

With Netanyahu’s backing, the ultra-Orthodox parties hope to pass a military exemption when the Knesset returns following the Jewish High Holidays in October. Even if the law passes, the Supreme Court is almost certain to knock it down, Malach said.

“But the point is that you are getting time. And this is the most important thing for Netanyahu,” he said. “The short term is the whole term for him. Because until the Supreme Court will decide, he will get one year, two years – that’s enough.”

That short-term strategy may well come to apply to Hezbollah as well. Amid all the talk of whether Israel will invade Lebanon in the coming days, there is no discussion of what a long-term settlement with Israel’s neighbor might look like.

Michael Shemesh, a correspondent for Israeli broadcaster Kan traveling with Netanyahu to New York this week, said that reporters asked an aide to the prime minister about the potential that Gallant might be fired.

“We don’t do politics during wartime,” the aide replied. “There were reporters who couldn’t help but laugh,” Shemesh said.