Hamas sent an updated response to the latest ceasefire proposal with Israel a couple of days ago, which represented a “breakthrough on a critical impasse,” according to a senior Biden administration official.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Thursday that he had dispatched the Israeli negotiators to meet with mediators in response to Hamas’s updated stance.

Word of Hamas’s latest response broke publicly Wednesday, which was the first news of possible movement since its most recent rejection of the deal President Joe Biden outlined at the end of May.

“I have to say, given the recent developments, we do believe there is a pretty significant opening here, and we welcome the prime minister’s readiness to try to seize that opening by empowering his negotiating team to engage directly in Doha, [Qatar], over coming days in the Oval Office,” the official said. “I think what we got back from Hamas was a pretty significant adjustment to what had been their position, and we think that is encouraging.”

Netanyahu and Biden spoke Thursday about Hamas’s response.

“President Biden and the Prime Minister discussed ongoing efforts to finalize a ceasefire deal together with the release of hostages, as outlined by President Biden and endorsed by the UN Security Council, the G7, and countries around the world,” White House officials said in a readout of the call. “The leaders discussed the recent response received from Hamas. The President welcomed the Prime Minister’s decision to authorize his negotiators to engage with U.S., Qatari, and Egyptian mediators in an effort to close out the deal.”

The official dismissed the possibility that a deal was imminent, saying, “I just want to emphasize this does not mean this deal is going to be closed in a period of days.”

The U.S., Egypt, and Qatar have acted as mediators over the course of the more than eight months of war, though their efforts have remained fruitless, dating back to the one-week ceasefire agreement in late November 2023. There have been several instances in which the negotiations appeared close to a deal this spring, but they have all collapsed.

Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has devastated the enclave. Roughly 35,000 people have been killed, and it is unknown how many of them are civilians and how many are combatants, though even Israeli officials indicated earlier this spring that at least half had been civilians. The entire population is facing severe food insecurity, and most of the population has been displaced.

Israeli officials have indicated the war in Gaza is winding down and that much of Hamas has been defeated, though they continue carrying out operations against the group.

The war began after Hamas carried out the largest terrorist attack in Israel’s history on Oct. 7, 2023. Early that morning, more than 1,000 militants overpowered the Israel-Gaza border and poured into southern Israel, where those terrorists proceeded to kill roughly 1,200 people, many of whom were civilians, and kidnapped approximately 250 more.

About 100 hostages were released during the November ceasefire. It is unclear how many of the remaining hostages are still alive.

On May 31, Biden outlined a proposal that Israel had agreed to, which would begin a six-week ceasefire during the first phase of the deal. During that period, Israeli forces would withdraw from population centers in Gaza, the international community would surge humanitarian aid into the strip, and Israel would release a large number of Palestinians detained by Israeli forces. Women, children, and hostages in need of medical care would be released during this time as well.

The deal was widely supported internationally, but Hamas did not agree to it.

The issue that had prevented many previous iterations of ceasefire proposals was whether the agreement would amount to a lasting ceasefire, effectively allowing the portions of Hamas that are still intact to remain that way and potentially reconstitute, or whether Israel would be permitted to have the option to continue its military operations once the first phase ends.

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Both leaders welcomed the meeting to take place between their national security teams in the Strategic Consultative Group format on July 15.

Netanyahu is set to address Congress on July 24.

A senior Hezbollah commander was killed in a presumed Israeli airstrike Wednesday as the two sides brace for a possible all-out war.

The Lebanese-based terrorist group acknowledged the death of Muhammad Nimad Nasser in the strike that took place near the city of Tyre. He has been identified as the leader of the Aziz Unit.

Nasser was responsible for a part of Hezbollah’s operations along Lebanon’s southern border, which it shares with Israel, according to Reuters. Hezbollah began firing cross-border rockets at Israel in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack that left roughly 1,200 people dead, while an additional approximately 250 people were kidnapped.

Nasser is believed to have been the same rank as Taleb Abdallah, who was killed in an Israeli strike last month. Hezbollah carried out its largest drone and rocket attack in retaliation for Abdallah’s killing.

The continuous exchange of rocket and drone fire over the border has forced tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the border to leave their homes indefinitely, and there’s no clear time frame for their return, given the possibility of a ground war.

Israeli and Hezbollah leaders have warned in recent weeks about the limited conflict expanding into a full-blown war. A major conflict would likely result in both sides incurring significant casualties and destruction, according to experts.

There are also concerns that if Israel and Hezbollah were to commence a full-scale war, it would drag others in the region into the fight. The United States has continued to support Israel’s efforts against Hamas and Hezbollah, while Iran supports both terrorist groups and others in the Middle East.

Several countries, including the U.S., have urgently sought to convince both sides to avoid a larger escalation or miscalculation, though it remains unclear if those concerns will be heeded.

Earlier this week, Kamal Kharrazi, a foreign affairs adviser to the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, told the Financial Times that Iran and its “axis of resistance,” a title given to the proxy forces it supports and funds, would come to Hezbollah’s defense with “all means” if an all-out war began.

