Israel bombed the southern suburbs of Beirut for the second time in a week on Sunday, killing at least three people and wounding fifteen, in what it described as retaliation for Hezbollah drone incursions into its northern territory. Lebanese civil defence teams pulled bodies from the rubble of a residential building in the Ghobeiry district of Dahiyeh, a Hezbollah stronghold, as smoke plumed over the capital. The Israeli military claimed it had struck a ‘precise target’ — a command centre used by the Iran-backed group — but the attack drew immediate condemnation from Beirut and Tehran, which sees any assault on the area as a red line.

The raid followed a morning in which three drones launched from Lebanon penetrated Israeli airspace, causing no casualties but triggering alarm in border communities. That breach prompted two far-right Israeli ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, to publicly demand that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu enforce the so-called Dahiyeh doctrine — a strategy of disproportionate force that envisages flattening buildings in the suburb to deter Hezbollah. The government’s decision to act on that advice threatens to unravel the fragile ceasefire that has held, albeit imperfectly, since 7 April, and which was already strained by a similar Israeli strike a week ago that set off a tit-for-tat escalation with Iran.

Viewed from Washington, the timing of the latest strike is diplomatically disastrous. President Donald Trump had signalled that a deal to end the three-month-old war with Iran was imminent, possibly to be signed on Sunday. Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, responded by saying there was ‘no point’ in continuing talks with the United States, accusing Washington of either lacking the will or the ability to restrain its ally. Tehran has consistently made a permanent ceasefire in Lebanon a condition of any broader settlement, a demand that Netanyahu’s government has so far rejected.

Analysts in London and European capitals warn that the Dahiyeh strike risks plunging the region back into full-blown conflict. Hezbollah’s drone operations, while largely symbolic, demonstrate the group’s ability to test Israeli defences even under heavy bombardment. With the US-Iran diplomatic track now openly questioned by Tehran, the prospect of a swift end to hostilities is fading. Unless Washington can broker an immediate de-escalation, the cycle of retaliation that began in February, when Israel and the US first struck Iran, looks set to deepen, dragging Lebanon further into a war from which its exhausted population can ill afford to recover.