The Decibel - Why Israel’s war with Iran is spreading to Lebanon

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

On February 28th, the US and Israel struck Iran – and Iran fired back at military bases and allies in the region. The war has since dominated global attention, but it’s not just playing out in Iran. After the Iran-backed militia group, Hezbollah, fired into Israel in solidarity with Iran, a second front in the war opened up in Lebanon. Now, hundreds of thousands have been displaced in Lebanon and hundreds of others are dead as a third war between Hezbollah and Israel escalates. The Globe’s senior international correspondent Mark MacKinnon was in Lebanon this past week. He joins The Decibel to explain how this latest conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is impacting the people of Lebanon, and why this round of fighting feels different. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On February 28th, the U.S. and Israel struck Iran, and Iran fired back at military bases and allies in the region. The war has since dominated global attention, but it's not all playing out in Iran. Just two days after those initial strikes, Israel was hit by rockets from Hezbollah, the militia in Lebanon. This set off a fresh wave of attacks between the two. There's Israeli drones audible in the sky.

Those are usually the reconnaissance ahead of an airstrike. People here are panicking and leaving behind me in a couple of cars. You can see families putting their things to leave the IDP center. They no longer feel safe even after fleeing their homes once in the last week because the warning from Israel is that everyone in the entire Dahi should now leave. The Globe's senior international correspondent Mark McKinnon was in Lebanon this past week. There's an angry sense of deja vu here. as many Lebanese are asking why Hezbollah.

It was only 15 months ago that Israel and Hezbollah fought their last devastating conflict, and many people are still just rebuilding their homes from that one. There's also a real confusion. People don't know where or how this region-wide conflict will end. Today, Mark explains how this latest conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is impacting the people of Lebanon and why this round of fighting feels different. I'm Rachel Levy McLaughlin. In for Cheryl Sutherland.

This is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Mark, great to have you back on the show. Thanks for having me. This is a fast-moving file, so I just want to note that we're talking at around 11 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday. Before we dive into what it was like in Lebanon, from the outside, this is a war between Iran, the U.S. and Israel.

Why is Lebanon involved? The simplest way to understand that is Hezbollah. And Hezbollah, since its creation, has been, it was founded, funded, armed by Iran's Revolutionary Guard. And two days after the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, Hezbollah opened, let's call it, a front with Israel. And that was a decision that has dismayed many other Lebanese. And this is part of Iran's axis of resistance, right? Yeah, and that's a very badly damaged axis of resistance. If you go back in time two plus years to before October 7th and those horrific Hamas attacks on southern Israel, Iran's axis of resistance really, they called it the ring of fire, surrounded Israel.

There was Iran, of course, its allies, Hezbollah and Lebanon to the north of Israel. Hamas in Gaza and the south of Israel, you had the regime of Bashal Assad and Syria, which cooperated with this axis. And you had the Houthis in Yemen. Two plus years later, fast forward. And, you know, what it feels to many Israelis anyways and Iranians, like, you know, continuation, one long war since then. Iran obviously is doing a lot of damage in its neighborhood. Hezbollah is still fighting on, but Hamas is very quiet in this moment, and the regime of Bashal-Assad is gone, of course. And just to be clear, Hezbollah is separate from the government in Lebanon,

and it's not part of the Lebanese army, right? Absolutely. I mean, there are two Hezbollah cabinet ministers inside the Lebanese government, but the leaders of the Lebedee's government, the prime minister and the president have condemned Hezbollah's decision to open this front as illegal, and the Lebanese army is not helping Hezbollah in this fight. It's largely been standing aside as Hezbollah and Israel once more fight each other. Was it surprising to see Hezbollah launch strikes into Israel so soon after the war in Iran started? Well, this was why I flew to Beirut as soon as the conflict between Israel, the U.S. and Iran erupted, because this was the next big question. First of all, a lot of airlines shut their airspace and I was able to fly into Bayruth, which was quite remarkable.

But the question of whether Hezbollah, as weakened as it was and as exhausted as Lebanon is and was whether they would feel compelled to respond was one of the big open questions in those first 48 hours after the death of Ayatoll al-Ali-Kamini, the Iranian Supreme Leader. And as we can see, Hezbollah decided to put aside, you know, the public opinion in Lebanon and felt that it had to act. You know, Hezbollah supporters that I've spoken to say that they felt they had no choice because they believe the U.S. and Israel after the war against Iran would come to Lebanon anyway, so it's better to fight now than to fight later. Can you give us a sense of what the fighting's been like?

