--:-- Ayesha Roscoe: Israel's assassination of the longtime leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon has plunged the region into even greater uncertainty. Iran backs Hezbollah and vows to retaliate for Hassan Nasrallah's death. All attempts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza and now Lebanon have so far failed. What's Israel's end goal and what's ahead for a region very much on edge?
--:-- Ayesha Roscoe: I'm Ayesha Roscoe. This is a special Sunday episode of Up First from NPR News. The Middle East is now even more exposed to the possibility of a wider war. We'll hear reaction from the region and ask what could happen next after the death of a leader the U.S. considered a powerful terrorist who spent decades amassing weapons capable of reaching far into Israel. And could Israel's next move be a ground invasion of Lebanon? Stay with us for what you need to know about what's next in the Middle East.
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--:-- Ayesha Roscoe: This weekend, a region is reacting to the news. Word of Hassan Nasrallah's death, the leader of the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah, was met with intensity, both rage and joy. And these opposing reactions, as NPR's Ruth Sherlock reports, show just how deep divisions run in the region.
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: In northern Syria, they began celebrating even before Nasrallah's death was confirmed. Pure joy. Words cannot describe how happy we are feeling. Syrian journalist Farid al-Makhloul is in Idlib, a rebel-held part of Syria that's been pummeled by Hezbollah alongside the Syrian regime in the 12 years the country has been in civil war.
--:-- Farid al-Makhloul: Nasrallah sent Hezbollah fighters to prop up the regime, as it appeared to be in trouble. Too many people have been displaced, killed and lost their beloved because of Nasrallah's support to the Syrian regime.
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: In Israel overnight and early Saturday morning, people celebrated. In Tel Aviv, residents of an apartment blasted this popular song against Nasrallah. We'll take you down, God willing, it says, and send you back to God along with all of Hezbollah.
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: As Hezbollah broadcast its confirmation that Nasrallah, the leader of the Iran-backed militant group for 32 years, was dead, along with other commanders, there was rage and grief from Hezbollah supporters. In Ramallah, in the West Bank, streets filled with Palestinians chanting promises to continue resistance against Israel. In a eulogy, a Hamas leader said Nasrallah's soul was, quote, inside the birds of the heaven. And in the Shia Muslim-majority city of Basra in Iraq, thousands walked wearing black. In the Iraqi parliament, politicians sobbed as the political representatives of a militia aligned to Hezbollah spoke in sorrow of Nasrallah's passing.
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: Iraq and parts of Yemen, controlled by Iran-backed Houthi militias, have declared several days of mourning, as has, of course, Hezbollah's backer, Iran. Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, warned that, quote, the blood of the martyr shall not go unavenged But what could this revenge look like Iran when they reach to the point of a country versus country war they will not do it Haider Salman a political analyst doesn believe that even now Iran wants to enter a direct war with Israel Iran knows Israel is militarily superior.
--:-- Haider Salman: But that doesn't mean, Salman says, that the militias Iran calls its axis of resistance in the region, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, and Shia militias in Iraq won't respond.
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: As night fell in Iraq on Saturday, videos showed angry protesters clash with riot police as they tried to reach the US embassy in the green zone in Baghdad. And in Israel, sirens sounded sending Israelis to shelter. from a missile fired from Yemen.
--:-- Ayesha Roscoe: In Lebanon, Israel continues to target more of Hezbollah's top leadership. Just this morning, it announced another top official had been killed. NPR's Kat Lonsdorf is in Israel, in the city of Haifa, with the latest on Israeli strikes and how people there are bracing for retaliation. Kat, good morning.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: Hey, good morning. So Israel has been striking not just southern Lebanon overnight and this morning, but also southern Beirut again. That's the area they've been hitting repeatedly in the past few days where Nasrallah and several other senior Hezbollah officials have been killed.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: These strikes have been fairly constant, especially in southern Lebanon over the past week or so. They've killed more than 700 people, wounded thousands more, and also caused massive displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon. We've been hearing about that from our colleagues on the other side of the border.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: The situation is quite desperate there for a lot of people. Here in Israel, people are bracing for a potential retaliation, either by Hezbollah or Iran or another one of the Iranian-backed groups in the region.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: Netanyahu returned to Israel earlier than expected from his time at the United Nations last night. And in a speech, he said this. He said, quote, The work is not yet complete. In the coming days, we will face significant challenges.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: Israel has now issued new restrictions, banning large gatherings for most of the country, and the Israeli military has called up more reservists to the north as it prepares for a ground invasion into southern Lebanon. A ground invasion.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: Tell us more about that. What are you hearing about how real that possibility might be? The idea behind this ground invasion would be to push Hezbollah back from the border with Israel to create what Israel calls a, quote, buffer zone of several miles.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: Israeli officials, including Netanyahu and the other top leaders of the military, have been making it clear that ground invasion is a real possibility. This is something they've been talking about for months here, but now we seem to be seeing more signs that it could be imminent.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: There's troops amassing at the borders, tanks and other military equipment are being sent up. And in the past few days, several brigades worth of reserves have been called up for action to report in the north up here.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: And I should say, obviously, Israel has been fighting another war in Gaza for nearly a year now. Its reserves are exhausted. Starting another major war with a big ground invasion is going to strain an already strained system.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: You've been in Haifa in northern Israel, bordering south Lebanon for the past few days. What is life like there with this escalation in tensions?
