In the past year, Hezbollah has suffered the heaviest losses of its four-decade history. Iran has offered rhetorical support, but it has not joined the fight.

When President Masoud Pezeshkian addressed the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, he criticised Israel’s war in Gaza and warned that its attacks on Lebanon could not go unanswered. But Mr Pezeshkian, who was elected in July,

The specter of a new war between Israel and Hezbollah looms large, and experts warn it could be more destructive than their last major conflict in 2006. That war left more than 1,100 Lebanese civilians dead across 34 days and decimated much of southern Lebanon. A United Nations-brokered ceasefire took weeks to complete.

A sharp escalation in border warfare between the Iran-backed Hezbollah group and Israel, raising fears of a new Israeli ground offensive in Lebanon, is the latest episode in decades of conflict across the Lebanese-Israeli frontier.