Israel threatens to intensify strikes against Hezbollah - media

Israel has threatened to intensify military strikes against Hezbollah, and a senior United States envoy has warned Beirut that time is running out for the disarmament of the Iranian-backed Lebanese faction. This is reported by UNN with reference to Bloomberg.

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A nearly year-long ceasefire between the Middle Eastern neighbors calmed what had been a second front in Israel's war in Gaza against Hamas, a Palestinian ally of Iran. The November 27 agreement, brokered by Washington, required the Lebanese government and its army to remove Hezbollah from areas near the Israeli border and disarm it.

However, Hezbollah has refused to voluntarily surrender its arsenal, and Israel, citing self-defense provisions in the ceasefire agreement, has carried out dozens of deadly airstrikes, mostly in southern Lebanon, against what it calls Hezbollah's attempts to regroup. These attacks have been almost daily recently, including at least one commando raid.

"We will not allow Lebanon to become a new front against us, and we will take all necessary measures," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday at a weekly cabinet meeting, according to a transcript provided by his office.

Separately, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that "Hezbollah is playing with fire, and the President of Lebanon is delaying," calling for "maximum enforcement."

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, a former army commander, touted a plan to disarm Hezbollah by the end of the year. With that deadline approaching, Israel claims Hezbollah is rebuilding capabilities lost during fighting in mid-2024.

"They're trying, but they're dinosaurs. It's a paralyzed government run by a foreign terrorist organization," senior US diplomat Tom Barrack said on Saturday about Beirut's disarmament campaign, which is also hampered by Lebanon's economic crisis.

Hezbollah has up to 20,000 rockets and about 40,000 full-time fighters and reservists, who are paid almost 10 times more than Lebanese Armed Forces personnel, who are outgunned, Barrack said.

Read also: US offered Hamas safe exit from Israeli-controlled areas of Gaza – Axios

A former private investor, Barrack, Washington's ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, advised Lebanon to speak directly with Israel and potentially develop bilateral relations in the spirit of US-sponsored agreements. The countries are technically at war.

"We don't have time for this diplomatic cadence. It's clear that Israel has become the dominant ally in this reshuffling of the chessboard of what's happening in the Middle East," Barrack said at the annual Manama Dialogue of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Bahrain.

Speaking to reporters, Barrack said Israeli officials shared intelligence showing Hezbollah rearming, using arms smuggling routes through neighboring Syria, and evidence of an underground drone manufacturing facility in the Beqaa Valley in eastern Lebanon. Lebanese leaders deny such activities, he added.

Barrack compared a potential escalation of the conflict with Lebanon to Israel's brief war with Iran in June, when Tehran was attacked along with many of its top military and several key nuclear facilities.

"So you decide what happens if Israel starts acting aggressively with someone else who is a foreign terrorist organization," Barrack said.

Although the ceasefire agreement requires Israel to withdraw troops from Lebanon, it maintains five army outposts at convenient locations on the shared border between the countries. It is being offered to withdraw them in exchange for the LAF's actions to disarm Hezbollah, which it insists must be prevented from repeating the October 7, 2023 cross-border raid by Hamas that triggered the multi-front conflict.

"We will not allow a threat to the residents of the north," Katz said in a Sunday statement.

Addition

The remains of three people handed over by Hamas to the Red Cross in Gaza do not belong to any hostages, Israel said on Saturday, another setback for the US-brokered ceasefire agreement in the Israel-Hamas war.