by tyler | Oct 12, 2023 | CNN, politics
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday pledged that the United States will never falter from its support for Israel as he condemned Hamas’ “litany of brutality and inhumanity” as evoking “the worst of ISIS.”
“The message that I bring to Israel is this: you may be strong enough on your own to defend yourself, but as long as America exists, you will never, ever have to,” Blinken said in remarks alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv. “We will always be there by your side.”
The top US diplomat’s trip to Israel, days after Hamas’ deadly attacks in Israel, is another show of support as the Biden administration seeks to bolster the country’s defenses and stop the conflict from expanding or spreading. The visit also comes as the US seeks to help secure the release of hostages, including American citizens, held by Hamas and as the death toll, both as a result of Hamas’ attacks and Israeli strikes in Gaza, continues to grow.
“Tragically, the number of innocent lives claimed by Hamas’ heinous attacks continues to rise. Among those, we now know that at least 25 American citizens were killed,” Blinken said.
The US been “adamant” with other nations about the need to unequivocally condemn Hamas’ attacks, the top US diplomat said, cataloging the horrors committed by the terrorist group: “babies slaughtered, bodies desecrated, young people burned alive, women raped, parents executed in front of their children, children in front of their parents.”
“I understand on a personal level, the harrowing echoes that Hamas’ massacres carry for Israeli Jews, indeed, for Jews everywhere,” Blinken noted, describing his own identity as both a father and Jew.
“There is no excuse. There is no justification for these atrocities,” he said. “This is – this must be – a moment for moral clarity.”
Following his meeting with Netanyahu, Blinken met with a 24-year-old Israeli-American survivor of the music festival massacre during an unannounced visit to a donation site in Tel Aviv.
“If there’s any way to help, first priority, first priority are our friends and family that are now in Gaza,” an emotional Lior Gelbaum told the top US diplomat.
“We’re thinking of them and we’re trying to do everything we can,” he replied. “We’re trying to bring them home.”
Blinken was accompanied on the trip by a number of senior US officials, including the Deputy Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs. On Friday, he will travel to Qatar, which has been a key actor in talks with Hamas to try to secure the release of hostages from the terrorist group.
Blinken will also be in Jordan on Friday for meetings with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordanian King Abdullah II.
“We’re pursuing intensive diplomacy throughout the region to prevent the conflict from spreading, and I’ll be doing that over the course of my trip in the coming days,” Blinken said Thursday.
Blinken echoed the “the crystal clear warning the President Biden issued yesterday to any adversary – state or non-state – thinking of taking advantage of the current crisis to attack Israel: Don’t.”
In remarks alongside Netanyahu, the top US diplomat said some military support has already arrived in Israel and “more is on the way.”
“As Israel’s defense needs evolve, we will work with Congress to make sure that they’re met. And I can tell you, there is overwhelming, overwhelming bipartisan support in our Congress for Israel’s security,” Blinken said.
He did not explicitly speak of restraint from Israeli forces but said he discussed with the Israeli leader the importance of taking “every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians.”
“No country can or would tolerate the slaughter of its citizens or simply return to the conditions that allowed it to take place. Israel has the right, indeed the obligation, to defend itself and to ensure that this never happens again,” Blinken said.
“As the prime minister and I discussed, how Israel does this matters,” he said, reiterating that respect for civilian life is what distinguishes democracies from the likes of Hamas. Blinken also stressed that Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.
by tyler | Oct 12, 2023 | CNN, politics
Federal prosecutors on Thursday announced an additional charge against New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife, alleging they conspired to have the senator act as a foreign agent of Egypt.
The superseding indictment filed against Menendez, who was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time of the alleged actions, adds a new dimension to the case by alleging a US senator was working on behalf of another country.
Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, were indicted last month on corruption-related offenses, and are accused of accepting “hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes” in exchange for the senator’s influence.
Prosecutors had alleged the bribes included gold, cash, home mortgage payments, compensation for a “low-or-no-show job” and a luxury vehicle.
Both Menendez and his wife have pleaded not guilty. A trial date has been set for May.