What's been going on in Lebanon? This is considered the third big Israel-Hesbola war after conflicts in 2006 and 2024. And I've been there for some of them. And it's always very strange because there are parts of the country, parts of Beirut. even, that feel unaffected. And it's very much, or at least in the first days, it was very much an Israeli campaign against the Dahlia, the southern suburbs of Beirut, that are seen as the Hezbollah stronghold, they're an almost entirely Shia neighborhood of Beirut, neighborhoods.

The Daha is a collective term. And then the southern border belt with Israel, again, heavily Shia. And a lot of the fighting in the first days was there, but it's spreading more and more. We've seen a few strikes in central Beirut the last few days. and as these evacuation orders have happened, you're seeing hundreds of thousands of people sort of fleeing towards the center of Beirut and a sense of spreading sense of chaos

and danger throughout the entire country. Can you give me a sense of the geography, what areas are being hit? You mentioned the Dahlia. Could you sort of lay this all up for me? Yeah, if you're in central Beirut, you are about a half an hour's drive from the Dahlia. So if you can imagine being in the downtown

of a major Canadian city and one of these suburbs having a series of explosions, you may not even hear that. Certainly, there have been mornings where I had a decent sleep woke up and read about what had happened at the Dahia overnight. Other nights you're awake all night listening to the sound of drones, hearing fighter jets overhead and hearing explosions.

So, you know, in Beirut, there's sort of this contained conflict that's sort of a spilling beyond the borders of those suburbs. And then you've got this other front where Israel is launching a widening ground invasion of southern Lebanon, which is, again, the Hezbollah stronghold, how far and how deep that will go. We don't know yet. We've heard different messages from Israeli ministers, but that is the sort of their shaping of what the larger Israeli response is, what they plan to do this time, where they, how far they will go on the ground we don't know yet. I know things are changing very quickly here, but could you give me an updated sense of numbers, how many people have died, how many people have been evacuated so far?

Yeah, in terms of the casualties, the number was the last time I looked approaching 700, and this is day 10 of the Israel has been. Bill of War, day 12, I think, of the larger war with Iran. And that number has been jumping by about 100 a day the last few days. And so you can kind of see how the intensity is rising. And of that 700, I think it's worth noting that at least 90, according to UNICEF, are children. So this is not the targeted campaign that Israel is claiming that it is carrying out, obviously. In terms of the evacuation order, it's the first one for southern Lebanon, everywhere south of the Latani River, which is this waterway that sort of runs. almost parallel to the Israeli border in southern Lebanon.

That involved 400 to 450,000 people. And then a second evacuation order for the Dahlia covers 700,000 residents there. So you've got about 1 million, 1.1 million people on the move, many of whom. And if you're living in central Beirut, even in the unaffected neighborhoods in terms of airstrikes, you're seeing tents on every public space in parks, people sleeping on cardboard. Because when you get one of these evacuation orders, and I talk to a lot of families that were on the move this week, You don't know if you have half an hour. Do you have three days, 30 seconds to get your family, to get out of there?

And so a lot of people, they really just have the clothes on their back and whatever they could grab before they headed out the door. And they've been living like that for days. And they don't know how long they'll be there. Wow. You mentioned some areas are unaffected by strikes. Some neighborhoods are deeply affected. How is this impacting daily life for people? What's functioning?

What's not? I mean, it is one of the strangest things about Lebanon. there for a few conflicts. Some of them involving Israel, some of them closer to being internal conflicts. The history of the 1975 to 1990s civil wars in the back of every Lebanese brain, even if they weren't alive then, their parents have told them about it. They know which neighborhoods are Christian, which neighborhoods are Sunni, which neighborhoods are Shia. And right now you're seeing the Shia fleeing from their neighborhoods largely into Sunni Muslim neighborhoods. The Christian neighborhoods, they don't feel comfortable going in so far.

