AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
How might Hezbollah respond to the killing of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, by the Israeli military in Lebanon? And what does a growing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah mean for Lebanon, a country that's already suffering political and economic instability? To address those questions, let's bring in Mohamad Bazzi. He directs the Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University. Welcome to the program.
MOHAMAD BAZZI: Thank you for having me.
RASCOE: So what kind of response do you expect from Hezbollah to the killing of Nasrallah, this towering figure and leader?
BAZZI: So I think we've seen some response already in that Hezbollah is continuing to fire rockets at northern Israel. It's trying to say that it hasn't been defeated. It's trying to say that it still has the capability to fire rockets at Israel. I don't know if we're going to see a broader response because, so far, Hezbollah hasn't used the more precise missiles that it has, the missiles that Nasrallah himself had threatened to fire on Tel Aviv and on other Israeli cities if Israel were - attacked Beirut, as it's done repeatedly over the past week. So we haven't seen that level of response yet, and I'm not sure if that means that Hezbollah's capability has been reduced and that they have those missiles.
RASCOE: Well, how do you gauge Hezbollah's strength militarily and politically now?
BAZZI: That's very hard to gauge in the past week especially, you know, considering that this is still unfolding. Everyone is in shock. The membership of Hezbollah is in shock. All of Lebanon is in shock. And then Lebanon is under constant attack, as it's been for the past week or so. I mean, I would bring us back to this past Monday, which I think was the larger escalation, even. I mean, the killing of Nasrallah was a huge escalation and a huge event, but this past Monday, dozens of Israeli warplanes started bombing targets across Lebanon. They killed more than 550 people, injured almost 1,800 people in - within several hours. And so that was one of the most intense aerial bombardments in modern history. And that, I think, marked the day when Israel expanded the Gaza war into Lebanon.
RASCOE: Well, you wrote a piece for The Guardian, and this was even before the airstrikes killed Nasrallah, warning against Israel turning Lebanon into another Gaza. Do you see that as a real possibility, especially with the talk of a ground invasion?
BAZZI: Yeah, I think since I wrote that piece, which I wrote right before the airstrike that killed Nasrallah - I think since that, Israel has expanded - I would argue it's expanded the war - the Gaza war into Lebanon. We're seeing Israel using the same kind of brutal tactics it deployed in Gaza - massive bombardment of civilians, displacement of civilians. And we also see Netanyahu eviscerated one of the last supposed red lines that President Biden had tried to impose on Israel, which was to prevent Israel from expanding the Gaza war into Lebanon.
So I think we are in a new chapter. We are in war in Lebanon. And so even though this hasn't yet turned into the regional conflagration, the regional war that the Biden administration fears that would pull in Iran and other players, it's already a two-country war.
RASCOE: What do you say to those Israelis who are in the region that, you know, Hezbollah has fired on, and they - who believe that a ground invasion may be necessary to push Hezbollah back, and that it wouldn't - and that a cease-fire in Gaza would not stop the attacks from Hezbollah? What do you say to that?
BAZZI: I mean, every Hezbollah leader, including Nasrallah, who's been killed now, has been saying for 11 months that as soon as there's a cease-fire in Gaza, they would stop firing rockets at northern Israel. When we had a one-week cease-fire back in late November, Hezbollah did stick to that promise. They stopped firing as well.
There's also - separately, there's been talk of a cease-fire deal that the Biden administration, France, several Arab countries, put together this week. They were - they unveiled it publicly on Wednesday night as Prime Minister Netanyahu was heading to the U.N., as he was on his way to address the U.N. General Assembly. And it seemed that Biden - Biden administration had received assurances that Netanyahu was interested in the cease-fire, and that was a 21-day cease-fire specifically for Hezbollah and Israel. It didn't even involve Gaza. And then Netanyahu landed in New York and changed his mind and said he was no longer interested. And then they killed Hassan Nasrallah the next day.
RASCOE: And in the 30 seconds we have left, how could the Biden administration prevent this conflict from widening?
BAZZI: I think at this point, the only tool that the Biden administration can use is to exert enough pressure on Netanyahu, and that means withholding weapons in order to get him to agree to a cease-fire, now both in Lebanon and Gaza.
RASCOE: That's Mohamad Bazzi. He directs NYU's Center for Near Eastern Studies. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
BAZZI: Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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