Menendez has refused calls from his fellow Democrats to resign, but has not said if he will run for reelection next year. The new charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Menendez and his wife are now facing as much as 50 years in prison if convicted.
According to the alleged scheme, Menendez met with an Egyptian intelligence official at his Senate office in 2019, along with his wife and New Jersey businessman Wael Hana where they discussed a human rights issue involving Egypt and a US citizen injured in an airstrike in 2015. Certain members of Congress believed Egypt had not provided fair compensation to the American injured in the attack, causing them to object to provide military aid to Egypt.
Following the meeting, prosecutors allege, Menendez searched the name of the injured American and his claim. One week later, the Egyptian official texted Hana in Arabic stating if Menendez helped resolve the issue, “he will sit very comfortably.” Hana replied, “orders, consider it done.”
The following year, in March 2020, prosecutors allege that Nadine Menendez texted one of the Egyptian officials, “anytime you need anything you have my number and we will make everything happen.” A few days later, she arranged a meeting between the Egyptian official and the senator to discuss negotiations between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia over a dam Ethiopia was constructing on the Nile River. The dam’s construction was a key foreign policy concern of Egypt, prosecutors allege.
Within a month, prosecutors allege, Menendez wrote a letter to the US Treasury secretary and secretary of State to “express my concern” about the stalled negotiations over the dam. “I therefore urge you to significantly increase the State Department’s engagement on negotiations surrounding the [Dam],” the letter said.
Prosecutors allege Menendez knew about the foreign agent law. It is illegal for a member of Congress or any public official to act as foreign agent. Prosecutors allege Nadine Menendez and Hana failed to register as agents working on behalf of Egypt and conspired to have Menendez act on behalf of Egypt. Hana has previously pleaded not guilty.
In May 2022, Menendez sent a letter Attorney General Merrick Garland to follow up on an earlier request to prosecutors to open the investigation into the former lawmaker, David Rivera, alleging he had worked on behalf of a Venezuela state-owned oil company.
Hana’s attorney Lawrence Lustberg rejected the new allegations.
“The new allegation that Wael Hana was part of a plot concocted over dinner to enlist Senator Menendez as an agent of the Egyptian Government is as absurd as it is false,” Lustberg said. “As with the other charges in this indictment, Mr. Hana will vigorously defend against this new and baseless allegation.”
Lawyers for Menendez could not immediately be reached for comment on the new charge.
This story has been updated with additional details.
by tyler | Oct 12, 2023 | CNN, politics
Former President Donald Trump lashed out Wednesday at Benjamin Netanyahu, saying the Israeli prime minister was caught unprepared by Hamas’ attack and praising the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah as “very smart.”
The remarks reflect the soured relationship between the two men and are notable at a time when Trump’s Republican presidential rivals have uniformly sought to position themselves as steadfast supporters of Netanyahu during Israel’s war with Hamas.
“(Netanyahu) has been hurt very badly because of what’s happened here. He was not prepared. He was not prepared, and Israel was not prepared,” Trump told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade in an interview clip that aired Wednesday night.
Trump went further at a campaign event in West Palm Beach, Florida.
“When I see sometimes the intelligence, you talk about the intelligence, or you talk about some of the things that went wrong over the last week, they’ve got to straighten it out because they’re fighting potentially a very big force,” Trump said Wednesday.
Regarding Hezbollah, which the US and its allies have warned against escalating the current conflict, Trump said, “They’re vicious, and they’re smart. And, boy, are they vicious, because nobody’s ever seen the kind of sight that we’ve seen.”
The criticism is a stark reversal from the firm friendship Trump shared with Netanyahu while in office, embracing the Israeli leader at every turn. But it’s driven by animosity Trump has held for Netanyahu ever since the prime minister publicly acknowledged that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. In the months that followed, Trump accused Netanyahu of disloyalty and fumed to Axios, “F*** him.”
Though Trump later congratulated Netanyahu after he returned to power late last year, his hostility toward him has hardly waned, sources familiar with his thinking told CNN, and Trump maintains that Netanyahu shouldn’t have commented on Biden’s win. At the campaign event Wednesday night, Trump again resurfaced his false claims of election fraud and suggested that Hamas’ attack wouldn’t have happened if he were president.
