Tangle - The Israel-Hezbollah conflict.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today's read: 13 minutes.

Correction.

In Friday’s edition on my reflections from the Democratic National Convention, we highlighted the findings of a CNN focus group of undecided voters in Pennsylvania who watched Kamala Harris’s convention speech. We wrote that “7 of the 8 voters are now decided: They said they would be voting for Harris.” In fact, seven of the eight voters said they had decided but only six said they were voting for Harris. One was decided for Trump. We missed the error during the editing process. 

This is our 115th correction in Tangle's 264-week history and our first correction since August 21st. We track corrections and place them at the top of the newsletter in an effort to maximize transparency with readers.

Don't forget.

A few months ago, we held our second ever live event in New York City. We recently published the video from that event, which is now live on YouTube channel:

Quick hits.

1. Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Tim Walz will be interviewed by CNN's Dana Bash in their first interview since she became the nominee. (The interview) 
2. Former President Trump said he agreed to the terms of the Sept. 10 presidential debate, with both sides agreeing to let moderators mute the candidates' microphones, though the Harris campaign says these discussions are ongoing. (The agreement) Separately, Trump announced that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard had joined his campaign’s transition team as honorary co-chairs. (The announcement)
3. Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a revised indictment accusing former President Donald Trump of 2020 election interference. The indictment limits the scope of evidence in the wake of last month's Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity. (The indictment)
4. A New Hampshire resident died from eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), a mosquito-borne illness. It's the state's first reported death from EEE in a decade. (The death)
5. Two members of Donald Trump's campaign staff had a verbal and physical altercation with an official at the Arlington Cemetery over staffers’ presence in an unauthorized area, according to an NPR report. (The report) Trump’s campaign spokesman said they had received permission to photograph in the area. (The response)

Today's topic.

Israel and Hezbollah. On Sunday morning, around 100 Israeli warplanes launched airstrikes targeting hundreds of rocket launchers across southern Lebanon; Israel said its attack preempted a planned offensive from Hezbollah. Shortly after, Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones it said were targeting military bases and missile defense positions in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights and across Northern Israel. Hezbollah claimed the attack successfully hit its targets, while the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said it was “mostly” thwarted, causing light damage to some homes while one Israeli sailor was killed by missile shrapnel. At least three people were killed amid the Israeli strikes, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry, including a fighter from the Hezbollah-allied group Amal.

A senior Israeli official said that the United States was notified of the attack beforehand. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Charles Q. Brown met with Israeli defense officials after the attacks on Sunday, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has stressed the United States’s "resolve to support Israel's defense.”

Back up: The Golan Heights are a hilly region of northeastern Israel and southwestern Syria bordering Lebanon. Israel captured and occupied a portion of the region during The Six-Day War in 1967 and officially annexed it in 1981. Hezbollah is a Shiite military and political group operating out of Lebanon, where it constitutes the most powerful armed force in the country. The group’s origins trace back to the Lebanese Civil War beginning in 1975, but took the name Hezbollah — Arabic for “Party of God” — after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. 

Since Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979, Hezbollah has been supported and funded by the Iranian government to serve as a Shiite proxy in the region. It has conducted suicide bombings in Lebanon and Israel, as well as armed hijackings of passenger jets, and is designated a terrorist organization by the United States. 

Then what: On Oct. 8, the day after Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel, Hezbollah began firing rockets and artillery across the border to show its solidarity with Hamas and draw Israeli fire. The Hezbollah attacks have killed 23 Israeli soldiers and 26 civilians and have led to the evacuation of 80,000 Israelis from the northern region of Israel. 

Israel has responded with airstrikes that have killed over 500 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters with Hezbollah and other armed groups. Israel has been striking progressively deeper into Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah’s military capabilities, and it has executed targeted strikes on military leaders. A month ago, Israel killed Hezbollah’s top commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, leading Hezbollah to vow retaliation. Hours later, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was also killed in Tehran.

In a speech on Sunday night, Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah claimed that the target of the latest strikes was a military intelligence base near Tel Aviv, about 70 miles away. Over 250 missiles were launched during the attack, with the intention of overwhelming the Iron Dome missile defense system so that drone strikes could reach the base. Nasrallah said that the operation was “over and completed,” adding that “for now, the people can be at ease and carry on with their lives.”