In addition to Hamas and Hezbollah, Tehran also supports the Houthis in Yemen, which have severely disrupted the global shipping markets with dozens of missile, drone, and rocket attacks on commercial vessels transiting the waterways off Yemen’s coasts, as well as militias in Iraq and Syria that have carried out more than 170 aerial attacks against U.S. forces in the region over the span of several months since Oct. 7, though these attacks have largely stopped.

“There would be a chance of expansion of the war to the whole region, in which all countries, including Iran, would become engaged. In that situation, we would have no choice but to support Hezbollah by all means,” Kharrazi said, emphasizing how the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah could devolve into a regional war.

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Tehran did involve itself in the conflict in April when Iran launched a barrage of more than 300 missiles, rockets, and drones from within its own borders toward Israel following an Israeli strike on an Iranian Consulate in Syria that killed a senior Iranian commander and other senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Israel responded minimally, demonstrating its ability to hit within Iran’s borders without inflicting much damage or destruction. President Joe Biden refused to support a more significant response, reportedly telling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “If you launch a big attack on Iran, you’re on your own,” according to the New York Times. 

Multiple current and former leaders believe the United States needs to target Iran to stop the Houthi attacks targeting commercial vessels sailing in the previously highly trafficked waterways off Yemen’s coasts.

These attacks began on Nov. 19, 2023, and the Houthis have said they’re doing so in solidarity with Palestinians affected by the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and they have attacked or threatened U.S. Navy and commercial vessels 190 times from then until June 13, according to a U.S. defense official.

U.S. officials have long accused Iran of supplying the Houthis with weapons as one of Tehran’s proxy forces in the region. With the Houthi attacks ongoing and showing no sign of abating, former defense officials argue the department needs to focus on Iran to stop the Houthi attacks.

“We haven’t effectively put the pressure on Iran to stop this behavior, whether that means ratcheting up the pressure on them. I’m not necessarily suggesting we should be going downtown Tehran bombing, but there are some things we have to do to create pressure on them,” retired Gen. Joseph Votel told the Washington Examiner.

The U.S. has carried out several iterations of strikes targeting Houthi launchers and depots, though it has not been enough to either destroy the Houthis arsenal or deter them from continuing the attacks.

“Unfortunately, this has not gone deep enough,” the former U.S. Central Command commander added. “And what I mean by going deep enough is we haven’t really taken the steps to really cut off the supply that is coming from Iran, and maybe perhaps some other Iranian line groups here may be supporting this that have allowed them to be resourced over a long period of time.”

The Houthis have targeted more than 60 vessels in their campaign, which have killed a total of four sailors, and they have seized a ship and sank two others.

Similarly, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Washington Examiner, “At some point we have to deal with the source, and that’s Iran.”

At least 29 major energy and shipping companies have altered their routes to avoid the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, and as of mid-February, container shipping through the Red Sea had declined by approximately 90% since December 2023. They have their vessels sail around the southern tip of Africa instead of navigating through the Red Sea between Africa and the Middle East. The new route is about 11,000 nautical miles longer and adds one to two weeks of transit time and approximately $1 million in fuel costs for each voyage.

Shipping companies have had to reevaluate whether it should have vessels sail through the Red Sea given the threat from the Houthis. Prior to this ongoing situation, about 10-15% of international maritime trade travels through the body of water.

“The bigger issue, ultimately, goes back to Iran. It’s Iran that’s sustaining and supporting these groups. And we believe that certainly Iran is sustaining the Houthis with weapons, but we also believe that Iran is helping them with targeting and other things,” former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told the Washington Examiner.

He also raised the issue of the resources being used by the U.S. military to thwart these attacks.

“This conflict has been going on for some time,” he said. “So, I have a bigger concern about the ability of our defense industrial base to produce the munitions we need for other fights in other places.”

“Well, the challenge is you can shoot a missile like an SM-3 and within a matter of seconds and minutes, it knocks down a target and completes its mission. But it takes well over 12 months or so to replace that missile, and if we get into a bigger conflict with a different adversary somewhere else, say in the Indo-Pacific, then those are fewer missiles that we have in our inventory. And that’s my concern,” he said.

Iran’s network of proxies have all acted against U.S. or Israeli interests since Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel that has proved to be a catalyst for instability in the region. Hamas, which is based in Gaza, gets Iranian support, as does Hezbollah, a more sophisticated terror group based in Lebanon that is engaged in a limited conflict with Israel.

The ongoing exchange of rocket and missile fire over their shared border in Israel’s north and Lebanon’s south has forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians on both sides.

McCaul, who met with Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant this week, said Gallant described Iran as “the octopus and the tentacles, are the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas,” and the lawmaker added, “They’re getting very provocative and then even with our own military ships in the region, [the Houthis are] slowing down commercial activity in the Red Sea.”

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The possibility for a widened conflict between Israel and Hezbollah appears more likely than at any other point during the war given escalating rhetoric from the leaders of both. A major conflict between the two of them would be highly destructive and would likely include heavy casualties on both sides.

“The question is, what does Iran do, particularly if the fate of Hezbollah is threatened,” Esper said.