“If the election wasn’t rigged, there would be nobody even thinking about going into Israel,” the former president told his supporters.
He also invoked the US government’s 2020 killing of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and claimed Israel declined to participate in the strike.
“I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down. That was a very terrible thing, I will say that,” Trump said.
At the time, however, Netanyahu praised the strike, saying it was justified because Soleimani “was planning further attacks.”
When CNN pressed Netanyahu in his last interview with the network in September about whether the newfound hostility from Trump bothered him, the Israeli leader said, “I’ve been long enough in the political life to put aside the periodic ebb and flow of emotion and to look at the substantive positions that leaders and allies have done. … So, yeah, I don’t particularly care for that. I mean, I don’t care about it, is the way I would say it.”
In the interview with Fox’s Kilmeade, Trump would not say if he has spoken with Netanyahu in the days since the Hamas attack.
“I don’t want to say about, you know, who I’ve talked to. But I was very disappointed that a thing like this could happen,” the former president said.
While most of the 2024 GOP field has otherwise been reluctant to criticize Trump head on, a few contenders seized on his Wednesday remarks.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has recently escalated his attacks against Trump, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter: “(It) is absurd that anyone, much less someone running for president, would choose now to attack our friend and ally Israel, much less praise Hezbollah terrorists as ‘very smart.’”
Former Vice President Mike Pence also pushed back on his former boss’s remarks, saying, “Hezbollah aren’t smart, they’re evil.”
“This is no time for the former president, or any other American leader to be sending any message other than America stands with Israel,” Pence told a local New Hampshire radio show Thursday.
While Trump’s comments toward Netanyahu are personal, Israeli officials have acknowledged they were caught by surprise when Hamas attacked. US officials have also said they did not see intelligence that this type of attack was going to unfold any more than the Israelis did.
“We were surprised this morning,” Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, the international spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, told CNN on Saturday. “About failures, I prefer not to talk at this point right now. We’re in war. We’re fighting. I’m sure this will be a big question once this event is over.”
Trump was a vocal Netanyahu ally during his presidency. He ultimately ended the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and effectively took Israel’s side in negotiations with Palestinians, moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem and endorsing the annexation of West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements into Israel.
This story has been updated with additional information.
by tyler | Oct 12, 2023 | CNN, politics
Majority Leader Steve Scalise is scrambling to lock down the votes to become the next House speaker, but protracted opposition to the Louisiana Republican inside the GOP conference and the numerical realities of the narrowly divided chamber could ultimately derail his bid.
Several senior Republicans see little path to 217 votes, after Scalise won just 113 votes in the GOP conference, which includes three delegates who don’t have a vote on the House floor. Making up that deficit in just a matter of days is an extremely tall order – plus a number of hard-right Republicans say they are dead-set against Scalise, when he can only afford to lose four GOP votes on the floor. At least 12 GOP lawmakers have said publicly they’ll oppose Scalise’s nomination and more have expressed frustration or skepticism about his leadership, more than enough to sink his bid.
House GOP members are gathering again Thursday afternoon behind closed doors, to try to hash out a way forward.
But on Thursday morning, Scalise’s math problem only worsened: At least three more Republicans indicated they would be voting for GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio in a floor vote for speaker, stiffening the opposition to Scalise.
“I’m not on the whip team, but I can count votes and there’s a pretty big gap right now,” said Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee, one of the Republicans who said he would vote for Jordan.
Republicans are worried that Scalise is facing grim prospects of becoming speaker, an impasse that threatens to prolong the GOP’s leadership crisis that has left the House paralyzed and unable to move on any legislation.
Late Wednesday, members of the conference were beginning to weigh how they would handle the potential collapse of his bid, with several GOP sources saying they believe they’d have to consider a new candidate who has yet to run for the speakership.
Scalise spent Wednesday after the vote meeting individually with GOP members as he and his whip operation tried to convince the holdouts to come around, the sources said. He found some success in the outreach, but there’s no indication yet that he can win over enough Republicans to overcome the razor-thin GOP House majority.
