Backed by Iran and deeply entrenched in Lebanon, Hizballah possesses military capabilities far greater than Hamas’s. Israeli officials have made clear, on and off the record, that they will no longer tolerate the terrorist group’s existence on their northern border. To this end, French and American diplomats have been working on a negotiated solution that involves Hizballah’s withdrawal north of the Litani river, which divides the southernmost tip of Lebanon from the rest of the country. Israel in exchange would cede Har Dov and few other small parcels of land—based on Hizballah’s extremely tenuous claims that these are in fact Lebanese territories. David Wurmser explains why the deal should be a nonstarter:

Hizballah has been in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701—the resolution that terminated the 2006 Second Lebanon War—since its signing. . . . In many ways, the U.S. proposal only asks of Hizballah to implement one part of UNSCR 1701 and completely ignores [the others, along with previous resolutions]. This itself constitutes a major victory for Hizballah. [Moreover], under the plan proposed by the U.S. and France, Hizballah is rewarded—and its resistance validated and continued existence as an armed militia legitimized—by a full Israeli withdrawal in all of the areas in addition to other disputed parcels.

The U.S. and France have also proposed under this agreement that the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) secure the border and the buffer zone south of the Litani River. Indeed, UNSCR 1701 had called for that, but [the LAF] has long been proven to be an entirely dysfunctional fiction as a sovereign force. It cannot in any way cross Hizballah, and to believe it can . . . is simply delusional.

The U.S. and France are pushing for an agreement to avoid escalation on Israel’s northern border which must be understood in effect as part of a larger effort to appease Iran on substance and strategy while giving Israel hollow tactical scraps. It is a deal Israel must refuse.

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].