For Iran and Hezbollah, Calibrating Response to Israeli Strikes Leaves No Room for Error

Hezbollah fighters. (AFP)
Hezbollah fighters. (AFP)
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For Iran and Hezbollah, Calibrating Response to Israeli Strikes Leaves No Room for Error

Hezbollah fighters. (AFP)
Hezbollah fighters. (AFP)

Two back-to-back strikes in Beirut and Tehran, both attributed to Israel and targeting high-ranking figures in Hamas and Hezbollah, have left Hezbollah and Iran in a quandary.
Analysts agree that both strikes hit too close to home to pass without a response, and were serious security breaches for Iran and Hezbollah. Calibrating that response to restore deterrence without sparking an even more damaging escalation may be the most delicate balancing act in nearly a year of teetering on the brink of a regional war.
Tuesday’s rare strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs killed a top Hezbollah commander who Israel says was responsible for a missile strike on a soccer field in the town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, killing 12 children and teenagers. Hezbollah has denied responsibility for the attack, The Associated Press reported.
While the target of the strike in Beirut was a military figure, it hit a densely populated urban neighborhood on the outskirts of the capital where Hezbollah has many of its offices, killing at least five civilians — three women and two children — and wounding dozens more.
Less than 12 hours later, the Palestinian group Hamas — a Hezbollah ally also backed by Iran — announced that the chief of its political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, had been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Tehran, where he was attending the inauguration of the new Iranian president.
Israel has neither claimed nor denied responsibility for that strike, which comes nearly 10 months into the brutal war in Gaza sparked by Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel. It also coincides with another push by mediators to close a cease-fire and hostage-exchange deal.
Analysts said both Hezbollah and Iran will feel compelled to retaliate, but their calculations differ.
Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center who researches Hezbollah, said that although Israel also struck in Beirut’s southern suburbs in a January attack that killed Hamas official Saleh Arouri, Tuesday’s strike targeted a top Hezbollah commander and killed civilians.
“This time, we’re too far into the war, and a Hezbollah commander is the target. Hezbollah has to respond, and if they don’t, this would be a new rule: Killing civilians on the Israeli side would lead to targeting of" the Beirut suburbs, he said. “Hezbollah cannot afford this.”
Hezbollah began firing rockets over the Lebanon-Israel border the day after the war in Gaza began, in what it described as a “support front” for Hamas. Although the near-daily clashes have been deadly and have displaced tens of thousands in both Lebanon and Israel, they have remained mostly confined to the border region.
In order to reestablish deterrence after Tuesday’s strike, Ali said, “Hezbollah would need to respond beyond its now-limited geographical scope of operations. They need to strike deeper in Israeli territories, and this brings with it great risks.”
Andreas Krieg, a military analyst and senior lecturer in security studies at King’s College London, agreed that Hezbollah will feel the need to carry out a significant retaliatory strike.
“I think Hezbollah has been hit much harder, much more where it hurts” than Iran, he said. “In the Israeli-Hezbollah confrontation, this is a major escalation whereby Hezbollah has to respond adequately in a more or less timely fashion” to restore deterrence.
However, the militant group will probably hit a significant military target — such as an air force base near Haifa that appeared in a video of surveillance drone footage the group released in July — rather than a civilian target, he said, and will most likely try to calibrate the attack to cause only material damage to limit further escalation.
Nabih Awada, a Lebanese political and military analyst close to the Iranian-backed “axis of resistance” and a former fighter with the Lebanese Communist Party who spent a decade in Israeli prisons along with some of the current Hamas leaders, said Hezbollah saw the strike in Beirut as a “violation of all rules of engagement” because it targeted a civilian residential area and because Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukur was targeted “in his home rather than in a military headquarters.”
Hezbollah, he said, “has developed many equations,” including that the response to a strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs will be in Haifa.
For Iran, the situation is more complicated.
In some ways, the current moment mirrors the time in April when Israel and Iran risked plunging into a war after Israel hit an Iranian consular building in Damascus, killing two Iranian generals. Iran retaliated with an unprecedented direct strike on Israel. At that time, diplomatic efforts managed to contain the escalation.
But there are key differences. The assassination of Haniyeh took place on Iranian soil, embarrassing Tehran and making clear that Israel can easily hit targets there.
While some analysts believe that will be mitigated by the fact the target was not an Iranian figure, Iranian officials have vowed a harsh response.
Krieg said that while the killing of Haniyeh's death was “damaging reputationally” for Iran and “humiliating” because it showed that Tehran was unable to protect high-profile visitors, “Haniyeh is not an integral part of the axis of resistance.”
“His death has no strategic implications for Iran other than it being a slap in the face because you’re the host and your guest was killed while you were on watch,” he said.
As such, Krieg said he believes Iran could choose to mitigate its response.
Nomi Bar-Yaacov, an associate fellow in the International Security Program at Chatham House, said Iran might turn to its proxies to retaliate.
“They have got their people, training, arming, planning everywhere, and they can reach anywhere in the world,” she said. “They can also hit Israeli or Jewish targets globally.”
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said he expects Iran’s response to be another direct hit on Israel.
The strike on Haniyeh “wasn’t just on Iranian territory, it was in Tehran,” he said. “It was at the inauguration. It doesn’t matter who was targeted” and whether or not the target was Iranian.
Iranians, he said, are likely feeling that “if the demonstration of force in April managed to restore deterrence in the short run, that deterrence is now gone” and that they are “going to have do way more than what they did in April in order to be able to restore the balance of power."
The exchange in April did not spiral because of the diplomatic intervention by the United States and others, and the Iranian strike itself appeared carefully choreographed to cause minimal damage.
Still, Parsi said, there was also “a lot of luck” that went into keeping the escalation limited.
“It’s a pivotal moment in this conflict. I don’t think we’ve been in as difficult a moment in this conflict, given that we’ve seen what Iran is capable of in April,” Bar-Yaacov said.
If the response to the strikes does not cause Israeli casualties, a wider war could still be avoided, Ali said.
But, he added, “We are in the territory of too many ‘ifs’ to avoid a war, and this doesn’t bode well.”



