Israel claims attacks on densely populated residential areas that killed more than 200 people were aimed at Hezbollah

What was the point of Israel’s surprise mass strikes on Lebanon that killed more than 300 people and drew widespread international condemnation?

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials have claimed the largest strike against Hezbollah during the month-long war against Iran was carefully aimed at members of the armed group, but the attacks appeared to be as much a piece of violent spectacle to benefit Netanyahu as militarily useful.

Others have speculated that the attack – without warning and initially hitting more than 100 targets in 10 minutes including in densely populated residential areas in central Beirut – was aimed at undermining the US-Iran ceasefire that many see as being imposed on an unhappy Netanyahu.

The version being briefed in the Israeli media is that Hezbollah had sought to move command posts to civilian areas outside its historical centres, such as the sprawling Dahieh suburb, to better conceal and protect them – a claim Israel has previously made about Hamas in Gaza.

But the huge scale of the attack, combined with the lack of the warning and the details of some of those killed – including the Hezbollah secretary general Naim Qassem’s nephew and personal adviser Ali Yusuf Harshi – could point to something more ambitious: a failed attempt to kill Qassem himself. His predecessor, Hassan Nasrallah, was assassinated by Israel in 2024.

What is clear is that in the half-baked ceasefire negotiations conducted by Donald Trump and his coterie of amateur diplomats, the question of Israel’s war in Lebanon against a proxy of Tehran has – deliberately or not – been left ticking like a timebomb.

The Israeli strikes came despite the fact that Hezbollah had said it had been “notified of a ceasefire” and had been “committed to it since this morning”, according to Lebanese political sources.

By Thursday, Hezbollah and Israel were trading heavy fire again.

Netanyahu’s justification for such a horrific attack on civilian centres hours after the ceasefire had been announced appeared thin at least. His boasts about killing an aide to Qassem and his insistence of Israel’s right to continuing striking in Lebanon suggested to some that it was an attempt to act as a spoiler in a ceasefire he had argued against.

Instead, Israeli officials – despite believing that the wider ceasefire may collapse – appear to believe that they have at least two weeks to continue operations in Lebanon as talks between Iran and the US are due to continue.

The irony not lost on observers is that it is Israel’s continued fighting that could collapse a deal, with senior Iranian figures warning of a response against Israel on Thursday. The president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said the Israeli strikes on Lebanon violated the ceasefire agreement and would render negotiations meaningless.

The Soufan Center thinktank in New York said: “Even if Lebanon was formally outside the deal, the scale of Israel’s strikes was likely to be viewed as escalatory, nonetheless. Israel’s strikes can be understood both as an effort to drive a wedge between Iran and its proxies and as a response to being allegedly sidelined in the original ceasefire discussions.”

In its newsletter, the thinktank added: “The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel was informed of the deal only at the last minute and ‘wasn’t happy’. Netanyahu now seems determined to pursue a scorched earth policy in Lebanon, even if – or perhaps especially because – it might scuttle the ceasefire deal.

“At the same time, Iran is likely seeking to exploit and widen any existing tensions between the United States and Israel in an effort to divide the two allies.”

For Marion Messmer, the director of the international security programme at Chatham House, Israel’s strikes on Lebanon point to a deeper issue: Washington’s difficulty in managing its relationship with Israel, its ally in the war against Iran.

In a briefing, Messmer wrote: “Israel’s insistence that its military action in Lebanon is not part of the agreement reveals a key vulnerability and shows the limits of the US ability to manage its allies: the ongoing bombing campaigns in Lebanon could undermine the ceasefire overall and keep the US trapped in a conflict it is now seeking to exit.

“After weeks of President Trump being furious with European allies for not sufficiently supporting the US, it now appears to be the alliance relationship with Israel that provides more of a risk to US interests in the Middle East.”

Underlining questions about the purpose and timing of Wednesday’s strikes are claims that the Israel Defense Forces’ own assessment is that – despite Israel’s latest invasion into southern Lebanon and its bombing campaign – disarming or defeating Hezbollah is unrealistic.