Israel has said that its military bases were not hit, and that the attack caused “very little damage,” according to Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the weekend’s exchange was “not the end of the story,” leading to increased speculation about a wider regional war. 

However, in the days since, both Israel and Hezbollah (along with its backers in Iran) have expressed satisfaction with their respective attacks, signaling the threat of intensification may have passed. Additionally, reporting has indicated that diplomats from both sides have messaged each other about a desire to de-escalate.

Today, we’ll get into what the right and left are saying about the recent exchange between Israel and Hezbollah, as well as some perspectives from the region. Then, I’ll give my take.

What the right is saying.

• The right mostly supports Israel’s preemptive strikes, arguing they minimized the immediate threat posed by Hezbollah. 
• Some suggest neither side wants a war despite the latest round of attacks. 

In National Review, Andrew C. McCarthy wrote about “Israel’s necessary preemptive strike against Iran and Hezbollah.”

“Most informed analysts presume a major war pitting Israel against jihadist Iran and its Hezbollah militia is inevitable. I prefer to frame it this way: The war is on and has been for some time; the real questions are how intense it is and how intense it may become at any given time,” McCarthy said. “This is an existential war for Israel, whose sharia-supremacist foes, both Shiite and Sunni, harbor deep-seated antisemitism and regard Israel’s existence as an affront to Islam. Israel must fight and defeat its enemies.”

“Iran and Hezbollah have both threatened more significant strikes, which would take their war of aggression into the heart of Israel… That is why Israel acted decisively, reminding its enemies — as it did by taking out Haniyeh in Tehran while the Iranian regime marked the installation of a new president — that it has extraordinarily good intelligence about their planning, the capacity to hit them hard, and the will to do so notwithstanding Biden-administration calls for restraint,” McCarthy wrote. “Hezbollah was able to fire only about 230 rockets and launch about 20 drones, most of which were intercepted and none of which caused material harm.”

In The Chicago Tribune, Daniel DePetris said “Israel and Hezbollah flirt with a war.”

“The good news: Both sides are claiming victory and seem to want to move on. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, are playing up Israel’s tactical proficiency against the Lebanese militia, stating that a much more deadly Hezbollah attack was averted. Meanwhile, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is puffing out his chest and alleging that the group has avenged the death of one its senior commanders in an Israeli airstrike last month,” DePetris wrote. “Although Israel and Hezbollah have been sending ordinance at each other for nearly a year, both sides appear to understand just how devastating a full-scale war would be for Israel and Lebanon, let alone the region at large.”

“It’s no surprise that Israel and Hezbollah would prefer to avoid an all-out confrontation. Simply put, the stakes and costs are too high, and whatever benefits may be accrued would be overshadowed by the sheer destruction, both economically and in human terms, that would result,” DePetris said. “None of this means that we’re out of the woods. A war between Israel and Hezbollah is still very much a live possibility — and it will continue to be a possibility as long as a cease-fire deal in Gaza is elusive. But rationality has ruled the day thus far.”

What the left is saying.

• The left is concerned by the escalation of violence but relieved that full-scale war seems to have been avoided for now.
• Some note that ceasefire talks have continued undeterred despite the attacks.

The Guardian editorial board called the attacks “another ominous threshold crossed.”

“The nightmare scenario of a regional war encompassing Lebanon and involving Hezbollah’s patron, Iran, remains frighteningly possible. For now at least, despite the weekend’s reciprocal show of force, all parties appear keen to avoid such an outcome,” the board said. “The caution underlines the vertiginously high stakes and reflects calculated self-interest. Israel is reluctant to open another front in the north, which would be costly in Israeli lives, and Hezbollah does not wish to risk a catastrophic repeat of the second Lebanon war in 2006.

“But the risk of miscalculation and unintended consequences, as messages are delivered via the medium of explosives, is high… At what point Iran may judge it necessary to intervene on behalf of its proxy counts as a known unknown,” the board wrote. “For as long as that cycle is sustained, and the unconscionable plight of Palestinians in Gaza is allowed to continue, the dangers of a regional conflagration – whether by accident or design – will grow. This weekend’s eruption on Israel’s northern border, in scale if not in lethality, represents another threshold crossed.”

