U.S., European and Arab mediators are pressing to keep stepped-up cross-border attacks between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah militants from spiraling into a wider Middle East war that the world has feared for months.
It's not clear whether Israel or Hezbollah has decided to ratchet down attacks to avoid triggering an Israeli invasion into Lebanon, said Gerald Feierstein, a former senior U.S. diplomat in the Middle East. Despite this past week's plateauing of hostilities, “it certainly seems the Israelis are still ... arranging themselves in the expectation that there will be some kind of conflict ... an entirely different magnitude of conflict," he said.
Gallant, in response, said, “We are working closely together to achieve an agreement, but we must also discuss readiness on every possible scenario.” While the U.S. helped Israel knock down a barrage of Iranian missiles and drones in April, the U.S. likely would not do as well assisting Israel's defense against any broader Hezbollah attacks, said Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is harder to fend off the shorter-range rockets that Hezbollah fires routinely across the border, he said.
“We’re going to continue to help Israel defend itself; that’s not going to change,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said. “But as for a hypothetical — specifically with respect to the northern border line ... — again, we want to see no second front opened, and we want to see if we can’t resolve the tensions out there through diplomatic processes.”