Is the Middle East on the Verge of All-Out War?
Natan Sachs joins Derek Thompson this week to discuss the Middle East conflict, including Israel’s strategy, Gaza’s humanitarian crisis, and Iran’s next steps. Then, they delve into the United States’ involvement, as well as Biden’s waning window of influence.
Since October 7, 2023, many have feared that the conflict between Israel and Hamas would bloom into a wider war that would consume the Middle East. Today, we are dangerously close to that reality. In just the last month, Israel carried out several attacks against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which, like Hamas, is backed by Iran. Israel is widely believed to be behind the remote detonation of pagers and communications devices that were implanted with explosives, killing and injuring scores of Hezbollah members. Israel assassinated the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and systematically killed much of its other leadership. It has launched a ground invasion of Lebanon—its first in nearly 20 years. It has bombed the Iranian consulate in Syria. Iran retaliated this week by launching nearly 200 missiles at Israel. In the Middle East, no stranger to warfare, this may be the most treacherous moment for interstate conflict since the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, is today’s guest. We begin by visiting each theater of the Middle East conflict: Lebanon, Gaza, Iran. We talk about Israel’s strategy, Gaza’s humanitarian crisis, and Iran’s next steps. We talk about the odds that today’s conflict will tip over into a full-blown regional war—and what that war might look like. And we talk about the United States, what the Biden White House is trying to achieve through private and public channels, and what levers Biden has left to influence the Middle East in his final weeks in office.
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In the following excerpt, Natan Sachs talks about what the mood in Israel is a year after the Oct. 7 attacks and tells Derek Thompson about the history of Hezbollah.
Derek Thompson: We’re speaking almost a full year after October 7. You’ve just come back from Israel. I would just like you to reflect on what you saw, what Israel is like, what the feeling in Israel is like one year after October 7.
Natan Sachs: Well, it’s an extremely somber time. This has been easily the hardest year, the most difficult year that Israelis remember. Perhaps back in 1948, there were harder times, but this eclipses anything else, including the horrific years of the Second Intifada in the early 2000s—when I was in Jerusalem, my hometown. The mood is very somber. There is mourning on a daily basis. It’s easy to miss, I think, from abroad because we see so much destruction in Gaza and in Lebanon, and understandably, there’s a lot of solidarity with the people there. Israelis, like absolutely everyone, including Lebanese and Palestinians, look at themselves first, at their own people, and they’re grieving. They’re still grieving for the people lost a year ago on October 7. They’re still discovering new things. Israelis are talking about new stories, new people. As of two weeks ago for myself, discovering new people you knew indirectly who were affected in a big way.
This is very prevalent in the mood. As one person put it, it’s not exactly a post-traumatic syndrome. It’s still a complex trauma ongoing because the hostages are still there—101 are accounted for—and still, of course, the fighting. I hasten to say—although this is a sign of the time, I guess, of how difficult it is—that’s, of course, true of Palestinians. It’s true now of Lebanese, as well. But again, for Israelis, of the way they look at themselves, at their country, a very difficult time. I’ll add two points to that. One is a deep domestic crisis. It’s cliché in Israel to say that the external threats are severe but that the real threat would always be domestic if Israel could not stick together.
Now is a real time of testing for that. Israel is coming off several years of political crisis, and this year, of course, is no exception, to say the least, with Prime Minister Netanyahu likely sticking around. And for many Israelis, say about half, they have a deep level of mistrust in Netanyahu, which is an extremely difficult position to be in in times of extreme war.
The second point that this affects is, it’s not only those affected on October 7 or during the war but tens of thousands of Israelis evacuated from the northern border, from the border with Lebanon, immediately after October 7 for fear that the same would happen to them in the hands of Hezbollah along the Lebanese-Israeli border. Hezbollah joined the fight on October 8, the day after. When Israel evacuated these tens of thousands, it was an expectation in Israel that they would return soon, and here they are, a year later, not returned. This, I think, can be overlooked from abroad, but it’s very important to understanding the Israeli actions right now, even. There’s a political imperative, absolute imperative, for the government to allow the civilians on the northern border to return home and to return home with some sense of safety.