Scalise or any other Republican candidate for speaker needs 217 votes to win the speaker’s gavel, a majority of the entire House, which currently has two vacancies. That means Scalise could only afford to lose four Republicans if every member is voting. Democrats are expected to uniformly back House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas, who is expected to back Scalise, sharply criticized members saying that they won’t vote for Scalise.
“I think they should all resign their congressional seat unless they get 100% of their district to vote for them,” he told CNN.
Jordan, who lost the vote for speaker to Scalise on Wednesday, 113-99, said Thursday he wants Republicans to unite around Scalise. “I do and I’ve been clear about that since yesterday,” Jordan said.
But pressed on if he would rule out taking the job if Scalise can’t get there, Jordan didn’t give a clear answer. “I will nominate Steve on the floor and I hope we can unite around a speaker,” the Ohio Republican said.
Former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Jordan, was sour on Scalise’s speakership candidacy in a Fox News Radio interview, pointing to the House majority leader’s recent cancer diagnosis.
“I just don’t know how you can do the job when you have such a serious problem,” Trump said.
The opposition to Scalise inside his party has thrown into doubt how Republicans will get out of their speaker conundrum that’s left them simply unable to govern.
While there was some belief on Capitol Hill that the brutal assault on Israel over the weekend might prompt Republicans to quickly select a leader – House lawmakers were given a classified briefing on Israel Wednesday before the conference vote for speaker – the deep divisions in the conference that led to Kevin McCarthy’s removal last week have now left the quest for a new speaker at a standstill.
Scalise is facing broad skepticism inside the far-right House Freedom Caucus, a key bloc of Republicans who mostly supported the Trump-backed Jordan for speaker, multiple sources told CNN, citing a general lack of trust with Republican leadership. Scalise has been in leadership years, although he is more conservative than McCarthy.
Jordan, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, threw his weight behind Scalise following Wednesday’s vote, saying he was encouraging his supporters to do the same. “We need a speaker and Steve is the guy for that. Like I said, I have offered to give a nominating speech for him,” the Ohio Republican told reporters Wednesday afternoon.
But there was a cohort of lawmakers who expressed staunch opposition to voting for Scalise on the House floor.
“Well, Leader Scalise won, and it’s not over. I’m still throwing my support behind Jim Jordan for speaker. I’m not going to change my vote now or any time soon on the House floor,” said GOP Rep. Max Miller of Ohio.
Scalise’s individual outreach did peel off at least one holdout. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who initially said Wednesday that she would vote for Jordan on the floor, met with Scalise and said afterward she felt “comfortable” enough to support his speaker nomination.
While she said he did not make specific commitments, he did assure her that he’ll allow her to “aggressively” do her job on the Oversight Committee, which is part of the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
But Luna said she would only back Scalise for the speakership on the first ballot. If it went to multiple ballots, she said, “we must find a candidate” the conference can unite behind.
Still, a number of Republicans don’t think that Jordan could be a viable alternative given that he lost to Scalise in the nominating contest, and some Republicans were irritated when he didn’t immediately close ranks behind Scalise.
“If Scalise were not to make it, the next person got less votes,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida said of Jordan. “And by the way, I think, more controversial. So that would not be a good thing for this place.”
Rep. Erin Houchin of Indiana said she doesn’t know if “it will be Jordan or Scalise or even someone else at this point. … I think we’re in uncharted territory, and it’s gonna be very hard to predict.”
Another GOP member said that it would have to be a new candidate altogether, something that would take longer to sort out.
“Steve is nowhere near 217,” said the Republican member.
Leaving the floor without a vote Wednesday, interim Speaker Patrick McHenry tried to be optimistic the House GOP conference would solve the impasse soon.
Asked if there could be a floor vote Thursday, the North Carolina Republican said, “That’s the hope.”
Could anyone get the 217 votes required? He had the same response: “That’s the hope.”
This story and headline have been updated to include additional developments.
by tyler | Oct 11, 2023 | CNN, politics
The United States has collected specific intelligence that suggests senior Iranian government officials were caught by surprise by Saturday’s bloody attack on Israel by Hamas, according to multiple sources familiar with the intelligence.
