Thousands of Iran-backed fighters offer to join Hezbollah in its fight against Israel

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FILE - Fighters from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah carry out a training exercise in Aaramta village in the Jezzine District, southern Lebanon, Sunday, May 21, 2023. Thousands of fighters from Iran-backed groups in the Middle East are offering to come to Lebanon to join the militant Hezbollah group in its fight with Israel. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)

Thousands of fighters from Iran-backed groups in the Middle East are ready to come to Lebanon to join with the militant Hezbollah group in its battle with Israel if the simmering conflict escalates into a full-blown war, officials with Iran-backed factions and analysts say.

Almost daily exchanges of fire have occurred along Lebanon's frontier with northern Israel since fighters from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip staged a bloody assault on southern Israel in early October that set off a war in Gaza.

The situation to the north worsened this month after an Israeli airstrike killed a senior Hezbollah military commander in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah retaliated by firing hundreds of rockets and explosive drones into northern Israel.

Israeli officials have threatened a military offensive in Lebanon if there is no negotiated end to push Hezbollah away from the border.

Over the past decade, Iran-backed fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan fought together in Syria’s 13-year conflict, helping tip the balance in favor of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Officials from Iran-backed groups say they could also join together again against Israel.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech Wednesday that militant leaders from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other countries have previously offered to send tens of thousands of fighters to help Hezbollah, but he said the group already has more than 100,000 fighters.

“We told them, thank you, but we are overwhelmed by the numbers we have,” Nasrallah said.

Nasrallah said the battle in its current form is using only a portion of Hezbollah's manpower, an apparent reference to the specialized fighters who fire missiles and drones.

But that could change in the event of an all-out war. Nasrallah hinted at that possibility in a speech in 2017 in which he said fighters from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan “will be partners” of such a war.

Officials from Lebanese and Iraqi groups backed by Iran say Iran-backed fighters from around the region will join in if war erupts on the the Lebanon-Israel border. Thousands of such fighters are already deployed in Syria and could easily slip through the porous and unmarked border.

Some of the groups have already staged attacks on Israel and its allies since the Israel-Hamas war started Oct. 7. The groups from the so-called “axis of resistance” say they are using a “unity of arenas strategy” and they will only stop fighting when Israel ends its offensive in Gaza against their ally, Hamas.

“We will be (fighting) shoulder to shoulder with Hezbollah” if an all-out war breaks out, one official with an Iran-backed group in Iraq told The Associated Press in Baghdad, insisting on speaking anonymously to discuss military matters. He refused to give further details.

The official, along with another from Iraq, said some advisers from Iraq are already in Lebanon.

An official with a Lebanese Iran-backed group, also insisting on anonymity, said fighters from Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, Afghanistan’s Fatimiyoun, Pakistan Zeinabiyoun and the Iran-backed rebel group in Yemen known as Houthis could come to Lebanon to take part in a war.

Qassim Qassir, an expert on Hezbollah, agreed the current fighting is mostly based on high technology such as firing missiles and does not need a large number of fighters. But if a war broke out and lasted for a long period, Hezbollah might need support from outside Lebanon, he said.

“Hinting to this matter could be (a message) that these are cards that could be used,” he said.

Israel is also aware of the possible influx of foreign fighters.

Eran Etzion, former head of policy planning for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a panel discussion hosted by the Washington-based Middle East Institute on Thursday that he sees “a high probability” of a “multi-front war.”

He said there could be intervention by the Houthis and Iraqi militias and a “massive flow of jihadists from (places) including Afghanistan, Pakistan" into Lebanon and into Syrian areas bordering Israel.

Daniel Hagari, Israel’s military spokesman, said in a televised statement this past week that since Hezbollah started its attacks on Israel on Oct. 8, it has fired more than 5,000 rockets, anti-tank missiles and drones toward Israel.

“Hezbollah’s increasing aggression is bringing us to the brink of what could be a wider escalation, one that could have devastating consequences for Lebanon and the entire region,” Hagari said. “Israel will continue fighting against Iran’s axis of evil on all fronts.”

