Israel’s war on the population of Gaza — which has thus far claimed the lives of more than 3,500 people and destroyed crucial infrastructure, including schools and hospitals — has now raged for over two weeks. Since the start of Israel’s bombing campaign, launched after a Hamas military operation killed 1,400 Israelis, many of whom were civilians, on October 7, observers have feared that the conflict could bring in regional actors such as the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, supported by its main financial backer Iran.

This, in part, explains Israel’s reluctance to launch a ground invasion of the Gaza strip, despite having promised to do so since the start of the conflict. Hezbollah, which has under its control over fifty thousand troops, is a significant military force, and the prospect of it opening up a northern front in the ongoing war has tempered the more hawkish elements within the Israeli security state and forced the United States to warn outside parties against intervention.

However, the barriers to Hezbollah’s involvement in the war are more complicated than its members, and Iranian assertions of its readiness for a new military confrontation, would suggest. There remain multiple conflicting interests both within the Lebanese party and across the region that make it impossible to speak confidently about the prospects for an escalation of the war.