And the Christians are not really keen to have them there because they know if the people perceived to be Hezbollah supporters come into their neighborhoods. They could become Israeli targets. That's a big point of tension. What has Israel said about what its goal is with this latest military action in Lebanon? I think the Israeli goal here is clearly to establish some kind of buffer zone. They don't want the communities of northern Israel, which were evacuated for a lot of the previous two years, to be targets for Hezbollah fire anymore.

And I think they view or senior Israeli politicians and general's view the 2024, war. Remember, there was an Israeli-Hesbolo war just 15 months ago as having been militarily successful in that they assassinated the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. There was that famous episode with the Pagers that took out so many Hezbollah senior commanders, but somehow Hezbollah still felt emboldened enough to strike again 15 months later after the attack on Tehran. The wording from Israeli ministers is very, very strong, very, very severe that they're going to create a buffer zone. What that buffer zone means, who's the government? going to be allowed to live there? Is there going to be an Israeli military presence deep into Lebanon?

We don't understand that yet. But there's really sort of a public determination to make this the last Israel Hasbole War, at least for a while. Have we seen Israeli troops on the ground in Lebanon? Yes, Israeli troops have been, have crossed into Lebanon several times already. That's been monitored by there's a United Nations peacekeeping force that's sort of in the middle of this, unable to keep the peace. So all they're doing is, you know, keeping count of how many times rockets fly one way or soldiers go the other way. There have been fights in some of the border towns in the Lebanese side of the border. Israel has lost several soldiers in those fights.

They claim to have killed 200 Hezbollah fighters. So there is already ground combat in southern Lebanon. I've seen some videos and photographs of massing tanks in northern Israel. It looked a lot like right before the start of the war in Gaza. After the initial Hamas attack, you'd see the sort of gatherings of Israeli armor and artillery at staging points, as they call them before they go in. for a major operation. What have we heard from the Lebanese government about all of this?

I was able to sit down on Monday with Hassan Salameh, who is, you know, he's formerly the culture minister, which I think undersells what he, you know, his importance in the Lebanese government. He has previously been the head of the United Nations mission in Libya to try and bring an end to that civil war there. And his assessment was that he sees Israel as preparing something, akin to the Gaza solution that it imposed on Gaza. And he referred to the Yellow Line specifically, which was after almost two years of war,

and we now all sides finally accept that more than 70,000 Palestinians were killed. There was a ceasefire, and the ceasefire terms included Israel withdrawing from 47% of Gaza and then withdrawing to that yellow line and keeping 53% of what was already a tiny coastal territory under its own control. under subsequent phase of the ceasefire, of course, Israel is supposed to withdraw further, but many Palestinians think this might be Gaza's new border because many, many Middle Eastern ceasefires, including in Lebanon, never get to phase two. And so Mr. Salome was talking with some concern that he thinks Israel may be planning to do

something similar in southern Lebanon by basically demolishing the towns of southern Lebanon, not allowing residents to return, establishing an Israeli military presence. And, you know, there are some words for that under international law, one of which, of course, would be occupation. And that would be a very dangerous direction. And you have to remember, of course, that Israel occupied that part of southern Lebanon from 1982 until 2000, which led to the creation of something called Hezbollah. We'll be right back. So as we've been talking about conflict between Hezbollah and Israel has been going on a long time, there was this recent war in 2024. You mentioned those pager bombs that I think a lot of people might remember that took out a lot

of Hezbollah's members and leadership. What have things been like since then? So since then, So since that time, Israel retained five positions, strategic heights in southern Lebanon, which, of course, to the Lebanese government, to Hezbollah was proof that Israel wasn't keeping its side of the bargain. It also carried out regular strikes on what it said were Hezbollah members and Hezbollah military positions in southern Lebanon, a job that should have been shifting to the aforementioned United Nations peacekeeping force that should have been done by the Lebanese government, which Israel said wasn't being done to its satisfaction by these other forces. And of course, The Israeli allegation always was that Hezbollah isn't disarmed, hasn't been disarmed. And the attacks that were launched 10 days ago proved that was also correct. That both sides weren't honoring their side to the deal. They were both preparing for another round of conflict. And here we are. And the people of Lebanon presumably are still picking up the pieces of their lives after this 2024 war that just ended.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's been one of the more tragic and repeated conversations that I had while talking to internally displaced levities over the past week. the 10 days. People who had, you know, just finished or almost finished rebuilding their homes or had gone home after the last war, seen their house destroyed, were waiting for some form of compensation to help them rebuild. And those hopes are shattered and that rebuilding was a waste. And so that's led to a lot of disillusionment. You know, why are, how is this happening to us again? We just went through this. What kind of state is Hezbollah in right now? Let's talk about militarily. How powerful is the group's military right now? It's a really difficult question to answer, where once