Hezbollah officials have said they don’t want an all-out war with Israel but if it happens they are ready.

“We have taken a decision that any expansion, no matter how limited it is, will be faced with an expansion that deters such a move and inflicts heavy Israeli losses,” Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Kassem, said in a speech this past week.

The U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and the commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force deployed along Lebanon’s southern border, Lt. Gen. Aroldo Lázaro, said in a joint statement that “the danger of miscalculation leading to a sudden and wider conflict is very real.”

The last large-scale conflict between Israel and Hezbollah occurred in the summer of 2006, when the two fought a 34-day war that killed about 1,200 people in Lebanon and 140 in Israel.

Since the latest run of clashes began, more than 400 people have been killed in Lebanon, the vast majority of them fighters but including 70 civilians and non-combatants. On the Israeli side, 16 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed. Tens of thousands have been displaced on both sides of the border.

Qassir, the analyst, said that if foreign fighters did join in, it would help them that they fought together in Syria in the past.

“There is a common military language between the forces of axis of resistance and this is very important in fighting a joint battle,” he said.

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US struggles to halt spiraling Israel-Hezbollah conflict

A harder push by the U.S. for Israel and Hezbollah to reach a truce has so far failed to halt an escalating conflict at the Lebanese border that increasingly appears headed toward a full-blown war.

Hezbollah has tied its daily cross-border rocket and artillery fire into northern Israel to the Israeli military operations in Gaza. But with no end in sight to the war against Palestinian militant group Hamas, the conflict in Lebanon inches closer to a crisis.

Even a cease-fire between Hamas and Israeli forces is unlikely to de-escalate tensions in Lebanon, as Israel sees Iranian-backed Hezbollah as a persistent threat for its some 80,000 displaced residents in the north.

The U.S. has offered a diplomatic solution that would create a buffer zone at the border, but the plan is unlikely to be accepted by both sides — or it would create, at best, a temporary solution, experts say.

Asher Kaufman, director of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, said the U.S. and Israel are “in a bind” because Hezbollah’s mission since its founding in 1982 remains the same: to destroy the state of Israel.

“Whatever the case, it would be a temporary agreement with Hezbollah, because the long-term strategy of Hezbollah and of Iran remain the same,” he said. “Nothing will change in that respect.”

Kaufman explained that for the diplomatic track to work, at least temporarily, Hezbollah will need some incentives, such as an agreed-upon boundary line.

“It’s very hard to think now about the constructive way forward, but the alternative of full war between Israel and Hezbollah would be so devastating,“ he said, adding a large war could drag in the U.S. and other Iran-backed militias. “It would devastate Lebanon. It would devastate Israel.”

Amos Hochstein, the U.S. special envoy who is in the region trying to defuse the tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant this week as the crisis worsened.

In remarks from Beirut, Hochstein said that “families are shattered” and “innocent people are dying,” while Lebanon is “suffering for no good reason.”

“It’s in everyone’s interest to resolve it quickly and diplomatically,” he said. “That is both achievable and it is urgent.”

The U.S. plan reportedly includes enforcing a United Nations resolution, called 1701, that helped end a brief war Israel had waged against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006.

The resolution demands a de-arming in the southern area of Lebanon, from the Litani River to the Blue Line, a UN demarcation line dividing Lebanon from Israel and the Golan Heights. In the U.S. plan, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and a UN peacekeeping force would be allowed to operate in the area, and there would be a phased withdrawal of Hezbollah fighters.

But that is likely only to be possibly after a cease-fire in Gaza. And it’s unclear if Hezbollah would agree to the deal. Israel has threatened to enforce the lines by force if needed.

Seth Krummrich, a retired special forces U.S. Army colonel who worked for decades in the Middle East, expressed doubt that a Gaza cease-fire would lower Hezbollah tensions for good. He assessed the situation has now escalated into a wider problem that cannot be solved without regime change in Iran and an established, brokered peace.

“It’s like asking a scorpion not to sting,” he said of Hezbollah. “The solution there is coming to an actual peace deal and creating some sort of stability in northern Israel and in Gaza.