In The Washington Post, David Ignatius said “Hezbollah’s escalation has not derailed the Gaza talks.”

“The sword of Damocles dangling over the Middle East finally fell early Sunday with an intense cross-border barrage between Hezbollah and Israel. But it didn’t trigger a major regional war. Nor did it explode the U.S.-led talks to bring a cease-fire to the Gaza war,” Ignatius wrote. “What transpired was a model of calculated escalation in which each side stopped well short of the conflagration the world has feared. Meanwhile, U.S. mediators in Cairo continued to inch forward in negotiations with Hamas representatives for a Gaza truce and the release of Israeli hostages.”

“The evidence that Hezbollah’s long-feared assault has come and gone is bad news for Hamas. U.S. officials believe that Hamas leader Yehiya Sinwar has been hoping a Hezbollah assault might change the dynamics of the U.S.-led effort to end the war — and provide him better terms. Now the pressure will grow for Sinwar to back a deal that many of his commanders want,” Ignatius said. “The Gaza war is a tragedy that compounds each day. But what was striking about this past weekend was that what the region had feared most finally happened — and yet the momentum toward peace continues.”

What Middle Eastern writers are saying.

• Writers in Israel argue the country should continue to strike against threats to its safety. 
• Writers in the Arab world say a ceasefire is all the more urgent after a regional war was temporarily avoided. 

In The Jerusalem Post, Avi Abelow said Hezbollah’s attack “highlights the urgent need for decisive action against Iranian threats.”

“In the face of escalating threats and prolonged uncertainty, Israel stands at a critical juncture. With Israelis from the North displaced from their homes for almost a year, the urgency to neutralize Hezbollah and dismantle the Iranian threat cannot be overstated,” Abelow wrote. “The situation is compounded by the failure of international mechanisms designed to protect Israel. UN Resolution 1701, passed in 2006, was intended to ensure that Hezbollah would not be allowed near Israel’s border and to prevent the smuggling of rockets. However, the international community and UNIFIL failed to enforce resolution 1701.”

“The world in general – and Israel in particular – has witnessed, throughout history, the limitations and failures of international diplomacy. Such efforts have often resulted in temporary ceasefires rather than genuine resolutions, leaving Israel’s enemies free to regroup and plan their next assault,” Abelow said. “While Israel did respond today, the critical need for a decisive military offensive against Hezbollah and Iranian proxies, once and for all, is clear. International diplomacy has proven inadequate, and waiting for a potentially more supportive US administration introduces unacceptable risks. Israel must seize the opportunity to act.”

In The Arab News, Osama Al-Sharif wrote “Israel awaits Iran’s retaliation following Hezbollah strikes.”

“After Sunday’s exchange, both sides clearly agreed to avoid a full-scale war. For Nasrallah, the calculated response brought an end to weeks of speculation and fear, not only in Israel but also in Lebanon. By hinting that the attack was successful, Nasrallah managed to take his party out of the current crisis between Israel and the US, on the one hand, and Iran on the other,” Al-Sharif said. “This leaves Tehran in an awkward position. With Hezbollah now watching from the sidelines, it is yet to fulfill its threat to punish Israel for Haniyeh’s killing.”

“This is why President Biden should exert pressure on Netanyahu to embrace a deal on Gaza. By doing so, he can save tens of thousands of Palestinian lives, the vast majority of whom are innocent and hapless civilians, while defusing a regional war and ending Hezbollah’s threat to northern Israel, at least for now. Israeli leaders know this, but Netanyahu remains the only obstacle to any truce — and the entire world knows this by now.”

My take.

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• Israel’s northern front with Hezbollah is costly for them, but it’s costly for Hezbollah to engage, too.
• Both sides seem to not want to push further, which is good for everyone hoping against the regional war intensifying.
• Pressure is building for Israel and Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire with Hamas.

When Israelis say they feel surrounded by enemies, one of the groups they’re talking about is Hezbollah.