The 911 Presidency: Trump Flexes Emergency Powers in His Second Term

FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump attends a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (not pictured) at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, June 5, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump attends a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (not pictured) at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, June 5, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
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The 911 Presidency: Trump Flexes Emergency Powers in His Second Term

FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump attends a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (not pictured) at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, June 5, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump attends a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (not pictured) at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, June 5, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

Call it the 911 presidency.
Despite insisting that the United States is rebounding from calamity under his watch, President Donald Trump is harnessing emergency powers unlike any of his predecessors.
Whether it’s leveling punishing tariffs, deploying troops to the border or sidelining environmental regulations, Trump has relied on rules and laws intended only for use in extraordinary circumstances like war and invasion.
An analysis by The Associated Press shows that 30 of Trump’s 150 executive orders have cited some kind of emergency power or authority, a rate that far outpaces his recent predecessors.
The result is a redefinition of how presidents can wield power. Instead of responding to an unforeseen crisis, Trump is using emergency powers to supplant Congress’ authority and advance his agenda.
“What’s notable about Trump is the enormous scale and extent, which is greater than under any modern president,” said Ilya Somin, who is representing five US businesses who sued the administration, claiming they were harmed by Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs.
Because Congress has the power to set trade policy under the Constitution, the businesses convinced a federal trade court that Trump overstepped his authority by claiming an economic emergency to impose the tariffs. An appeals court has paused that ruling while the judges review it.
Growing concerns over actions
The legal battle is a reminder of the potential risks of Trump’s strategy. Judges traditionally have given presidents wide latitude to exercise emergency powers that were created by Congress. However, there’s growing concern that Trump is pressing the limits when the US is not facing the kinds of threats such actions are meant to address.
“The temptation is clear,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program and an expert in emergency powers. “What’s remarkable is how little abuse there was before, but we’re in a different era now.”
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who has drafted legislation that would allow Congress to reassert tariff authority, said he believed the courts would ultimately rule against Trump in his efforts to single-handedly shape trade policy.
“It’s the Constitution. James Madison wrote it that way, and it was very explicit,” Bacon said of Congress’ power over trade. “And I get the emergency powers, but I think it’s being abused. When you’re trying to do tariff policy for 80 countries, that’s policy, not emergency action.”
The White House pushed back on such concerns, saying Trump is justified in aggressively using his authority.
“President Trump is rightfully enlisting his emergency powers to quickly rectify four years of failure and fix the many catastrophes he inherited from Joe Biden — wide open borders, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, radical climate regulations, historic inflation, and economic and national security threats posed by trade deficits,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
Trump frequently sites 1977 law to justify actions
Of all the emergency powers, Trump has most frequently cited the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to justify slapping tariffs on imports.
The law, enacted in 1977, was intended to limit some of the expansive authority that had been granted to the presidency decades earlier. It is only supposed to be used when the country faces “an unusual and extraordinary threat” from abroad “to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.”
