The coming weeks will be pivotal in determining whether the current regional war in the Middle East will increase in intensity. Israel has agreed to resume cease-fire negotiations on August 15, just over two weeks after it assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader and chief negotiator, in Tehran, and Fuad Shukr, one of the founding members of Hezbollah’s armed wing, in Beirut. Both Iran and Hezbollah have vowed to respond to Israel’s attacks.

Fearing escalation, the United States, Qatar, and Egypt put forth a statement pushing for a new round of negotiations after Western diplomats reportedly pushed for a potential comprehensive agreement to end the war in Gaza. The deal would include a cease-fire, an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and a prisoner swap between Israel and the Palestinian resistance factions. The deal would also prioritize humanitarian needs by increasing aid to Gaza and developing a robust plan for rebuilding the infrastructure devastated by years of conflict.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the US-Qatar-Egypt statement by confirming that he will continue negotiations on August 15. Yahya Sinwar, who replaced Haniyeh as the chairman of Hamas’s political bureau, called on the mediators to propose a plan to force Israel to implement the deal to which the organization, based on proposals by President Joe Biden, agreed in late May. Additional rounds of negotiations, Hamas’s representatives said, would “provide the occupation time to continue perpetuating the war of genocide against our people.” It is unclear whether the party will send its representatives to negotiations on August 15. It is, however, clear that Hamas no longer believes that Israel is at all serious about ending the war.

Like Biden, Kamala Harris has made statements critical of Israel’s actions and has even gone as far as to call for an immediate cease-fire. But she has avoided applying any serious pressure on Netanyahu’s government, to which the United States has agreed to send an additional $3.5 billion in military aid to be spent on American-made equipment.

In the months immediately after October 7, Netanyahu experienced a significant drop in support. However, more recent polls show him to be more popular than Benny Gantz, who resigned from the government in mid-June in opposition to Netanyahu’s refusal to accept the deal proposed by Biden in late May, which would have ensured a cease-fire and release of Israeli hostages. Netanyahu’s recalcitrance seems to have won, rather than lost him support among the Israeli public. Under these conditions, it seems there is little reason to expect that this round of negotiations will be any different from previous ones, which have consistently been obstructed by Israel.

Since June, Israel has signaled that the war on Gaza would soon enter a “less intense phase,” characterized by targeted attacks aimed at preventing Hamas from regrouping. However, despite Israel’s continued massacres, including a recent attack on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza City that claimed over one hundred Palestinian lives, Hamas’s operations against Israeli soldiers within the strip have persisted. The appointment of Sinwar — who unlike Haniyeh is based in Gaza rather than Qatar — as head of Hamas’s political bureau and the architect of the October 7 attacks sends a clear message that the movement is prepared to continue the fight, if Israel refuses to accept a cease-fire.

Iran, which insists on its right to defend its sovereignty, following the assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran, has also indicated its potential willingness to scale back its response if that contributes to the end of Israel’s onslaught against the Palestinian people. The newly inaugurated president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, told his French counterpart that the United States and Europe must urge Israel to accept a truce in Gaza to reduce tensions. But it remains unknown whether an Iranian military response will take place and, if so, what its scope would be. Iran has spent the days following the assassination of Haniyeh in extensive talks with allies, partners, and diplomatic mediators, possibly negotiating the acceptable contours of a response that would reestablish deterrence with Israel without risking regional escalation.

Hezbollah has also remained tight-lipped about the specifics regarding the timing, scope, and intensity of its anticipated response to Shukr’s assassination. The media is rife with speculation, fueled in part by Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, who in his latest speech confirmed that a response was imminent. A Lebanese newspaper close to Hezbollah, however, did report that the party may target Tel Aviv as part of its response. But Nasrallah has deliberately kept his comments vague, leaving it unclear whether the response would be a coordinated effort involving other factions within the resistance axis or a solo operation by Hezbollah. Uncertainty surrounding Hezbollah’s actions, Nasrallah emphasized, is itself a component of the party’s response.