“That is not going to happen in our lifetime. Just the amount of damage that was done in Gaza, the number of family members that were lost for those that survived, they will always hate Israel,” said Krummrich, now vice president at Global Guardian, an international security services provider that works in Israel.

There is some precedent for Hochstein, who brokered a 2022 agreement between Israel and Lebanon on a maritime border dispute that paved the way for natural gas exports.

But the conflict raging now is much more complex, and Hochstein cannot directly talk to Hezbollah because it is a U.S.-designated terrorist group. He is limited to discussions with the Lebanese government and the LAF, despite Hezbollah being a major power player in the country.

In recent weeks, Israeli officials have increasingly warned that a wider conflict is inevitable with Hezbollah, which first fired rockets into Israel on Oct. 8, a day after Iran-backed Hamas invaded southern Israel and killed some 1,200 people, while taking another roughly 250 hostages.

As the cross-border shelling has become more intense, Netanyahu warned earlier this month that “one way or another” Israel “will restore security to the north.”

Netanyahu has been less combative than some of his allies, such as Gallant, who has been warning of war with Hezbollah since the end of last year. Netanyahu is especially more willing to pause bigger action in Lebanon as he struggles with the goals of destroying Hamas in Gaza and returning some 120 hostages still in the coastal enclave.

Michael Makovsky, president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said Netanyahu appears resistant to a wider war in Lebanon, but an end to the Gaza war could “free up” an Israeli operation in the north.

“That might make it easier for Netanyahu to do something more strongly in the north,” he said. “But I think they prefer not to deal with it now, even if things are less intense in Gaza, because they [have] got to resupply their weapons.”

The Lebanon conflict spiraled even further out of control this week, when Hezbollah released what it claimed was aerial surveillance footage of Israeli military sites in the port city of Haifa. In response, Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, threatened that “all-out war” was a possibility.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah delivered a speech Wednesday mourning the loss of senior commanders killed in Israeli strikes and also warning Israel against an invasion, saying it would be “unable” to win a conflict in Lebanon.

“When it comes to Lebanon in general, there is great readiness and manpower for the resistance,” he said. “If a war was imposed on Lebanon, the resistance will fight without any constraints, without any rules, without any ceiling.”

The rhetoric on both sides, along with the escalation of border fighting, only renewed existing fears that a full-blown war could be approaching, and that the U.S. will be unable to stop it.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby stressed on Thursday that “conversations are ongoing” between officials in the region who are still holding out hopes for a diplomatic solution.

“We still don’t want to see a second front opened up,” he told reporters. “Obviously, we take the tensions and the rhetoric seriously by both sides.  And we’re doing everything we can to try to prevent that outcome.”

If diplomacy fails and Israel moves forward in Lebanon against U.S. wishes, it’s not clear how much leverage Washington will have to stop the conflict.

Netanyahu’s administration has resisted pressure from the U.S. over the Gaza war and repeatedly bucked the Biden administration’s demands. Relations have hit a sore spot — Netanyahu had a highly public spat this week with the White House over what he claimed was a holdup of arms sales to Israel — but Biden remains very supportive of Israel.

Boaz Atzili, a professor of foreign policy and global security at American University, said there is a good chance that Netanyahu’s government, if it continues to stay in power, will move into Lebanon against U.S. advice because Israel sees it as a defensive strike to return its displaced residents and ensure another Oct. 7 attack can never happen again.

“They think that the right thing to do is to fight,” he said. “They might defy what the U.S. administration is telling them. Also, they might draw the lesson that the consequences of defying this might not be very terrible.”

Still, a war in Lebanon would be much costlier than the one raging in Gaza, as Hezbollah is the star proxy for Iran and has built up its forces in the past roughly two decades since the last war. The armed group also has tens of thousands of rockets, much more than Hamas.

If the U.S. were to halt all arms sales, Israel could struggle to prosecute the war. But Krummrich, the retired special forces colonel, said Israel believes it has a “righteous position” to defend itself after Oct. 7 and could procure weapons through other channels.

“The U.S. could cut off all arms supplies,” he said, “but I still don’t think that that would stop Israel from doing it if they truly believe [in] it.”

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