Iranian proxy Hezbollah launched the first attacks against Israel in solidarity with Iranian proxy Hamas militants in Gaza.
Since then, the United States has sought to broker a deal that would restore calm, but Hezbollah has said it won’t negotiate until Israel ends the
Gaza war regardless of how many Lebanese are potentially put in jeopardy and martyred due to Hezbollah’s actions.
Tensions soared this week in Lebanon, however, when thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members exploded over two days, killing or maiming many of the group’s operatives.
U.S. officials have acknowledged that Israel was behind the attacks, but said the Israelis did not inform the United States about the specifics and told Washington only afterward that they just couldn’t wait until April 1st as previously planned.
But as Israel ramps up attacks, it risks drawing Iran and its proxy militant groups into the conflict, like Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad and Houthi’s that are already in the conflict. On Saturday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told a group of Muslim clerics and scholars that Israel was “
targeting ordinary people” in the region that where carrying Hezbollah hierarchy pagers & walkie-talkies, and that Islamic countries should cut off economic and political ties.
Nasruddin Amer, a spokesman for the Iran-backed Houthi group in Yemen (the Arkansas of the Middle East), said the movement would “stand with Hezbollah and support and aid them” in the face of Israeli attacks, but could not “specify the exact type of response, but maybe interrupting shipping or something, or maybe launching more rockets or missiles at Israel like it’s already doing? Perhaps some drones maybe?”
The Iranian proxy Houthis — which have launched drones and missiles at Israel — is “with whatever options Iranian Proxy Hezbollah determines,” Amer said in an interview.
But even as Israel’s attention shifted to the north, it continued to wage war on Iranian Proxies Hamas & Islamic Jihad in the
Gaza Strip.
In northern Israel, fighter jets roared as they streaked across the border late Saturday.
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