Lebanese leaders this week received a “blunt” warning from US special envoy Amos Hochstein that the White House is ready to support an Israeli offensive in southern Lebanon if a “diplomatic solution” is not found to stop cross-border hostilities with Hezbollah.
“The US will stand by Israel and not condemn them publicly if it launches an offensive against Hezbollah,” Hochstein told senior officials in Beirut, according to an unnamed senior Arab official who spoke with Middle East Eye (MEE).
During his meetings with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, Hochstein also revealed Israel “anticipates roughly five more weeks of intense fighting in Gaza, after which it will pause its main offensive across the enclave.”
After this, “Israeli officials intend to turn their full focus to the northern border with the aim of pushing Hezbollah back from the area so the roughly 60,000–96,000 displaced Israelis can return to their homes before the start of school in the fall,” Hochstein reportedly warned.
The Israeli-born senior US official also said that the anticipated “lull in Gaza fighting” could allow Hezbollah and Israel to start negotiations and reach a detente “without a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.”
Hochstein's visit to Beirut ended just hours before Hezbollah published unprecedented reconnaissance footage of numerous sensitive sites in Israel’s north, namely the port of Haifa and its naval base.
The video immediately prompted Tel Aviv to announce the approval of battle plans for a wider-scale attack on Lebanon.
“Operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon were approved,” and the military is “accelerating the readiness of the forces on the ground,” the Israeli army said in a statement.
In a speech on Thursday, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah issued a stern warning against Israel and the US, saying the Lebanese resistance is ready to “fight without restraints, rules or limits” if Israel expands its offensive.
“The enemy must wait for us by air, land, and sea. We repeat: If war is imposed on Lebanon, the resistance will fight without rules, controls, or ceilings,” Nasrallah said, adding that “storming the Galilee is a possibility that remains present within the framework of any war that the occupation may launch against Lebanon.”
“We obtained new weapons, which I will not reveal now. We developed some of our weapons and used new weapons that we had not used previously,” the resistance leader stressed. He also took aim at the US-backed ceasefire proposal for Gaza, saying: “There is an exposed and clear loophole in Biden’s ceasefire proposal that allows Netanyahu to continue the war in Gaza.”