U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken shakes hands with Egypt's Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty.

 The Biden administration is taking a more hands-off approach than usual during a week of dramatic escalation between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, with top U.S. officials holding back from full-on crisis diplomacy for fear of making matters worse.

The public restraint follows explosions of the militant group's pagers and walkie-talkies and an Israeli airstrike targeting a senior Hezbollah operative in Beirut, which threaten to spur all-out war between Israel and its enemies in the Middle East and doom already faltering negotiations for a cease-fire in the Hamas conflict in Gaza.

The escalation came even as two Biden administration officials stopped in the region this week to appeal for calm. It heightens the impression that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-right government is paying ever less attention to the mediation efforts of its key ally, despite depending on the U.S. for weapons and military support.

“The United States looks like a deer in the headlights right now,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Middle East Institute think tank in Washington. “In terms of words, deeds and action ... it's not driving events, it's reacting to events.”

There has been no publicly acknowledged U.S. contact with Netanyahu since senior White House official Amos Hochstein visited Israel on Monday to warn against escalation. The first wave of device explosions — widely blamed on Israel, which didn’t acknowledge responsibility — struck the next day.

And Gaza cease-fire negotiations were at such a delicate point that Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited only Egypt in a trip to the region this week because traveling to Israel in support of a deal might cause Netanyahu to say something that undermines the U.S.-led mediation, U.S. officials said.

Asked if the U.S. still had hope for a deal in Gaza — which the administration calls crucial to calming regional conflict — President Joe Biden said Friday that he did and his team is pressing for it.

“If I ever said it wasn’t realistic, we might as well leave,” Biden told reporters. “A lot of things don’t look realistic until we get them done. We have to keep at it.”

In the meantime, the White House and State Department have declined to comment publicly on the Hezbollah devices exploding Tuesday and Wednesday, killing at least 37 people and injuring thousands more, including civilians, in what analysts believe was a highly sophisticated Israeli intelligence operation.

Nor would they offer any assessment of an airstrike Friday in a densely populated part of Beirut — the deadliest such strike on Lebanon’s capital in years — which killed a Hezbollah commander. The Israeli military said 10 other operatives also were killed. Lebanon's health ministry said at least 14 people died.

Netanyahu and Hamas have followed past rounds of direct U.S. diplomatic outreach with fiery rhetoric or surprise attacks that the U.S. sees as setting back the effort for a truce.

Blinken appeared to loop in the pager explosions as the latest example of that.

When mediators seem to make progress in a Gaza deal, often there's an “incident, something that makes the process more difficult, that threatens to slow it, stop it, derail it,” Blinken said in Egypt, in response to reporters' questions about the pager attacks.

There may yet be high-level contact with Netanyahu when he travels to New York for next week’s U.N. General Assembly gathering of world leaders, said U.S. officials with knowledge of the discussions who spoke anonymously to discuss the administration’s strategy. But the officials also acknowledge that the situation has become so precarious that taking a public stance either firmly in support or critical of Israel would probably do more harm than good.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller batted away a question about whether months of Biden administration visits to the Middle East without a cease-fire deal to show for them was making Blinken and other officials look like “furniture” in regional capitals.

“So far, we have been successful of keeping it from turning into an all-out regional war,” Miller said. He credited U.S. messaging — sometimes through intermediaries, to Iran, its militia allies in the region and to Israel.

The Biden administration pointed out that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been in contact this week with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant. Gallant's job, however, is said to be in jeopardy.

Critics accuse the administration of pushing a deal on Gaza that’s repeatedly failed to win buy-in from the warring sides and has been outpaced by the growth of the conflict. The administration could do more diplomatically, including by working harder to rally Middle Eastern countries to intensify pressure on Israel, Iran and the latter’s proxies to stop fighting, said Katulis, the Middle East Institute analyst.

U.S. officials rejected assertions that they have given up on either a Gaza cease-fire or preventing the conflict from spreading to all-out war in Lebanon.

“We'd be the first ones to recognize ... that we are not closer to achieving that than we were even a week or so ago,” national security spokesman John Kirby said Friday.