The contours of this conflict are different from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and in some ways equally complicated. Since Hamas's October 7 attack, Hezbollah has pledged to join the fight against Israel. Militarily, it has been more successful than any other entity — it has driven tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes in northern Israel, killed hundreds of soldiers, and genuinely disrupted life in the country in a way that attacks from Hamas or the Houthis rarely do. Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said plainly his goal was to force Israel into a multi-front war that would burden it enough to slow its military incursion in Gaza, something it has almost certainly succeeded in doing.

At the same time, for anyone worried about a larger conflict breaking out in the region, this outcome is relatively positive. Hezbollah clearly does not want an all-out war with Israel. Lebanon is rife with its own economic woes, leadership vacuums, and internal conflicts. Hezbollah can challenge Israel's military in a way Hamas cannot, but ratcheting up the aggression would be massively destructive and probably unsuccessful. Indeed, the group reportedly never expected to be fighting this long, and some ninety thousand Lebanese have had to evacuate from southern Lebanon.

This response to Shukr's assassination — which looked big and blustery but did minimal damage and did not kill many — gives Hezbollah the ability to propagandize about its retaliation while it allows Israel to let the dust settle. Simultaneously, Israel and Hezbollah are telling their own versions of this story that cannot coexist. Hezbollah is saying it hit all of its military targets while Israel is saying it successfully defended its bases.

Aside from on-the-ground reporting that confirms Israel's side of the story, there's an obvious dynamic at play here that gives the game away. Hezbollah benefits from convincing its people it has leveled a successful and far-reaching attack as far as Tel Aviv; then it can back down without risking an unwanted escalation and looking weak to its own people. Conversely, Israel has an inherent motivation to play up threats to give itself latitude for pre-emptive strikes without international condemnation. Israel saying these attacks were a flop is believable because they are generally motivated to say the opposite.

David Daoud put it like this:

Therefore, though Hezbollah opted for the riskiest retaliatory option—a massive individual strike—it once again deployed its propaganda machine to bridge the gap between reality and the image it wants to project to its followers and claim success. It can thus tread the very fine line of settling the score for Shukr, appearing strong before its base but not granting Israel sufficient justification or legitimacy to initiate a full war.

Of course, there is a limit to how "encouraging" any of this is: The entire region remains on the brink of all-out war. The idea that the "region" isn't at war already is actually hard to wrap my head around. What do you call it when two countries exchange months of rocket fire, assassinate leaders, kill soldiers, and displace tens of thousands of each other's citizens from their homes? The war is on. As National Review’s Andrew McCarthy wrote, the real question now is just how bad it will get — how deep will Israel push into Lebanese territory, how successful can Hezbollah be at killing Israelis, and how much will Iran or its other proxies engage?

All the while, talks of an imminent ceasefire in Gaza pop up every few weeks and never seem to materialize. The horrors on the ground persist. Until the war in Gaza ends, the war with Hezbollah will be a live issue, as will the risk of a more devastating regional conflict. It’s worth saying that more of the same could be devastating for Israel, too. As Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Brik, a former commander in the IDF, recently wrote, another year of a war of attrition against Hamas and Hezbollah risks the collapse of Israel. The country is nearing the economic precipice: its government’s budget is strained, it had its credit rating downgraded, it has a negative economic outlook, its export of goods and services has fallen by nearly 20%, and some economists believe it’s already in a recession and “headed towards a deep” one. At the same time, social division inside the country is intensifying, and the situation in the West Bank is spinning out of control.

The buck for all of this ultimately stops with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. With calls for his replacement coming from domestic opponents and allies abroad, how Netanyahu responds is as much about Israel’s survival as his own.

Take the survey: What do you think of the recent exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah? Let us know!

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Heads up.

Your questions, answered.

Q: It might be a lot to ask, and maybe more of a thought experiment than a task, but with all the talk I've heard of Harris making a mistake in choosing Walz over Shapiro, what might the Pros/Cons have looked like if she had gone the other way?

