Israel has shifted gear in Lebanon. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement that making the north of Israel safe for Israelis to return is now his nation’s war aim was followed by a wave of exploding Hizbollah communication devices targeted at commanders and members in Lebanon. While Hizbollah and Lebanon were reeling, Israel moved two IDF Divisions to its north and intensified bombardments of targets into southern Lebanon. Its actions as much as its statements have confirmed that it is entering a new phase of its war with Hizbollah.

All this may or may not be a precursor to all-out war, in which the IDF enters Lebanon and seeks to inflict permanent, debilitating damage on Hizbollah, not only in southern Lebanon, but in the Beqaa valley and Beirut. Whatever shape the next phase takes it is now clear that Israel is rendering obsolete the paradigm of violent co-existence within which it has fought Hizbollah for decades.

That is a problem for the Hizbollah leadership, which has relied on being able to fight a limited war in which they exercised control over the levels of violence through careful calibration of their operations. They may no longer have that lever, and they and their patrons, Iran, may now need a new strategy to ensure their own survival. What are their options?

Hizbollah’s challenge has been less one of capabilities but of consequences and impact. They command a powerful and constantly developing arsenal and a well-trained fighting force. They have recently advertised their new drone capabilities by flying one over Israeli territory and have maintained a high tempo of attacks against targets in Israel. What has shaped their strategy, and the statements of their leader Hasan Nasrallah, is the careful calculation of the repercussions of escalation for Hizbollah and Lebanon.

Hizbollah has sought to use sufficient pressure to remain credible as a defiant and effective fighting force, but not enough to merit a response from Israel which could harm their position and their capabilities. The freedom to adjust its posture comes from the nature of the war they have been fighting with Israel. Unlike Hamas, which has been fighting Israel in a zero-sum game for statehood, Hizbollah has had choices over what battles it fights and what risks it takes. That may be about to change.

As a key member of the ‘Axis of Resistance’, Hizbollah could seek to mobilise the other groups in the partnership. That is, on paper at least, a formidable array of militias and armed non-state actors, including the Houthis in Yemen, who have landed missiles in Israel and with whom they have a much closer relationship than Hamas. It also includes Iraqi groups such as Kata’ib Hizbollah, whose members have already rallied together with Lebanese Hizbollah as part of the Islamic Resistance of Iraq.

More Islamists may make their way to Lebanon through Syria and fight on the ground alongside Hizbollah. Others will, as they have done before, seek targets closer to home. The Axis of Resistance is more of a concept than a coalition, however. It lacks the mechanisms for coordinating sustained military operations and the operations it has launched so far out of sympathy with Hamas have neither deterred Israel nor degraded its capabilities. Neither are they wholly autonomous. Tehran’s view on the level of support it gives will be critical.

Hizbollah is proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the US, Europe and the Gulf on the basis of the operations it has mounted against US and Israeli targets in the Middle East, Europe, South America and Asia. It has demonstrated global reach over decades. Hizbollah will consider activating its global network if it is under pressure at home. Their target set will widen to include Israel’s allies and facilitators. A successful attack would gain headlines and cause outrage, but the strategic impact of such attacks could be limited. More impactful will be terrorism against Israel and, in particular, IDF targets. Taking Israeli and in particular IDF hostages would be a priority.

Most critically Hizbollah will require Iran’s close and sustained support to maintain it as a fighting force, to deliver its regional network of non-state armed groups and to use its influence with Russia and other powers to garner support – possibly including military support for Hizbollah. The group will expect Tehran to guarantee its survival; the regime in Iran has little option but to follow through. Hizbollah is a uniquely valuable partner for Tehran and without it the key stone falls out of the Axis of Resistance. While the loss of Hamas is politically bearable in Tehran, that of Hizbollah is not. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps will commit heavily to protecting Hizbollah both in Lebanon and through operations elsewhere.

There is a complication for Tehran, however. While it has a spiritual commitment to Hizbollah, its strategy has been to avoid escalation to state-on-state war with Israel. It made clear that its missile attack on Israel on 14 April was a limited act of retaliation, but it has not yet repeated it since the assassination of Ismael Haniyeh at the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian in July. A fundamental consideration for Tehran is that its armed forces are not configured for a sustained war with Israel. Their capabilities and their strategy are designed to sponsor asymmetric conflict with Israel through third parties. Their strategy with Israel has been everything short of war, anything but peace.

Hizbollah has operated, until now, on a similar principle. While Hizbollah’s propaganda, like that of other members of the Axis of Resistance, promotes the idea of an inevitable, apocalyptic conflict with Israel in which its enemy is ultimately destroyed, in practice that is not what the Hizbollah leadership have sought.

They have to manage political considerations, too; primarily, how they avoid provoking an Israeli reaction that destabilises or alienates further their host country. Hizbollah is a state within a state and in many respects, not least in its military power, stands above the state. But it does not, unlike the Palestinians groups, seek statehood through secession from Lebanon. It has preferred instead to remain a ‘Hezb’, a word most frequently translated as ‘party’, but having strong overtones of a religious community defined by belief rather than borders. It also reflects a strain within Shia thinking, and one present in the Iranian regime’s transnationalism, that borders are artifices that the community of believers must transcend. At a more practical level, starting a war which results in the devastation and destabilisation of Lebanon is not in their interests. The Hezb needs a host. While it is a community it can entrench its sectarian identity and is free from the responsibility of managing other equally well-defined communities. They are also beyond any constitutional accountability, a position they exploit to the full.

Yet as well as refreshing their strategy, Hizbollah have an immediate and difficult calculation to make over how they respond to what is a highly embarrassing penetration and weaponisation by Israel of their communications equipment. For reasons of prestige and reputation they will need to respond – as they did recently to the killing of their southern region commander, Fuad Shukr – with sufficient force to be able to claim they have avenged the attack. That may trigger Israel’s plans for escalation when Hizbollah are off balance from the loss of their communications.

The Hizbollah leadership also have a more pressing organisational problem in addressing the security lapses which allowed their comms equipment to be turned into weapons. That will corrode trust, create tensions and consume resources within their ranks and with their partners. It will take time for the organisation to process the consequences of the lapses, rebuild its defences and regain its balance.

Hizbollah’s immediate response and its strategy shift will, in the meantime, be determined by how Israeli strategy unfolds. Despite committing themselves to making the north safe for the return of their citizens, the Israeli government have not specified what that will take. So far, their actions have yet to provide the reassurance that Israelis seek.

Deployments and rhetoric give little grounds for hope that this situation will de-escalate, but the interests of Iran, Hizbollah and, in the long term, Israel, lie not in a war with maximalist aims but in a state of coexistence, which, regrettable and cynical as it may be, includes everything short of war.