Two Israeli air strikes against Hezbollah targets in Syria in recent weeks seem to mark a more openly assertive stance toward the group after years of shadow boxing, requiring careful calibration to avoid escalation into a war that neither wants.
For most of the six-year-long conflict in Syria, Israel has stuck determinedly to the sidelines, not wanting to get sucked into the chaos unfolding to its northeast. While it is suspected of carrying out occasional attacks against minor targets, it has tended not to confirm or deny involvement.
But it is determined to stop Lebanon's Hezbollah, with which it fought a 2006 war, and which it sees as the top strategic threat on its borders, from using its role in the Syrian war to gain weapons and experience that could ultimately endanger Israel.
Since early in the conflict, the Shi'ite movement's energies have been focused on propping up President Bashar al-Assad in alliance with Iran and Russia, throwing thousands of its fighters into battle against Syrian rebels.
But although this strategy makes the prospect of a new war with Israel unwelcome to Hezbollah, it has not altered its view of the country as its foremost enemy, or stopped it strengthening its position for any new conflict.
In the past six weeks, two Israeli attacks appear to have marked a shift, underscoring Israel's intent to squeeze Hezbollah and coming as the Trump administration carried out its own missile strikes in Syria.
In both cases, Israeli officials have also been less guarded about acknowledging who was behind the attacks.
On March 17, Israel struck a site near Palmyra, prompting Syria's army to retaliate with Russian-supplied anti-aircraft missiles and on April 27, it hit an arms depot in Damascus where Hezbollah was suspected of storing weapons supplied by Iran.
"The incident in Syria corresponds completely with Israel's policy to act to prevent Iran's smuggling of advanced weapons via Syria to Hezbollah," Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said of the strike last week, but without explicitly confirming Israel carried it out.
Hezbollah has also bared its teeth, conducting a media tour along the Lebanon-Israel border that was widely interpreted as a message that it was unafraid of a new war, and hinting that any coming conflict might involve attacks on Israeli settlements.
A larger strike by Israel, or one that misses its target with unintended consequences, might provoke an escalation, further destabilizing Syria and sucking Israel into an already complex conflict.
It's an outcome that neither Israel nor Hezbollah wants, but in a war that has already produced many unpredictable outcomes, it is not out of the question either.
RULES OF THE GAME
Hezbollah is an Iranian-backed movement that was formed to combat Israel's 1982-2000 occupation of Lebanon. Its battlefield prowess, extensive social works among Lebanese Shi'ites and its alliance with powerful regional states have helped it secure a dominant role in the country's politics.
Since the 2006 war with Israel, which killed more than 1,300 people, displaced a million in Lebanon and up to 500,000 in Israel, both sides have engaged in brinkmanship but avoided renewed conflict.
Both say they do not want another war, but don't shy away from saying they are ready for one if it does end up happening.
Last month, Hezbollah took Lebanese journalists on a tour of the southern frontier with Israel, allowing pictures to be taken of soldiers posing with weapons and staring across the border.
Israel runs patrols along the same frontier, sends up drones and is constantly bolstering its defenses. In March, Israeli minister Naftali Bennett, a hardliner, threatened to send Lebanon back to the Middle Ages if Hezbollah provoked another war.
An official in the military alliance that backs Assad said Israel's recent air strikes had hit Hezbollah targets but played down the damage done. As for retaliation, they drew a distinction between Israel striking Hezbollah units deployed to fight on behalf of Assad in Syria and those at home in Lebanon.
"If Israel hits a Hezbollah convoy in Syria, Hezbollah will decide if it will respond or not according to the circumstances in Syria because, despite everything, Syria is a sovereign state and Hezbollah cannot respond in a way that embarrasses the regime," the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Fearing a possible US attack on North Korea, Beijing is urging its citizens there to return, as Pyongyang continues its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile tests.
The US-funded Radio Free Asia reported on Tuesday that the Chinese Embassy in North Korea sent out the warning less than a week before the 85th anniversary of the Korean People’s Army on April 25, an occasion some expected the North to use as an opportunity to conduct its sixth nuclear test.
Pyongyang instead conducted a large live-fire drill. Four days after the anniversary, the North carried out a missile test, but the projectile exploded several minutes after launching, a "failure" South Korean officials later surmised was intentional.
Amid holiday celebrations, the nuclear-powered USS Michigan submarine, armed with 150 Tomahawk missiles, joined a US Navy carrier strike group led by the USS Carl Vinson near the Korean Peninsula, in a show of force from Washington.
A Korean-Chinese citizen who left Pyongyang after receiving the warning in late April told Radio Free Asia, "The embassy has never given such a warning. I was worried and left the country in a hurry," according to the Korea Times.
With the recent deployment in South Korea of the controversial Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD), Washington’s threats of military action against the North and the US’s ongoing joint military exercises with South Korea, Pyongyang has accused the US of pushing the peninsula "to the brink of nuclear war" with its "aggression and hysteria."
New satellite images indicate that North Korea could be expanding its submarine-launched ballistic missile program (SLBM), as photos show the presence of Pyongyang’s second submersible test-stand barge.
The barge was spotted on North Korea’s west coast in aerial photos taken of the Nampo Naval Shipyard, 38 North, a North Korean watchdog site hosted by Johns Hopkins University’s US-Korea institute, noted in a Monday analysis.
The report, written by Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., suggests that "Barges such as these are used by navies to conduct underwater tests of new and modified submarine missile launch tubes and launch systems, as well as to conduct initial missile test launches before these systems are installed in a submarine."
Since 2014, Pyongyang has conducted at least six test launches of the KN-11 (Pukguksong-1) missile from its other barge at the Sinpo South Shipyard on the country’s east coast.
The new, second barge appears identical to the first, according to the report, and appear to be modeled after Russia’s old PSD-4 barges.
The analysis adds, "The discovery of a second missile test barge may have a number of implications for the future of North Korea’s SLBM program that appears to be an important priority for Kim Jong-un."
This activity comes amid North Korea’s ongoing missile and nuclear weapons tests, despite international sanctions and calls for denuclearization. The US has deployed vessels to the Korean Peninsula as a show of force and is in the midst of some of its annual drills with South Korea, moves that have infuriated Pyongyang.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has lately responded to Washington’s posturing by declaring that it would conduct its next nuclear test whenever the leadership deemed it necessary, saying through its state-run news agency that the country is "fully ready to respond to any option taken by the US."
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