upon a time, you know, there was some transparency in Hezbollah and that you could sort of go and talk to the leadership. You could, you know, go travel around southern Lebanon, fairly unescorted. It really closed ranks after the 2024 war, assessing probably very correctly, that they had been deeply penetrated when you see those pager attacks, when you see the targeting of Hassan Nazrallah. So the outside analyses, which are mostly from Israel and from the United States and think tanks in these places, suggest that they lost about 80% of their fighting power in that last war. So they've had 15 months to rebuild from, let's say, 20% to wherever they are now. We don't know how successful they were, especially after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria,

which cut off sort of the flow of money and weapons from Iran to a large extent. You know, that's left them obviously wounded but still willing to fight. But the Lebanese army still doesn't seem capable of disarming Hezbollah. Is that right? Yes, and that's something that, you know, again, Mr. Salome and any Lebanese soldier would complain about. I mean, the West Israel had been asking the Lebanese army for years to disarm Hezbollah, while at the same time denying funding to the Lebanese army, saying you can't have fixed-wing aircraft, for instance, you're only allowed to have helicopters, you can't have tanks,

because they didn't want the development of a strong force on its. Israel's northern border and that to turn into a different security threat or for Hezbollah to get possession of those weapons. So you have this very weak institution in the Lebanese army, one of the weakest armies in the world probably being asked to take on very powerful militia with a strong foreign backer. To do that, they've been saying for 20 years, you've got to give us some help. That help never came. So we talked about where Hezbollah's military is at. What about politically? What kind of influence does Hezbollah have on governance in Lebanon right now?

You know, as I mentioned at the top, they had two cabinet ministers in this latest sort of coalition government, but they've lost a lot of influence since the 2024 were. Between 2006, that first really big conflict with Israel in 2024, Hesbola had de facto control over who got appointed prime minister, who got appointed president. They had control over what came and went through the airport and the Port of a route, which famously exploded in 2020. It appeared to be a Hezboa weapons storage there. That was gone after 2024. They no longer had that influence. They had to accept a Prime Minister, Nawaz Salam, and a president, Joseph Haun, neither of whom were traditionally pro-Hesbla.

They're more popular with Gulf Arab states with France, the United States. And these are the figures now who are saying, we consider Hezbollah's actions to have been illegal. So, you know, you can no longer say that the Lebanese state has been captured by Hezbollah. like you could probably say for the previous two decades, but it's still the most powerful military force. At least it was until this latest conflict started. And you said Hezbollah may be losing support from Lebanese people as well. Can you give me a sense of what you heard from people about how they're feeling?

Yeah, I mean, it depends on who you're talking to. If you're speaking to Lebanese Christians or Sunni Muslims, they've been tired of Hezbollah for a while now. They've been tired of having their politics controlled by what they see as an Iranian faction. They've been tired of these wars, obviously. And in this moment, they don't say it quite in so many words, but the implication of what they're saying is they'd be very happy to see the end of Hezbollah, one way or the other here. That's been coming along for a while and hasn't mattered so long as Hezbollah is stronger

than any force that could challenge it. What's been interesting, again, as it says, the Shia community that has traditionally supported Hezbollah, the Shia Muslims that I've spoken to in the last seven, ten days, who were saying, you know what, they made a mistake this time. I used to support them. They haven't been taking our interest into account. And I'm, you know, frankly, disappointed, disillusioned with Hezbollah. I spoke with one woman who had moved seven times over three Israel-Hesbila wars,

six times in the last 15 months, you know, from her home in southern Lebanon to apartment to the Dahlia to shelters to back to the Dahlia to shelters again. And that was not an isolated story. So many of people who were raised to be. believe that Hezbollah was their defender, their protector, who were raised to look to the Ayatollah and Iran as their spiritual leader to go this far and start questioning these people, these figures. It's been a long journey, but they've been through a lot. And the economy in Lebanon has also been in dire straits for years now. What has this renewed