“But ain't nobody giving up," Kirby said, reiterating that the U.S. was working with fellow mediators Qatar and Egypt to put together a final Gaza proposal to present to Israel and Hamas. “We're still going to keep the shoulder to the wheel. We're still going to keep trying on this.”

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Why did Israel blow up Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies — and what might happen next?

A region fearing all-out war may have been taken to the brink by a legion of pagers and walkie-talkies.

Waves of explosions in supermarkets and streets across Lebanon in successive attacks over two days reverberated from Beirut to the south in a targeted effort, largely attributed to Israel, to hobble the militant and political group Hezbollah.

At least 12 people were killed, including an 11-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl, and more than 2,700 people injured in the coordinated explosions of pagers that belonged to Hezbollah members. A day later, walkie-talkies were hit with a similar attack that killed 25 people and injured hundreds of others.

Israel has not directly claimed responsibility for the operation, but Hezbollah laid the blame squarely on its adversary, and two U.S. officials told NBC News that Israel was behind the attack.

From Russia to Jordan, countries warned that this was a dangerous escalation after months of simmering conflict in the Middle East. On Thursday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called the attacks an act of of war against Lebanon. Israel flew fighter jets over Beirut during his speech, rocking the capital with sonic booms, as the Israel Defense Forces and Hezbollah exchanged fire over the border.

NBC News looks at what the operation, which has killed or wounded so many, might have been aiming to achieve and what could come next.

Why now?

Israel announced a new war objective late Monday — the safe return of residents displaced from their homes by months of fighting with Hezbollah across the northern border with Lebanon. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also warned the U.S. that the only way to achieve that goal was “via military action.”

The growing fear and expectation was that some form of escalation was likely imminent. Then the pagers exploded.

It was initially unclear why Israel carried out Tuesday's pager attack when it did and whether it was an opportunistic operation or something more strategic, two U.S. officials and a Western official told NBC News on Wednesday.

And despite the second wave of walkie-talkie attacks and the airstrikes that followed, a former senior Israeli security official told NBC News said the attacks were opportunistic and not part of a wider strategic offensive.

“The timing was not a strategic decision, but of necessity, because it became a kind of use-it-or-lose-it situation,” the former official said. “Israel got a tactical success, which is substantial, but it’s still tactical.”

It was unclear if Israel would use this tactical advantage to wage a larger offensive against Hezbollah or if Hezbollah would stage a major campaign against Israel.

“We’re not going to war with Lebanon as of now,” the former official said.

There was even the possibility that the pager attack could be used to defuse tensions and start a dialogue, persuading Hezbollah to de-escalate or else risk more crippling blows. But that scenario appeared unlikely, the official said.

The offensive follows months of tensions between Hezbollah and Israel that began soon after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack and Israel’s monthslong military assault on the Gaza Strip. Hamas and Hezbollah are both backed by Iran.

Indeed, the gains from the device operations would be most effective as an opening salvo in a broader war, Michael Horowitz, the head of intelligence at Le Beck International, a security and risk management consultancy, told NBC News, by incapacitating key operatives and disrupting communications while sowing internal distrust.

What is to be gained from such an operation?

Israel could benefit on several different levels from such a massive and shocking operation, Horowitz said.

The first is the physical damage caused to Hezbollah militants — Lebanon’s health minister said that the flood of patients inundating hospitals across the country, including civilians, had injuries largely to their hands and faces. But disabling so many pagers is likely to significantly disrupt the group’s ability to communicate and could take a large number of Hezbollah commanders out of the field.

“Those devices, which may have been used for emergency communication, particularly in case of full-scale war with Israel, would also have been distributed among key commanders from the low-ranking field officer to the higher echelon of the group,” Horowitz said. “We can expect that a lot of them will no longer be able to carry out their military duties.”

While the exact details of the operation remain unclear, the attacks could signal that Israel knew the ins and outs of Hezbollah’s supply chain and managed to infiltrate it, he said.

“As a security breach, it can’t get much worse,” Horowitz added.

The attacks are a “huge blow” to Hezbollah, said Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy director for research at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. A security breach of this scale could seriously damage the group’s morale, he said.

This was “simply an unprecedented opportunity to hurt the organization and traumatize its membership,” Hage Ali said.

