[SS from essay by Assaf Orion, Liz and Mony Rueven International Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel. He was head of strategy for the Israel Defense Forces from 2010 to 2015.]
In the weeks since late July, when Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran and Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr was killed in Beirut, there has been much speculation about the eruption of a wider conflict in the Middle East. According to this view, if Iran and Hezbollah choose to retaliate through major direct attacks on Israel, they could transform Israel’s current campaign in Gaza into a regional war. In this scenario, Israeli forces would then be engaged in high-intensity fighting on multiple fronts against multiple armed groups, terrorist militias, and a nuclear-threshold state’s military equipped with a huge arsenal of long-range missiles and drones.
In some ways, this wider regional war is already at hand. From the outset, “the Gaza war” was a misnomer. Ever since [Hamas](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/tags/hamas)’s heinous October 7 attack nearly one year ago, Israel has faced not one but numerous antagonists in what has already become one of the longest wars since Israel’s founding. The day after Hamas’s assault from Gaza, Hezbollah began attacking Israel from Lebanon, declaring that it would continue its attacks as long as the fighting in Gaza continued. Shortly thereafter, the Houthis in Yemen also joined in, launching continual attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea and launching missiles and drones at Israel, including one that exploded in central Tel Aviv.
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[SS from essay by Assaf Orion, Liz and Mony Rueven International Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel. He was head of strategy for the Israel Defense Forces from 2010 to 2015.]
In the weeks since late July, when Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran and Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr was killed in Beirut, there has been much speculation about the eruption of a wider conflict in the Middle East. According to this view, if Iran and Hezbollah choose to retaliate through major direct attacks on Israel, they could transform Israel’s current campaign in Gaza into a regional war. In this scenario, Israeli forces would then be engaged in high-intensity fighting on multiple fronts against multiple armed groups, terrorist militias, and a nuclear-threshold state’s military equipped with a huge arsenal of long-range missiles and drones.
In some ways, this wider regional war is already at hand. From the outset, “the Gaza war” was a misnomer. Ever since [Hamas](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/tags/hamas)’s heinous October 7 attack nearly one year ago, Israel has faced not one but numerous antagonists in what has already become one of the longest wars since Israel’s founding. The day after Hamas’s assault from Gaza, Hezbollah began attacking Israel from Lebanon, declaring that it would continue its attacks as long as the fighting in Gaza continued. Shortly thereafter, the Houthis in Yemen also joined in, launching continual attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea and launching missiles and drones at Israel, including one that exploded in central Tel Aviv.