— Thomas from Westford, MA

Tangle: That’s a great question. If you’ll allow me a little bit of a brag, when I wrote about Kamala Harris’s choices for her running mate, I put Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz above Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. Of course, I also put Sen. Mark Kelly (AZ) above both of them, but some reporting has indicated that something the Harris campaign learned about Kelly dropped him down the list (I also heard this privately, but I’m not going to report rumors). Kelly notwithstanding, I’m a little proud of the fact that I was ahead of the curve in the pundit class on where I rated Walz.

But it was a close 2 & 3 for me, and it’s a decision I could’ve easily seen going the other way.  The biggest pro for Shapiro is that he has a very high approval rating in Pennsylvania, the most consequential state in the 2024 election, where he’d be able to leverage his popularity to help deliver the state for Democrats. He’ll still be able to drive the vote in PA without being on the ticket, but it’s not hard to imagine that impact would have been even higher if he’d been on the ticket. If the Harris-Walz ticket loses Pennsylvania by a small margin, this will look like an all-time bad decision. 

The biggest con for Shapiro is that he risked upsetting progressives, who loathe his positions on Israel (though as I’ve said, I don’t think his positions are all that different from Walz’s or Kelly’s). More interestingly, Shapiro just speaks and sounds more presidential than Walz, leaving some concerned that he might have overshadowed Harris.

Honestly, it’s hard to weigh the pros and cons. I think vice presidential opinions on policy positions don’t matter too much in voters’ decision making, and it’s debatable how much the selection matters at all. I think it’s possible Harris could have made a bad choice for running mate, but I think she had several good options in front of her, and I think she picked one of them. Whether that was Shaprio or Walz, I honestly don’t think it’s going to make or break this election.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

Extreme heat killed a record number of Americans in 2023, according to research published on Monday by the Journal of the American Medical Association. At least 2,325 people died from heat last year, the study found, which includes deaths with heat as an underlying and contributing factor. The study reviewed data back to 1999 and found that annual deaths remained relatively steady until the 2010s, then started trending upwards. Globally, cold-related deaths still far outpace heat-related deaths, but the latest research caught the eye of Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), who called on the Federal Emergency Management Agency to add heat to its list of “qualifying events” for disaster declarations. The Hill has the story. 

Numbers.

• 444. The approximate area, in square miles, of the Golan Heights. 
• 30. The approximate number of Israeli settlements in the Golan.
• 20,000. Hezbollah’s estimated number of active personnel in 2022, according to the Institute for Strategic Studies.
• 150,000-200,000. The estimated number of rockets in Hezbollah’s arsenal, according to the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS).
• 1,502. The number of Israeli targets attacked by Hezbollah between October 2023 and August 2024.
• 6,865. The number of Hezbollah targets attacked by Israel between October 2023 and August 2024. 
• 49. The number of Israeli fatalities as a result of Hezbollah attacks during that time, according to the INSS.
• 431. The number of Hezbollah fatalities as a result of Israeli attacks during that time, according to INSS.
• 37%. The percent chance that Israel declares war on Hezbollah in the next 12 months, according to an aggregate of expert predictions from INFER. 

The extras.

• One year ago today we wrote about the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was again our reader essay on Tim Walz’s National Guard service.
• Nothing to do with politics: An icon of the Las Vegas strip will go out with a bang as the Tropicana implosion (and fireworks display) has been set.
• Yesterday’s survey: 747 readers responded to our survey on Pavel Durov’s arrest with 55% saying they don’t know enough to form a strong opinion. “There's so much here that isn't yet clear. The exact nature of the alleged crimes, Durov's role (witness, suspect, bit player) in those crimes, the relationship between Telegram and Russia... I have no idea how to feel about the arrest, the man, or the app,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

A group of scientists from Northumbria University and their partners in Pakistan have created a process to use banana waste to create eco-friendly textiles and clean energy. With a goal to replace fossil fuel energy sources for 50% of Pakistan’s rural population, the researchers developed a new process aimed at creating syngas, a man-made gas, using agricultural waste. Dr. Muhammad Saghir, Director at Eco Research Ltd, said, “This innovative approach will not only transform agricultural by-products into sustainable textiles but also exemplifies a remarkable synergy between eco-conscious practices and technological advancements.” Interesting Engineering has the story. 

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