Israel further escalated its long-running war against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon on Monday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered new airstrikes in Beirut’s Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs, one day after Israel recaptured the 900-year-old Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli military has stepped up attacks in southern Lebanon in recent days – warning hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes, including from the entire coastal city of Tyre last week. Israel’s campaign has complicated diplomatic efforts to end the U.S.-Israel war against Iran, launched in late February.
Iran is suspending its participation in indirect talks with the United States to protest the Israeli military campaign in Lebanon, according to Iran’s Tasnim News Agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Soon after that report, President Donald Trump put out a statement on social media suggesting that Iran would not walk away from negotiations with the U.S. He also wrote that he spoke with Mr. Netanyahu, and indirectly with Hezbollah, and that “Israel will not attack them, and they will not attack Israel.”
Why We Wrote This
The Israeli military is escalating its campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has displaced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese. The ongoing conflict could also complicate U.S. negotiations aimed at ending the war with Iran and opening up the Strait of Hormuz.
Despite a Washington-brokered ceasefire announced in mid-April, Israel has escalated its attacks in Lebanon, and Hezbollah has been retaliating. The group has hit back against Israeli forces now occupying a swath of southern Lebanon, and has also targeted northern Israel.
Residents of Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh clogged exit routes on Monday, after the latest Israeli evacuation warning. Israel also reported the death of one soldier, killed by a Hezbollah drone near Beaufort Castle, a strategic hilltop in southern Lebanon that served as an Israeli military base during a previous Israeli occupation.
“There will be no situation in which Hezbollah attacks our cities and our citizens, and its terrorist headquarters in Beirut, in Dahiyeh, will remain out of bounds,” Mr. Netanyahu said.
On Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu hailed the recapture of the castle: “We’ve returned to Beaufort united, determined, and stronger than ever,” he said.
Iranian officials – who became targets during a devastating 40-day U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign – insist that a ceasefire in Lebanon be included in any U.S.-Iran ceasefire agreement.
For weeks, negotiators have sought to reconcile a U.S. 20-point plan and an Iranian 14-point plan, as the White House aims to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and bring down global energy prices.
Those Iran negotiations mean Mr. Netanyahu “will feel more pressure from Washington not to further escalate in Lebanon,” Andreas Krieg, a security expert at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera.
“Israel is stuck in permacrisis and war with no end in sight. Occupying Lebanese territory is a recipe to strengthen Hezbollah in the eyes of many Lebanese as the only force able to stop Israel’s encroachments on Lebanon’s territory,” he said.
“Hezbollah is still alive and kicking, and the northern communities in Israel are still under threat from Hezbollah, so Netanyahu is under immense pressure to show something, even if he has to concede ultimately to American pressure to cease operation,” Dr. Krieg said.
Israeli Military/Reuters
Israel’s capture of Beaufort Castle brought a sense of déjà vu for Israeli forces, which attacked the medieval fortress repeatedly when the Palestine Liberation Organization occupied it after 1976. Israel itself held control of the castle, and built a military outpost adjacent to it, during Israel’s occupation of a self-declared security zone in southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000.
During the current conflict, UNESCO has listed the castle as cultural property under enhanced protection. While raising the flags of Israel and the Israeli army’s Golani Brigade over the castle was heralded at home, some questioned the strategy behind Israel’s expanding ground offensive.
“Instead of raising the questions that must be asked about the dubious strategy of the war in the north and the lack of a solution to the threat of exploding drones guided by fiber-optic cables, of which Hezbollah is launching dozens every day, we got a nostalgic outpouring about this thrilling return to a historic site,” analyst Amos Harel wrote in Haaretz, about the raising of the flags over the castle Sunday.
“Almost no one is talking about what happened and what we lost there the last time,” wrote Mr. Harel.
Hezbollah attacked Israel Defense Forces (IDF) convoys with deadly accuracy in southern Lebanon in the 1990s. And the fact that Israeli government officials and journalists are excited about repeating history, under the assumption that this time things will be different, is troubling, Mr. Harel adds.
Despite its losses, Hezbollah “has managed to completely disrupt life in a fairly large stretch of Israel near the Lebanese border. And it is costing the IDF a few deaths and dozens of wounded every week,” he wrote.
Hezbollah has been decimated by exchanges with Israel starting in late 2023, when the group launched rockets at Israel in solidarity with Hamas, its Iran-backed Palestinian ally in Gaza. A series of incremental battles turned into a full-blown Israeli offensive in autumn 2024, which saw the targeted assassination of Hezbollah’s top leaders and commanders, and unbridled pummeling of its vast missile and rocket arsenal across Lebanon.
But Hezbollah rebuilt many capabilities and changed tactics during an 18-month ceasefire. And now, Iran insists that any truce with the U.S. must include Israel stopping its offensive against Hezbollah.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on the social platform X that the current U.S.-Iran ceasefire “is unequivocally a ceasefire on all fronts, including in Lebanon. Its violation on one front is a violation of the ceasefire on all fronts.”
Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the Islamic Republic’s key negotiator with the U.S., posted on X Monday that the U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz – to counter Iran’s own effort to block the strategic waterway – and “escalation of war crimes in Lebanon by the genocidal Zionist regime are clear evidence of U.S. noncompliance with the ceasefire. Every choice has a price, and the bill comes due.”
The U.S. rejects linking Lebanon to an Iran deal. But U.S.-Iran negotiations have shown little sign of progress, despite frequent declarations from President Trump that an agreement was near.
Though a ceasefire remains in place, U.S. Central Command said it launched “self-defense strikes” over the weekend against Iranian radar and drone command centers, and two Iranian drones aimed at ships.
Iran responded early Monday with two ballistic missiles fired at U.S. forces in Kuwait, which Central Command said were “immediately defeated.”