Tensions regarding a potential full-scale war between Israel, Hezbollah, and Iran have eased somewhat, according to General Charles Q. Brown Jr., Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in comments to Reuters on Monday. However, statements from both Jerusalem and Tehran suggest otherwise.
Brown met with Israeli officials in Tel Aviv to discuss security concerns, just a day after the Israel Defense Forces and Hezbollah exchanged fire on Sunday. This exchange involved hundreds of rockets and drones fired by Hezbollah at northern Israeli military positions.
Israel retaliated with airstrikes against Hezbollah strongholds, deploying over 100 warplanes to preemptively strike thousands of rocket launchers reportedly positioned to target Israel.
Despite the heavy exchange of fire, relatively few casualties were reported. Three Hezbollah militants and one Israeli soldier were killed during the events, which ended by mid-morning Sunday.
When asked about the threat posed by Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, Brown responded, “Somewhat, yes.”
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah had vowed retaliation following the killing of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in late July, reported Al Jazeera.
Both Hezbollah and Iran have pledged retaliation for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed while visiting Tehran in late July. While Israel has never claimed responsibility for this attack, Brown described the situation, saying, “You had two things you knew were going to happen. One’s already happened. Now it depends on how the second is going to play out.”
Brown continued, “How Iran responds will dictate how Israel responds, which will dictate whether there is going to be a broader conflict or not.”
Brown’s cautious optimism regarding a potential escalation contrasts with the views of Israel and Iran.
Iran’s chief of staff of the armed forces, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, responded to the Sunday exchange of fire, warning that “revenge against the Israeli entity is inevitable” following the death of Haniyeh.
“What we witnessed yesterday is only part of that revenge,” he confirmed, according to a report by the . “[Iran] will decide how and when to take revenge and will not fall into the trap of media provocations initiated by the enemies.”
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday also warned that “Iran’s aggression has reached an all-time high” and said Israel and the U.S. must expand their joint defenses.
Gallant further emphasized the threat posed by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear capabilities, stating that Jerusalem and Washington must work to prevent Tehran’s military from gaining nuclear weapons.
On Tuesday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said there were no “barriers” in communicating with the “enemy,” which some news outlets interpreted as a potential signal that Tehran may once again engage in nuclear talks with the West.
“We do not have to pin our hope to the enemy. For our plans, we should not wait for approval by the enemies,” Khamenei said, . “It is not contradictory to engage the same enemy in some places, there’s no barrier.”
The AP report said this rhetoric echoed comments made in the lead-up to the 2015 deal made between Iran, the U.S. and other Western nations.
But Khamenei also warned that “the enemy” could not be trusted.
Talks with Iran over its nuclear development collapsed after the U.S. withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) under the Trump administration in 2018 – a move Tehran has since claimed voided their commitments to the agreement.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in June that Iran is not believed to possess nuclear weapon capabilities, though it has enriched uranium to levels just short of weapons-grade standards.
While any new deal with Iran appears unlikely, another “historic” deal between the U.S. and a Middle Eastern nation, Saudi Arabia, may be on the horizon, Michael Ratney, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said Monday.
“While we came very close and are very close on very important elements of this agreement, it is important that we finalize all of it together, and with that we would have a history-making agreement between the U.S. and Saudi,” he told Saudi news outlet Asharq Al-Awsat, according to a translation r.
Ratney said the agreement would encompass several issues like bolstering the strategic partnership between Washington and Riyadh, enhancing military agreements and strengthening economic ties.
But it also includes efforts to normalize ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel – a push first launched throughout the Middle East under the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords.
Washington, under both the Trump and Biden administrations, has held the belief that improving Israel’s ties in the Middle East could better secure it from terrorist organizations as well as the Iranian regime – which is often at .
“We are in a complicated region and there are a lot of complexities to the agreement itself, but we will do it as quickly as possible,” Ratney reportedly said.
The U.S. ambassador said the Biden administration and Riyadh support the establishment of a two-state solution when it – though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly made it clear he does not support Palestinian statehood.
“We fundamentally believe that Palestinian statehood needs to come through a political process, through negotiations between the parties, not through any other means,” Ratney said.
“In the meantime, the deep priority is to stop the violence in Gaza, to stop the misery of the people of Gaza, to move forward with our efforts toward a cease-fire, to release Israeli hostages, and to end this conflict to find ways to deliver much-needed humanitarian assistance in Gaza,” he added.