Thompson: Let’s talk about several fronts of this war: Lebanon, Gaza, and Iran. And I want to hit them in that order because while I think they are tied together in several ways, they’re also distinct in their own right. So let’s start with Lebanon. Since we last spoke, Israel’s war, to your point, has broadened to the north. They’re taking on Hezbollah. They’ve assassinated their leadership in Lebanon and beyond. I’d love you to just help me understand: What is Hezbollah and what is their relationship to the governments of Lebanon and Iran?
Sachs: It’s a great question, and it’s a very hard one to answer. I don’t think there is a definitive one, which speaks to how good it is. Hezbollah is a party. It’s literally “the party of God,” a party of the Shia sect or the Shia group within Lebanon. Lebanon is a very complex society, a large Shia group, which originally was counted as a minority, it’s now probably a plurality—easily a plurality—alongside a Sunni Muslim group and Christian groups, Druze groups, and others. Among the Shia community, there was a party already: Amal, hope.
Then in the early ’80s, with very strong influence from Iran, emerged a new party, a rival to Amal, called Hezbollah, and it grows very much with Iranian support and very much tied to Iran. Of course, Iran is the one big Shia power at the time, and very shortly after the Islamic Revolution in Iran that brings the Ayatollah Khomeini to power, his people, including with some connections to the current supreme leader, Khamenei, have ties to clerics from Lebanon who had often gone to study either in Iraq, where there are very important Shia centers and a Shia population, or in Iran.
After the revolution, this becomes, to a certain degree, an outshoot of “exporting the revolution,” as people refer to it often. So in one sense, it is a proxy of Iran, but it is not correct to just define it as a proxy of Iran. It is also very much a Lebanese party, a party of this Shia group, Shia minority, or Shia part of Lebanon, and in that sense, it’s also a Lebanese party. So a proxy of Iran and a Lebanese party.
Now, it emerges in a time of the Israeli invasion of Southern Lebanon, which comes on the back of the civil war in Lebanon, and with sects, armed groups, fighting each other in a very bloody, very, very difficult war. Israel enters then to push out the Palestine Liberation Organization, Fatah, especially the Palestinian groups among the refugee camps in Lebanon, and in the beginning with some support, in fact, from the Shia population that had some hostility or rivalry with the Palestinians. But then Hezbollah emerges and, with Iranian support, becomes Israel’s main foe in the 18 years between 1982 and when Israel finally withdraws from Lebanon completely in 2000 and long after that, in fact, until today. When the civil war in Lebanon ends, a lot of the armed groups disarm.
There is a peace of sorts achieved, first with the Syrian occupation. They were the hegemon that came in to enforce the peace, and with the Lebanese state, that includes all these different factions. Although it is nondenominational, the state itself is very denominational. The prime minister is always a Sunni. The president is always a Christian, etc. But Hezbollah does not disarm, and Hezbollah creates sort of a state within a state. It slowly comes in, also, to Lebanese politics and becomes the kingmaker.
Now, the senior leadership positions in the Lebanese state itself, which are not officially part of Hezbollah, and are not part of Hezbollah, but they cannot be determined, they cannot be chosen, the president can’t be elected without acquiescence of Hezbollah leadership—or at least until recently, by Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. Most importantly, they are by far, or they were by far, but probably still, the strongest military force in Lebanon. So if you ask in the most cynical sense “Who holds the gun?,” there is a Lebanese armed force, and they are significant. But they are not significant if you compare them to the power of Hezbollah, and Hezbollah became, de facto, the armed force of Lebanon, but taking, sometimes, orders from Iran.
This excerpt was edited for clarity. Listen to the rest of the episode here and follow the Plain English feed on Spotify.
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Natan Sachs
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Subscribe: Spotify