The existence of the intelligence has cast doubt on the idea that Iran was directly involved in the planning, resourcing or approving of the operation, sources said.
The sources stressed that the US intelligence community is not ready to reach a full conclusion about whether Tehran was directly involved in the run-up to the attack. They continue to look for evidence of Iranian involvement, which caught both Israel and the United States by surprise.
And since the attack, government officials have noted that Iran has provided longstanding and significant support for Hamas, including weapons and financing, that unquestionably contributed to Hamas’s ability to pull off such a massive operation.
But the sources said that this intelligence – which has been briefed to lawmakers on Capitol Hill – has led US analysts to lean toward an initial assessment that the government of Iran did not play a direct role in the attack.
“Iran likely knew Hamas was planning operations against Israel, but without the precise timing or scope of what occurred,” said one US official. “Although Iran has long supported Hamas with material and financial support, we have not currently seen anything to suggest Iran supported or was behind the attack.”
But, this person cautioned, it is premature to draw any final conclusions based on what the US knows right now.
“We will be looking at additional intelligence in the coming weeks to inform our thinking on this issue, including whether there were at least some within their system that either had a clearer sense of what was coming or even contributed to aspects of the planning,” the official said.
Another source familiar with the intelligence told CNN’s Jim Sciutto that Iran was caught by surprise by the timing of the attack.
The sources did not disclose any further details about the nature of the intelligence, which one source briefed on the information said is extremely sensitive.
Some Israeli officials have been more willing to attribute direct knowledge of the attacks to Iran.
A senior Israeli official who has been briefed on Israeli intelligence, told CNN’s Matthew Chance Wednesday that Iran, which has provided longstanding funding and training to Hamas militants, may not have known about the exact timing of the raids from Gaza, but was certainly “aware of the Hamas operation before it happened.”
For some US and congressional officials, the hunt for direct evidence of Iranian involvement is a distinction without a difference.
“I know the administration is woe to peg Iran as responsible, but I think that all roads lead to Iran,” House Foreign Affairs Chairman Mike McCaul, a Texas Republican, told reporters following a briefing Wednesday. “We certainly don’t want to see this escalate, but Iran is already in this.”
Tehran doesn’t have advisers on the ground in blockaded Gaza, according to former security officials and other regional analysts, and it doesn’t command the group’s activities. But Iran has for years been Hamas’ chief benefactor, providing it with tens of millions of dollars, weapons and components smuggled into Gaza, as well as broad technical and ideological support.
One source familiar with the intelligence noted that while the group maintains operational independence from Iran – making it plausible that the Iranian government may not have known about the attack in advance – without Iranian support, Hamas could not exist as it does now. In other words, this person suggested, why would Tehran be any less culpable if they didn’t know about the specifics of the attack in advance, given that they enable the activities of the group that carried it out?
“That’s why you can speak out of both sides of your mouth on this,” this person said.
For days, senior US officials have said publicly that they have seen no indication that Iran was directly involved in the attack, even as they have condemned Tehran as broadly “complicit” because of its historic support for Hamas.
“We’re looking to acquire further intelligence,” national security advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. “But as I stand here today, while Iran plays this broad role – sustained, deep and dark role in providing all of this support and capabilities to Hamas – in terms of this particular gruesome attack on October 7, we don’t currently have that information.”
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
by tyler | Oct 11, 2023 | CNN, politics
The US and its allies are warning the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah against escalating the conflict in Israel as the US prepositions military assets to deter a potential widening of the war, multiple US officials and people briefed on the discussions tell CNN.
Senior administration officials do not believe at this point that Hezbollah is likely to join Hamas’ war in force against Israel, and officials think the warnings are having an impact even though there have been some escalation on the border.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown said on Wednesday that he has not seen “any indications of additional players” preparing to “get involved” in the conflict in Israel.
The US is sending the message to Hezbollah to stay out of the conflict through a number of channels, including the Lebanese government and the Hezbollah-allied Speaker of Lebanon’s Parliament, Nabih Berri. Berri was mentioned by administration officials briefing Congress on Sunday as a go-between, according to a person familiar with the briefing. The US won’t officially engage with what has been designated a terrorist group, so Berri is one natural conduit.