Hezbollah will now need to review its internal security, chase down potential collaborators and gauge how its supply chains may have been compromised, Horowitz said. “That takes a lot of time,” he added.

What’s next?

In an already volatile region, the pager and walkie-talkie attacks have added a long-feared incendiary in a surprising form.

Jordan’s foreign minister Wednesday accused Israel of “pushing the entire region into the abyss of a regional war.” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian called the attack “a sign of the decline of humanity and the dominance of barbarity and criminality.” The Kremlin warned that the region was in an “explosive state,” while its foreign ministry called the pager attacks an “act of hybrid warfare” aimed at provoking a major war.

In a statement Wednesday, Hezbollah promised a “difficult reckoning” for what it called a “massacre,” as it vowed to continue fighting in support of Gaza’s “people and resistance.”

Leader Nasrallah described the attacks as an "act of war," vowing retaliation, though he did not specify when or how the counterattack would be carried out.

But first, the group will have to review its internal security and take defensive measures, Horowitz said. “You don’t take unnecessary risks when taken off guard, as Hezbollah just did,” he added. “The group is poised to respond, but a response may take time.”

Hage Ali said that “if Israel was interested in a wide military operation, an attack in the immediate aftermath of this operation would have made sense. As time passes, the organization could readjust after this shock.”

An Israeli army commander in the north said Wednesday that troops were “at peak readiness.”

“The mission is clear — we are determined to change the security reality as soon as possible,” said the IDF’s northern command chief, Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin.

The IDF announced the strikes across the Israel-Lebanon border Thursday as Hezbollah began striking in northern Israel as well. Two soldiers were killed in northern Israel, the IDF said.

The U.S. and others have pushed both sides to avoid any significant escalation.

Washington said it was not aware of the “incident” in advance, but Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser under President Barack Obama, told the BBC on Wednesday that the “fairly indiscriminate use of violence” in the pager attacks was not something the U.S. would have wanted.

“This probably puts Israel in a position that the U.S. doesn’t want them to be, in terms of militarizing and potentially escalating the conflict in Lebanon,” Rhodes said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged de-escalation during remarks in Paris, where he was meeting with the French foreign minister Thursday. Blinken told reporters that both the U.S. and France "don’t want to see any escalatory actions by any party that make that even more difficult."

"France and the United States are united in calling for restraint and urging de-escalation when it comes to the Middle East in general, " Blinken said. "And when it comes to Lebanon in particular, we continue to work to get a cease-fire for Gaza over the finish line."

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What to know about the growing conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah

This week saw a dizzying escalation in the 11-month-old conflict between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

First came two days of exploding pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah — deadly attacks pinned on Israel that also maimed civilians around Lebanon.

Hezbollah's leader vowed to retaliate, and on Friday the militant group launched dozens of rockets into northern Israel. Later in the day, Israel said it killed the commander of Hezbollah’s most elite unit with a strike in Beirut that left at least 14 dead.

Many fear the events are the prelude to an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite group that is Lebanon’s most powerful armed force. A war threatens to bring devastation in Lebanon, heavy missile fire into Israeli cities and further destabilization to a region already shaken by the Gaza war.

During 11 months of exchanges of fire over the Lebanese-Israeli border, both sides have repeatedly pulled back when the spiral of reprisals appeared on the verge of going out of control, under heavy pressure from the U.S. and its allies.

But in recent weeks, Israeli leaders have warned of a possible bigger military operation with the goal of stopping attacks from Lebanon to allow tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by the fighting to return to homes near the border.

Here are some things to know about the situation:

What were the latest strikes?

An Israeli airstrike Friday brought down a high-rise building in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Shiite-majority area known as Dahiyeh where Hezbollah has a strong presence. At least 14 people were killed and more than 60 wounded, the deadliest Israeli strike in the Lebanese capital since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

The Israeli military said the strike killed Ibrahim Akil, the commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit, as well as other top leaders of the unit.

Hezbollah later confirmed Akil was killed, a heavy blow to Hezbollah’s most effective fighters. Israel said Akil led the group’s campaign of rocket, drone and other fire into northern Israel.