fighting meant for the stability of Lebanon? Yeah, I mean, this is something that in previous conflicts, the world would come together and help rebuild Lebanon. You see countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the United States and others come to sort of fund the rebuilding of Lebanon and helping it back on its feet. But this time, I think because of the war that's erupted in Iran, that the larger front, and many even in Lebanon call their war the small front, there's a feeling that the people that used to come to help at Lebanon, the United States and the Gulf countries are going to be absorbed with that war and with their own losses and with rebuilding whenever this ends, leaving Lebanon on its own. And Lebanon's a country that's been through not just these wars, but a succession of

financial crises. I mentioned the explosion, the Port of Beirut. It's really a city that wasn't functioning anyways anyway. I was walking down by the port the other day and the electricity of Lebanon, the Lebanese electricity company, still destroyed. The company that's in charge of running electricity in the country doesn't have windows and everybody has to basically own a generator and buy diesel fuel to keep the lights on. And now there's a lineup for diesel fuel as there's a panic about how long this war will last and where people can flee to with their cars. You know, there were a couple of restaurants last weekend that I went into and they just

said, sorry, all we've got is, you know, coffee and biscuits. You know, these are surprisingly supposed to be full-scale restaurants. So you just, you wonder how much a country can take. And if this war goes on, I think we're going to learn that. And the nightmare scenario, I think, has always been that. factions will turn on each other, these religious confessional groups that, you know, all of whom have some weapons will again start to blame each other for the country's problems. And you can see that point getting closer and closer. And that would be civil war within Lebanon. Yeah, nobody wants

to talk about it. Everybody says the Lebanese have learned their lessons from last time that they'll never go back down that path. But, you know, at this point, you know, as I mentioned, the Shia Muslims are largely not going into Christian areas so far because they don't feel welcome there. But when you've got a million people on the move and Beirut's already an overcrowded city with very poor services. And you can see over there that they've got electricity and they've got functioning bank machines and restaurants, people might be tempted to go into there. And if they get blocked from going into there, what happens?

So, you know, I'm not, you know, you don't want to wish this on a country, even to hypothesize about it, but you can see sort of the kerosene and the matches lying all about. So Mark Moshabakhamini, the new Supreme Leader of Iran, called on allies. to keep fighting, and presumably that might mean Hezbollah. I imagine that could prolong things. Yeah, I think that would absolutely mean Hezbollah. That may also be a signal to groups like the Houthis in Yemen and various pro-Iran militias in Iraq to continue fighting.

Again, that's just adding to the sense that this is, you know, we're in the first phase of this war, not moving towards the end of it. Just lastly here, Mark, U.S. President Donald Trump has signaled this war might be ending soon. Of course, it's hard to know when that may happen. But whenever the war in Iran does end, is that likely to also end the war in Lebanon too? I don't think Mr. Trump knows when this war will end. I think he's lost control of the situation. You know, this is not Venezuela.

They've removed a Shia religious figure, and you don't get to have a hand in choosing the next one. That's not how that goes. But let's say the son of the assassinated Iranian leader woke up tomorrow morning and decided to make peace with the man who killed his father. In that highly improbable scenario, yes, it would push the situation in Lebanon towards peace, but we've had these wars before between Israel and Hezbollah that have been fought without direct Iranian involvement. And, you know, that would have to be, I think, from an Iranian perspective, a condition would be that Israel ends its attack on Hezbollah and on Lebanon. But I think Israel would regard this as a separate front, a separate war, and one that, you know,

from all its signals very separately from whatever Mr. Trump has to say, it is signaling it intends to make sure it's the last one for a while. Mark, it's always great to have you on. Thanks so much. Thank you, Rachel. That was Mark McKinnon, the Globe's Senior International Correspondent. After Mark and I spoke, the Canadian government announced it would be providing over $37 million in aid to assist Lebanon with growing humanitarian needs. That's it for today.

I'm Rachel Levy McLaughlin, sitting in for Cheryl Sutherland. Ali Graham produced and mixed this episode. I produced The Decible, along with Madeline White and Mikhail Stein. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks for listening.