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: Well, it's relatively calm, although I think people are, of course, wondering what might happen next. You know, in recent days, Hezbollah has been firing dozens of rockets a day toward northern Israel, including toward here in Haifa.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: So there have been sirens and interceptions overhead as Israel's aerial defense system takes a majority of them out. These scenes have become relatively normal here after nearly a year of this kind of thing.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: And people here generally want this to stop, which most people I've talked to believe can only really happen with an escalation of Israel's action in Lebanon against Hezbollah, not with a ceasefire.
--:-- Ayesha Roscoe: Hassan Nasrallah led Hezbollah for 32 years. Over those decades, with the help of Iran, he built up an arsenal of weapons capable of reaching far into Israel. And now there are growing fears those weapons could be used in a wider war. For more, here's Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the Nonpartisan Middle East Institute.
--:-- Randa Slim: She spoke to my colleague, Scott Simon. How do you read the significance of this news?
--:-- Randa Slim: It's very significant. I mean, this is a person who has been the leader of this organization for the last 32 years, built the organization around his stature, around his ideas, and developed close relationships with the Iranian leadership.
--:-- Randa Slim: And so it the kind of organization where the leader makes most of the decision and has veto power over all of the decision. And so with his disappearance, basically, from the scene, the next thing to watch is who's going to succeed him.
--:-- Randa Slim: And the question to be asked, who died with him? Who died with him from the leadership council? Who of his advisors perished with him yesterday? So all of these are questions that will determine the next steps to be taken by the organization.
--:-- Randa Slim: Does this put the region closer or farther away from a ceasefire that the United States has been urging?
--:-- Randa Slim: It all depends on basically the decisions of three actors. The decision by Iran, which now is going to be playing more of a role in helping Hezbollah guide its own decision-making process and more of a role in its military decisions.
--:-- Randa Slim: So it depends on where Iran wants to go next. You know, does it want a regional conflagration or not? Until now, it has not wanted that.
--:-- Randa Slim: It depends on what the Israeli prime minister wants. Does he want a ceasefire? Or does he want to proceed with his campaign against Hezbollah, killing more commanders, bombing more missile sites, as has happened yesterday in the southern suburbs of Beirut, up to 40 strikes, you know, leveled basically whole neighborhoods and buildings, with Israel saying these were sites of missiles, Hezbollah missiles.
--:-- Randa Slim: Is the Israeli prime minister interested in, for example, reaching in agreeing to the ceasefire proposal put forward by the United States and France?
--:-- Randa Slim: And the third actor is, you know, Hezbollah. I mean, what do they want to do? Do they want to, I mean, I'm pretty sure they want to respond or they might in the short term. But then at the same after that, agree to the ceasefire proposal.
--:-- Randa Slim: And the big thing that was an obstacle to a ceasefire proposal, besides, in my opinion, the Israeli prime minister's political calculus of whether he wants war or not or whether he wants ceasefire proposal or not, is Nasrallah's linking the Lebanon theater with the Gaza theater.
--:-- Randa Slim: He said, yeah, I will go for the ceasefire proposal, but only if there is a Gaza ceasefire. And so now with him not being on the scene, will the new leadership, leader or leadership of Hezbollah with Iran decide that let's go for this ceasefire proposal and agree to de-link the Lebanon theater from Gaza?
--:-- Randa Slim: So these are the three players that will influence the next steps.
--:-- Randa Slim: I think a lot of people just hearing the news this morning are going to wonder what the prospects are for a wider war in the region. How do you how do you read that? I mean, again, it depends on the risk aversion of these players, you know.
--:-- Randa Slim: I mean, so far the Israelis have definitely shown that they are less risk averse toward a regional war. I mean, they must have calculated in their planning for this attack in their campaign against Hezbollah commanders that that kind of scenario might happen and that they were ready to deal with it.
--:-- Randa Slim: Iran so far has been risk averse about regional conflagration. Hezbollah the same because since October 8, when Nasrallah declared this war of support with Gaza, the escalation with Israel has followed a tit for tat pattern, you know, within certain rules of engagement that were not violated by Hezbollah.
--:-- Randa Slim: And so it depends what these players do next, and more importantly, what the U.S. will do next. Because of all the external players in this conflict, the U.S. has the most influence on Israel if it chooses to exercise it, and if it's able to, you know, I mean, get the Israeli prime minister to change his calculus.
--:-- Ayesha Roscoe: One of the biggest questions right now is how might Hezbollah respond to the killing of its leader by the Israeli military in Lebanon? And what does a growing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah mean for Lebanon, a country that's already suffering political and economic instability?