The strike came after the shock of the electronic device bombings, in which hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah detonated on Tuesday and Wednesday. At least 37 people were killed, including two children, and some 3,000 wounded. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

The casualties included some fighters from the group, but many of the wounded were civilians connected to Hezbollah’s social branches. Analysts say the attack has little effect on Hezbollah’s manpower, but could disrupt its communications and force it to take tighter security measures.

What is the situation on the border?

Hezbollah fired 140 rockets into northern Israel on Friday, saying it was targeting military sites in retaliation for overnight Israeli strikes into southern Lebanon. There was no immediate report of casualties.

It was a continuation of the near daily drumbeat of exchanges over the border since the Gaza war began in October. The exchanges have killed some 600 people in Lebanon – mostly fighters but including around 100 civilians — and some 50 soldiers and civilians in Israel. It has also forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate homes near the border in both Israel and Lebanon.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has promised retaliation for the electronic device bombings, raising fears of an escalation from the group. But Hezbollah has also proved wary of further stoking the crisis – it has not carried out its vows of revenge from Israel’s killing of a top commander, Fouad Shukur, in July.

Hezbollah says its attacks against Israel are in support of Hamas. This week, Nasrallah said the barrages won’t end – and Israelis won’t be able to return to homes in the north – until Israel’s campaign in Gaza ends.

As fighting in Gaza has slowed, Israel has fortified forces along the border with Lebanon, including the arrival this week of a powerful army division that took part in some of the heaviest fighting in Gaza. It is believed to include thousands of troops, including paratrooper infantry units and artillery and elite commando forces specially trained for operations behind enemy lines.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant this week declared the start of a “new phase” of the war as Israel turns its focus toward Hezbollah. “The center of gravity is shifting to the north by diverting resources and forces,” he said.

What is Israel planning?

Israeli officials say they have not yet made an official decision to expand military operations against Hezbollah – and have not said publicly what those operations might be. This week, the head of Israel’s Northern Command was quoted in local media as advocating for a ground invasion of Lebanon.

A U.N.-brokered truce to their 2006 war called on Hezbollah to pull back 29 kilometers (18 miles) from the border, but it has refused to, accusing Israel of also failing to carry out some provisions. Israel is now demanding Hezbollah withdraw eight to 10 kilometers (five to six miles) from the border – the range of Hezbollah’s anti-tank guided missiles.

Israel and Hezbollah’s 2006 war was a devastating monthlong fight triggered when Hezbollah fighters kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.

In that war, Israel heavily bombarded southern Lebanon and Beirut and sent a ground invasion into the south. The strategy, later explained by Israeli commanders, was to inflict the maximum damage possible in towns and neighborhoods where Hezbollah operated to deter them from launching attacks.

It became known as the “Dahiyeh Doctrine,” named after Beirut suburbs where large areas were levelled during the war.

But Israel could have a more ambitious and controversial goal this time: to seize a buffer zone in south Lebanon to push back Hezbollah fighters from the border.

A fight to hold territory threatens a longer, even more destructive and destabilizing war – recalling Israel’s 1982-2000 occupation of southern Lebanon.

What would be the impact of a full-blown war?

The fear is that it could turn out even worse than the 2006 war, which was traumatic enough for both sides to serve as a deterrent ever since.

The 2006 fighting killed hundreds of Hezbollah fighters and an estimated 1,100 Lebanese civilians and left large swaths of the south and even parts of Beirut in ruins. More than 120 Israeli soldiers were killed and hundreds wounded. Hezbollah missile fire on Israeli cities brought the war to the public, killing dozens of civilians.

Now, Israel estimates that Hezbollah possesses some 150,000 rockets and missiles, some of which are precision-guided, putting the entire country within range of Hezbollah fire. Israel has beefed up air defenses, but it is unclear whether it can defend against the intense barrages expected in a new war.

Israel has vowed it could turn all of southern Lebanon into a battle zone, saying Hezbollah has embedded rockets, weapons and forces along the border. And in the heightened rhetoric of the past months, Israeli politicians have spoken of inflicting the same damage in Lebanon that the military has wreaked in Gaza.

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