It doesn’t seem, to this observer anyway, that Israel’s interested in deescalating the situation in southern Lebanon.

Rather, it looks like the IDF’s keen to permanently cripple Hezbollah’s capacity to threaten northern Israel, in the process hollowing out the group’s military command structure. I talked at some length about that earlier this week in “Endgame.”

That’s not to suggest Israel’s the “aggressor,” nor that Israel’s actions can’t ultimately be explained by reference to self defense. It’s just to say that the line between self defense and offense — aggressive offense — is quite often blurry when it comes to the IDF. If you give Israel an excuse, they’ll take it, and they’ll run up the score before you know what happened.

There are two ways to look at the situation as it stands nearly a year on from October 7. I touched on this in the editorial from September 25’s Daily.

From one angle, the last year was a disaster for Israel. Its sense of security was shattered, already deep societal fissures are deeper, international opinion has turned against it and Palestine is front-page news pretty much every, single day. In those respects — and a few more besides — Yahya Sinwar’s gamble paid off. He created a quasi-existential crisis for Israel.

But Sinwar’s gambit created an existential crisis for Iran’s “Axis Of Resistance” too. Israel was never going to “destroy” Hamas entirely, and if there is a future for Gaza as something other than a desolate, ungovernable wasteland, Hamas will almost surely be a part of that future, for better or worse, with my money on “worse” for obvious reasons. But it’s probably fair to assess that both Sinwar and the world underestimated Israel’s willingness to carpet bomb the territory into hellish oblivion. Sinwar’s lieutenants are dead. So’s Ismail Haniyeh. And while the Qassam Brigades will reconstitute and regroup, they’ll never be the same. What was a uniformed, miniature army is now a loose confederation of, in many cases plainclothes, thrill-seekers employing clumsy guerilla tactics to torment their invaders. So, an ongoing, low-level insurgency. That’s a big downgrade.

As for Hezbollah, it’s hard to overstate the gravity of the losses the group’s incurred. I realize I’ve been on (and on) about this in recent days, but consider that between Ibrahim Aqil and Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah lost a combined 80 years of strategic, military experience. These commanders are synonymous with the group in a way that it’s hard for Westerners to wrap their minds around. If the US military loses a general, America’s capacity to wage war isn’t impacted. When Hezbollah loses a commander — never mind a lifer like Shukr — the entire machine suffers a degradation.

The Wall Street Journal published a good piece on Hezbollah this week. A security analyst quoted by the Journal called this, “[T]he single most crucial moment for Hezbollah since it was created.” The group, the same analyst went on to note, “tied its fortunes to the Gaza front, which it cannot control,” and now finds itself with “no good options.” In simple terms, Hezbollah’s at the mercy of Israel. And boy, oh boy: That’s a tough spot to be in if you’re Hassan Nasrallah.

It’s not that Iran’s abandoned Hezbollah, it’s that in this situation, there’s nothing Iran can realistically do to help. Hezbollah needs things the IRGC can’t, or isn’t in a position to, provide. For one thing, Nasrallah needs some kind of deterrent against the Israeli air force. There’s no way for the IRGC to get heavy equipment like that to a non-state actor, let alone under these circumstances. That’s not the kind of hardware you just smuggle in through Syria, particularly not when the IDF’s monitoring the border. The same’s true of people. Nasrallah needs IRGC and Quds personnel to temporarily fill now-vacant military command roles. But Iran’s bench is a lot thinner than it was five years ago, and the Quds can’t move people from Damascus to Beirut undetected. Hezbollah needs counterintelligence too. Iran’s no help whatever on that front. The entire history of Iranian counterintelligence efforts vis-à-vis Mossad is just one embarrassment after another.

I don’t know if “this is it,” so to speak, for Hezbollah, but it might be. And if it is, it’d be a big deal. We may be witnessing the beginning of the end for modern history’s largest, most powerful, non-state military actor. Benjamin Netanyahu’s in the US right now. He’ll address what’s likely to be a tough crowd at the UN General Assembly on Friday. I suppose this goes without saying, but Netanyahu doesn’t give a single damn what anybody in that assembly thinks, least of all Joe Biden. Whatever he’s going to do in Lebanon, he’s going to do. That’s what I mean when I say Hezbollah’s at Israel’s mercy.

Israel doesn’t need any additional weapons to finish that job, depending on how they go about it. There was every indication on Thursday that the IDF was preparing a ground maneuver, and it’s easy enough to predict a de facto loss for Israel in an invasion scenario given what happened last time. But it’s not as if the IDF didn’t learn from that experience. They know what not to do now. Or at least they should. Importantly (and ironically), Hezbollah needs desperately to draw Israel into a ground war. That’s the only hope they have. The situation as it stands is wholly untenable. Hezbollah’s all but defenseless. They have tens of thousands of advanced missiles and rockets, but they’re scared to use them because they know what happens if they kill a bunch of Israelis — namely, Netanyahu will turn Lebanon into Gaza.

On Thursday alone, the IDF killed more than two-dozen people at a school in northern Gaza (the military said it was a “Hamas command and control center”), 20 Syrians in the Bekaa Valley (I don’t know what they did wrong), a couple of guys in Beirut (the IDF said they were “drone commanders”), another two people in Qadmus and somebody in Qana for “good” measure.

Earlier this week, Iran’s foreign minister essentially begged the P5 to intervene. “Israel must immediately stop its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon,” Abbas Araghchi beseeched. “The Security Council must act now to halt Israel’s war and save innocent lives.” History, he warned, will “hold Israel’s enablers, especially the United States, responsible.”

With all due respect (and I don’t know how much respect is actually “due” here), we’ve tried. In case Iran and the rest of the world hasn’t noticed, Netanyahu’s not listening to us anymore. In some respects, Israel’s not listening to us anymore.

For Netanyahu, perpetual war’s the ticket to staying in power, and it’s also a kind of get-out-jail-free card. But more importantly, he’s enjoying this. There’s no doubt in my mind about that. Further, I do wonder what, if anything, Donald Trump promised when the two of them met in Mar-a-Lago a couple of months back. Who knows: Maybe Trump believes all-out war in the Mideast would bolster his chances of reelection in November.

Panning back out, I’ve gone above and beyond in these pages to exhibit the utmost sympathy for Palestinians in Gaza (who’ve been subjected to de facto genocide) and in the West Bank (where they live under the shadow of systematic oppression designed specifically to break their spirit by making daily life as difficult as absolutely possible). I’m going to afford Lebanon’s beleaguered citizens the same sympathy and respect.

At the same time, I can’t be anything other than honest, and the truth is that Israel’s regional antagonists should’ve known better. Israel will play along with the “unstable equilibria,” and Netanyahu will play all kinds of other games besides while letting you fire your rockets and hatch your little plots and schemes. But in the final analysis, they — the Israelis — aren’t f–kin’ around. Quite the opposite. They’ve been playing for keeps since 1948.

I’m sure Sinwar’s plan sounded “good” in theory, not just as it related to the Palestinian issue, but also vis-à-vis the potential to fan the flames of domestic discord in Israel on the heels of street protests against Netanyahu’s ill-fated judicial reform, but Sinwar’s decision to hand this Israeli government — this nightmare coalition where Netanyahu’s beholden to people even eviler than his own worst self in Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir and the like — an excuse to wage war, was to rope not just Hamas into a suicide mission, but Hezbollah too, and maybe Iran if they aren’t careful.

And folks, let’s face it: The Israelis ain’t leavin’. In fact, I wonder now if Smotrich and Ben-Gvir aren’t trying to trigger a Third Intifada so they have an excuse to formally annex the West Bank. Think on that.