--:-- Ayesha Roscoe: To address those questions, let's bring in Mohamed Bazi. He directs the Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University.
--:-- Mohamed Bazi: Welcome to the show. So what kind of response do you expect from Hezbollah to the killing of Nasrallah, this towering figure and leader?
--:-- Mohamed Bazi: So I think we've seen some response already in that Hezbollah is continuing to fire rockets at northern Israel. It's trying to say that it hasn't been defeated. It's trying to say that it still has the capability to fire rockets at Israel.
--:-- Mohamed Bazi: I don't know if we're going to see a broader response because so far Hezbollah hasn't used the more precise missiles that it has, the missiles that Nasrallah himself had threatened to fire on Tel Aviv and on other Israeli cities if Israel were to attack Beirut as it's done repeatedly over the past week.
--:-- Mohamed Bazi: So we haven't seen that level of response yet, and I'm not sure if that means that Hezbollah's capability has been reduced and that they no longer have those missiles.
--:-- Mohamed Bazi: Well how do you gauge Hezbollah strength militarily and politically now That very hard to gauge in the past week especially considering that this is still unfolding Everyone is in shock. The membership of Hezbollah is in shock. All of Lebanon is in shock.
--:-- Mohamed Bazi: And then Lebanon is under constant attack as it's been for the past week or so. I mean, I would bring us back to this past Monday, which I think was the larger escalation even. I mean, the killing of Nasrallah was a huge escalation and a huge event.
--:-- Mohamed Bazi: But this past Monday, dozens of Israeli warplanes started bombing targets across Lebanon. They killed more than 550 people, injured almost 1,800 people within several hours.
--:-- Mohamed Bazi: And so that was one of the most intense aerial bombardments in modern history. And that, I think, marked the day when Israel expanded the Gaza war into Lebanon.
--:-- Mohamed Bazi: Yeah, I think since I wrote that piece, which I wrote right before the airstrike that killed Nasrallah, since that, Israel has expanded. I would argue it's expanded the Gaza war into Lebanon.
--:-- Mohamed Bazi: We're seeing Israel using the same kind of brutal tactics it deployed in Gaza, massive bombardment of civilians, displacement of civilians. And we also see Netanyahu eviscerated one of the last supposed red lines that President Biden had tried to impose on Israel, which was to prevent Israel from expanding the Gaza war into Lebanon.
--:-- Mohamed Bazi: I think we are in a new chapter. We are in war in Lebanon. And so even though this hasn't yet turned into the regional configuration, the regional war that the Biden administration fears that would pull in Iran and other players, it's already a two-country war.
--:-- Mohamed Bazi: What do you say to those Israelis who are in the region that Hezbollah has fired on who believe that a ground invasion may be necessary to push Hezbollah back and that a ceasefire in Gaza would not stop the attacks from Hezbollah?
--:-- Mohamed Bazi: I mean, every Hezbollah leader, including Nasrallah, who's been killed now, has been saying for 11 months that as soon as there's a ceasefire in Gaza, they would stop firing rockets in northern Israel.
--:-- Mohamed Bazi: When we had a one-week ceasefire back in late November, Hezbollah did stick to that promise. They stopped firing as well.
--:-- Mohamed Bazi: There's also separately, there's been talk of a ceasefire deal that the Biden administration, France, several Arab countries put together this week. They unveiled it publicly on Wednesday night as Prime Minister Netanyahu was on his way to address the UN General Assembly.
--:-- Mohamed Bazi: And it seems that Biden administration had received assurances that Netanyahu was interested in this ceasefire. And that was a 21-day ceasefire specifically for Hezbollah and Israel. It didn't even involve Gaza.
--:-- Mohamed Bazi: And then Netanyahu landed in New York and changed his mind and said he was no longer interested. And then they killed Hassan Nasrallah the next day.
--:-- Mohamed Bazi: I think at this point, the only tool that the Biden administration can use is to exert enough pressure on Netanyahu. And that means withholding weapons in order to get him to agree to a ceasefire now both in Lebanon and Gaza.
--:-- Ayesha Roscoe: Thanks for speaking with us. Thanks for having me.
--:-- Ayesha Roscoe: And that's up first for Sunday, September 29th. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. The special episode was produced by Brent Bachman, Martin Patience, Michael Radcliffe, and Samantha Balaban, and edited by Denise Couture, Shannon Rhodes, Julia Redpath, Vincent Nee, and James Heider.
--:-- Ayesha Roscoe: Our senior supervising editor is Evie Stone. For more coverage of the Middle East and for differing views and analysis, visit npr.org slash mid-east updates. That link is in our episode notes or turn on your radio.
--:-- Ayesha Roscoe: And of course, listen to Up First tomorrow morning for all the news you need to start your week. I'm Aisha Roscoe. Thanks for listening to Up First from NPR News.
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