Iran-backed groups threaten to expand Gaza war as they step up attacks on Israel and U.S.

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• autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

  This is the best summary I could come up with:

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  BEIRUT — Rockets launched from Lebanon reached deeper into Israeli territory Monday than any since the 2006 war, as the Hezbollah militant group’s second-in-command threatened to escalate cross-border attacks if Israel continues its deadly assault on the Gaza Strip.

  The threats by Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, came as Iranian-backed militant groups across the Middle East launched an unprecedented array of attacks against American targets.

  Taken together, Hezbollah’s heightened rhetoric and the widening strikes by a group of Iran-backed proxies suggest that this “Axis of Resistance” is acting in harmony to ramp up pressure on the U.S. and Israel to check the latter’s escalating assault on the Gaza Strip.

  But Hezbollah’s moves are still a dangerous gambit that have pushed the entire Middle East closer to a regionwide war than at any point since this latest crisis began a month ago with the surprise Hamas attack.

  In his interview with NBC News, Qassem explained that Hezbollah’s combat posture was primarily one of deterrence — that its increasingly powerful but still-restrained cross-border attacks were meant to drag Israeli forces from their actions in Gaza.

  Schenker, who also worked as the Pentagon’s top policy aide on the Arab nations of the Levant, said the coordinated harassment of American military installations may be meant to relieve political pressure on Hezbollah by its supporters to fully enter the war and spare it from what could be disastrous Israeli retaliation.

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