Iran, for its part, has been promising to avenge Ismail Haniyeh’s death, and Israelis are preparing for another massive attack along the lines of April 13, but of greater duration and intensity. The situation is a reminder of what Benjamin Netanyahu conveyed to the U.S. Congress in his July 24 address: Iran is the greatest threat to Israel, and a serious threat to America as well. James Stavridis agrees:

Tehran has repeatedly sworn that Israel should be “eliminated” and “wiped off the map,” so no Israeli government will countenance a nuclear-armed Iran. Both the Biden and Trump administrations gave Israel assurances that the U.S. will not tolerate such a leap, either. If Tehran seriously pursues the bomb—something that will likely become clear in the next year or so—there will be tremendous pressure on whichever U.S. administration is in power to take military action.

In such a situation, Hizballah would undoubtedly unleash its arsenal of more than 120,000 missiles against Israeli civilians across the small country. This scenario was a big reason the Biden administration sent two aircraft carriers to the region last fall. If it came to war with Tehran, it would take four aircraft carriers—and likely a massive U.S. air-force surge into bases in the Arab states Qatar, Kuwait, and even Saudi Arabia.

Netanyahu’s speech reminded me of what Churchill later called “a gathering storm” in Europe in the late 1930s, which led to World War II. It is beginning to feel that way in the Middle East today.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.