High-Profile Assassinations Push Iran and Israel to the Brink of War

Israel has refused to comment on any involvement in Haniyeh’s death, but Netanyahu gave a defiant speech at the IDF’s headquarters in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, saying Israel had killed Shukr and warning that “Israel will exact a very heavy price for any aggression against us.”

Yet experts warn that Israel’s military, which is still actively fighting its war in Gaza, could face being overwhelmed if the war expanded to a full-scale conflict with Hezbollah or Iran.

Such a war would be “a whole different ball game,” said Jonathan Lord, a U.S. Middle East policy expert with the Center for a New American Security.

Experts believe Israel would have difficulty sustaining combat operations against Hezbollah, which has significantly more fighters and arms than Hamas and extensive tunnel networks under Lebanon’s southern border with Israel. Israel’s active-duty military is a little less than a third of the size of Iran’s, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based military think tank.

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