CNN published an article about the American administration and intelligence officials being concerned that Israel is planning a ground incursion into Lebanon that could be launched in late spring or early summer.
CNN published an article on Thursday about the American administration and intelligence officials being concerned that Israel is planning a ground incursion into Lebanon that could be launched in late spring or early summer if diplomatic efforts fail to push Hezbollah back from the northern border with Israel, senior administration officials and officials familiar with the intelligence say.
While a final Israeli decision has yet to be made, the worry is acute enough inside the Biden administration that the prospect of an incursion has made its way into intelligence briefings for senior administration officials, according to one person who received a briefing and was told an operation could happen early this summer, as stated by CNN.
“We are operating under the assumption that an Israeli military operation will occur in the coming months,” one senior Biden administration official told CNN. “Not necessarily imminently in the next few weeks, but perhaps later this spring. An Israeli military operation is a distinct possibility.”
While the US is a key mediator in ongoing discussions over a pause in the fighting in Gaza, the Biden administration has also been leading parallel discussions with Israeli and Lebanese officials that, if successful, would create a miles-wide buffer zone inside southern Lebanon. That deal would likely postpone an Israeli incursion, US officials believe.
“I think what Israel is doing is raising this threat in the hope that there will be a negotiated agreement,” said the senior official, who has heard differing opinions within the Israeli government about the need to go into Lebanon.
“Some Israeli officials suggest that it is more of an effort at creating a threat that they can utilize. Others speak of it more as a military necessity that’s going to happen,” the official told the American news media.
A second senior Biden administration official said there are elements inside the Israeli government and military in favor of an incursion. There’s “a growing group that says, ‘Hey, let’s just take a shot. Let’s just do it,’” the senior official said, adding that any incursion could lead to a “major, major escalation that we don’t even know the proportions of.”
According to the news media, some 80,000 Israelis have been displaced from the north since October. In a statement to CNN, the Israeli embassy in Washington wrote, “The State of Israel will not return to the pre-war status quo in which Hezbollah poses a direct and immediate military threat to its security along the Israel-Lebanon border.”
CNN noted that in recent days, Israel has been stepping up its air campaign, bombing deeper into Lebanon. Strikes last week came within 27 miles of the capital Beirut, the farthest into Lebanese territory from the border since the violence immediately started following Hamas’ October 7 massacres in Israel.
“There are fears this will grow to an expansive air campaign reaching much further north into populated areas of Lebanon and eventually grow to a ground component as well,” another person familiar with US intelligence told CNN.
The US intelligence community has been “ringing alarm bells,” they added.