France has also conveyed to Hezbollah, at Israel’s request, that they must stay out of the war and not escalate further or Israel will respond significantly, a source briefed on the talks said. Those discussions were also coordinated with the US, the source said.
“Western allies who have informal ties with Hezbollah have conveyed some messages,” a Western diplomat confirmed, adding that the response by Hezbollah indicated “the pre-existing will of Hezbollah not to escalate for now.”
A senior defense official said Monday, “We are deeply concerned about Hezbollah making the wrong decision and choosing to open a second front to this conflict,” adding: “We are working with Israel and with our partners across the region to contain this to Gaza.”
Hezbollah is a highly trained, well-armed and sophisticated military force that also receives Iranian support, so its entry into the conflict would mark a significant escalation. But current and former senior officials don’t believe Hezbollah is eager to join the war, largely because the risks for the group would outweigh any potential rewards.
On top of the messaging from US officials to urge Hezbollah to stay out of the conflict, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the deployment of a carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean in large part as a message to Hezbollah and its Iranian backers to refrain from entering the war.
“Let me be clear, we did not move the carrier for Hamas,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. “We moved the carrier to send a clear message of deterrence to other states or non-state actors that might seek to widen this war.”
President Joe Biden reinforced that message in remarks on Tuesday from the White House.
“Let me say again, to any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of the situation, I have one word: Don’t. Don’t. Our hearts may be broken, but our resolve is clear,” he said.
Hezbollah has congratulated Hamas on Saturday’s massive attack. It has also exchanged some rocket fire across the border with Israel – including rockets fired into Israel on Tuesday – but those attacks appear to be symbolic gestures of support rather than a precursor to serious military action, analysts said.
Additionally, the Lebanese economy is in free-fall and a destructive and bloody war between Hezbollah and Israel would only damage that economy further – and as a result would be a huge political risk for Hezbollah, which holds seats in the Lebanese parliament and claims to represent all Lebanese people as a significant political entity.
Still, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has already bolstered its presence along the border with Lebanon to address the potential threat, adding tens of thousands of additional troops after clashes in the disputed region, according to IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus.
On Wednesday, violence flared again, with Israel striking inside Lebanese territory after anti-tank missiles were launched at an IDF military post near the Lebanese border. Hezbollah said it fired on an Israeli site with “guided missiles” in response to the killing of three of its members on Monday.
The group also provides some passive military support, by drawing and holding Israel’s troops to the northern border and splitting Israel’s missile defenses, said Mike Knights, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute who specializes in Iran-backed proxy groups.
“Logic would tell you that if you’re Lebanese Hezbollah, you want to stay out of this conflict,” Norm Roule, a former national intelligence manager at Iran for the CIA, told an intelligence conference over the weekend. “You want to let the Israelis and Hamas chew themselves to ribbons and then you are the strong person standing.”
Hezbollah is not particularly invested in Gaza’s fate, former CENTCOM Commander Frank McKenzie told CNN on Tuesday.
“I think more likely than not, you’ll see little things up there in Lebanon, as we’ve seen, small scale attacks back and forth – enough to satisfy honor on both sides,” McKenzie said. “But one thing [Hezbollah’s leader Hassan] Nasrallah knows is, if he comes in, the Israelis will come north and they’re gonna hammer the sh*t out of him. They’re gonna hammer the sh*t out of him just like they’re fixing to hammer the sh*t out of Gaza.”
Still, Roule said, the US should have “some humility” about making firm assessments about the risk of the conflict spiraling beyond Israel’s borders.
Hezbollah’s calculus could change if it perceived that Israel has been significantly weakened – either politically or militarily, as its response to the attack unfolds, McKenzie and Knights told CNN.
“There’s this possibility that if Israel gets stuck in Gaza … then, at that point, we could see Lebanese Hezbollah get tempted,” said Knights.
For now, though, Knights said that Hezbollah is “communicating with the Lebanese people to say, ‘we’re trying here not to draw us into a war.’”
“That tells you something about them,” Knights said. “They are hesitant to mortgage their entire future on this.”