Nevertheless, as Iran and Hezbollah carefully choose what they believe the correct time and target for their retaliatory attacks to be, neither will ultimately decide whether the war expands. In contrast to Iran and Hezbollah, Israel has not only the potential but an interest in expanding the ongoing war. This is why the United States is reportedly preemptively urging Israel to “limit its response” before Tehran and Hezbollah have even made a move.

At least in its public statements, the United States does not seem to be worried about a war breaking out between Iran and Israel. The deputy Pentagon press secretary, Sabrina Singh, has recently said in an off-camera press briefing that while the United States has moved military assets to the region “to project a message of deterrence,” the Pentagon did not believe that an expansion of the war is “imminent.”

But this does not necessarily mean that these projections map out to the situation between Lebanon and Israel. While a major Iranian attack on Israel might help to reestablish mutual deterrence between the two, it does not necessarily follow that an attack from Hezbollah, which has been at war with Israel since October 8, would have the same effect.

Israel’s objectives regarding Iran have not changed since before October 7. Israel seeks to undermine any progress Tehran can make in normalizing relations with the West and prevent a nuclear deal akin to the one brokered by Barack Obama and rescinded by Donald Trump, which would lift US sanctions in exchange for abandoning development of a nuclear weapons program. These are concrete aims that can be realized without an escalation into a direct conflagration.

For Hezbollah, the stakes are different. In the few days that followed Hamas’s attack on October 7, the Israeli cabinet seriously considered conducting a preemptive attack on Lebanon. Shortly after Hamas and other members of the Palestinian resistance attacked Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) dispatched three divisions — one division contains between ten thousand and twenty-five thousand troops — to the northern border, terrified of the prospect of an invasion on a second front. One division commander reported that had Hezbollah chosen to invade, “we would have managed to stop them only at Haifa,” twenty-six miles south of the Lebanese border. According to some sources, it was only a last-minute intervention from the Biden administration that halted Israel’s preemptive attack.

Fear of having a repeat of October 7 from the north, along with the vulnerability of Israel’s northern settlements to Hezbollah, which has forced over seventy thousand Israelis to evacuate, continues to influence Israel’s calculations. Were Israel to succeed in its stated objectives — defeating Hamas and normalizing relations with the Arab states — they would, alongside whatever form the Palestinian resistance takes, have to contend with the presence of a massive, highly trained, and heavily armed military organization on its borders. This is why Israel considers the war with Hezbollah inevitable, if not imminent.

Furthermore, it is unclear whether Iran would necessarily get involved if Israel were to escalate its war with Lebanon. Hezbollah leadership has mentioned before that they would not require Iranian involvement if such a war were to take place. This could mean that Netanyahu may still be planning to take up the opportunity to channel his army’s resources away from Gaza and toward Lebanon, as he was planning in June, without necessarily risking an all-out war with Iran.

While Israel has systematically attacked Hezbollah’s military leadership through targeted assassinations over the last ten months, which has likely weakened the strategic capabilities of the party, these have not affected Hezbollah’s massive arsenal, nor the tens of thousands of highly trained fighters it can deploy. Similarly, these assassinations have done little to influence the internal refugee crisis in the north of Israel and have instead exposed the limitations of the Iron Dome defense system. While the war has led to the internal displacement of around ninety-eight thousand residents of the southern Lebanese border villages and towns, Israel has had to evacuate ninety thousand of its citizens from northern settlements.

Itzhak Brik, a retired Israeli major general, has described a potential war on Lebanon as “collective suicide.” He points out that the Irone Dome has been failing to intercept unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), rockets, and missiles for months, urging the Israeli establishment to recognize that the IDF has not prepared for dozens of daily missiles, let alone the thousands estimated to shower Israel daily if an all-out war were to break. Israel estimates that Hezbollah has between one hundred fifty thousand and two hundred thousand missiles and rockets, while Iranian sources estimate almost a million. The real amount surely lies somewhere between the two.

There is no doubt that Lebanon would suffer devastating destruction, especially in the south, the Beqaa Valley, and the southern suburbs of Beirut were it to engage in a full-scale war with Israel. However, what would be different this time around is that Israel would suffer a similar degree of devastation.