In analyzing executive orders issued since 2001, the AP found that Trump has invoked the law 21 times in presidential orders and memoranda. President George W. Bush, grappling with the aftermath of the most devastating terror attack on US soil, invoked the law just 14 times in his first term. Likewise, Barack Obama invoked the act only 21 times during his first term, when the US economy faced the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.
The Trump administration has also deployed an 18th century law, the Alien Enemies Act, to justify deporting Venezuelan migrants to other countries, including El Salvador. Trump's decision to invoke the law relies on allegations that the Venezuelan government coordinates with the Tren de Aragua gang, but intelligence officials did not reach that conclusion.
Congress has ceded its power to the presidency
Congress has granted emergency powers to the presidency over the years, acknowledging that the executive branch can act more swiftly than lawmakers if there is a crisis. There are 150 legal powers — including waiving a wide variety of actions that Congress has broadly prohibited — that can only be accessed after declaring an emergency. In an emergency, for example, an administration can suspend environmental regulations, approve new drugs or therapeutics, take over the transportation system, or even override bans on testing biological or chemical weapons on human subjects, according to a list compiled by the Brennan Center for Justice.
Democrats and Republicans have pushed the boundaries over the years. For example, in an attempt to cancel federal student loan debt, Joe Biden used a post-Sept. 11 law that empowered education secretaries to reduce or eliminate such obligations during a national emergency. The US Supreme Court eventually rejected his effort, forcing Biden to find different avenues to chip away at his goals.
Before that, Bush pursued warrantless domestic wiretapping and Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the detention of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast in camps for the duration of World War II.
Trump, in his first term, sparked a major fight with Capitol Hill when he issued a national emergency to compel construction of a border wall. Though Congress voted to nullify his emergency declaration, lawmakers could not muster up enough Republican support to overcome Trump’s eventual veto.
“Presidents are using these emergency powers not to respond quickly to unanticipated challenges,” said John Yoo, who as a Justice Department official under George W. Bush helped expand the use of presidential authorities. “Presidents are using it to step into a political gap because Congress chooses not to act.”
Trump, Yoo said, “has just elevated it to another level.”
Trump's allies support his moves
Conservative legal allies of the president also said Trump’s actions are justified, and Vice President JD Vance predicted the administration would prevail in the court fight over tariff policy.
“We believe — and we’re right — that we are in an emergency,” Vance said last week in an interview with Newsmax.
“You have seen foreign governments, sometimes our adversaries, threaten the American people with the loss of critical supplies,” Vance said. “I’m not talking about toys, plastic toys. I’m talking about pharmaceutical ingredients. I’m talking about the critical pieces of the manufacturing supply chain.”
Vance continued, “These governments are threatening to cut us off from that stuff, that is by definition, a national emergency.”
Republican and Democratic lawmakers have tried to rein in a president’s emergency powers. Two years ago, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced legislation that would have ended a presidentially-declared emergency after 30 days unless Congress votes to keep it in place. It failed to advance.
Similar legislation hasn’t been introduced since Trump’s return to office. Right now, it effectively works in the reverse, with Congress required to vote to end an emergency.
“He has proved to be so lawless and reckless in so many ways. Congress has a responsibility to make sure there’s oversight and safeguards,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who cosponsored an emergency powers reform bill in the previous session of Congress. He argued that, historically, leaders relying on emergency declarations has been a “path toward autocracy and suppression.”