Big security threats on the horizon: What to expect?

On the face of it, this past week’s Nato summit in Washington has ticked the boxes. The alliance can show it is bigger and stronger than ever, its military support for Ukraine appears undiminished and it has just sent a robust message to China to stop secretly supporting Russia’s war on Kyiv.

Sir Keir Starmer’s new government has had a chance to position itself as a linchpin in the transatlantic alliance at a time when political uncertainty hovers over the White House and much of Europe.

Back home in Britain, the priorities for this new government are pressing: the economy, housing, immigration, the NHS, to name but a few.

Yet unwanted threats and scenarios can often have a habit of turning up and upsetting the best laid plans.

So what could be coming down the track during the life of this new UK government?

No surprises here, this one is on everybody’s radar. But that does not make it any less dangerous, for Lebanon, Israel and the entire Middle East.

“The possibility of a large-scale Israeli invasion of Lebanon this summer should be at the top of the new government’s geopolitical risk register.”

That’s according to Professor Malcolm Chalmers, the Deputy Director-General of the Whitehall think tank, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

With the conflict continuing in Gaza and the Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping continuing, Prof Chalmers believes “we could be entering a period of sustained multi-front warfare in the region, for which neither Israel nor its Western partners will be prepared.”

Ever since the Hamas-led raid into southern Israel on 7 October last year, there have been fears that Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza could escalate across borders into a full-scale regional war.

Israel’s troubled northern border with Lebanon is where such a war is most at risk of igniting.

The daily exchange of fire across this border, between the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shia militia, have already resulted in hundreds killed, mostly in Lebanon.

More than 60,000 Israelis have been forced to abandon their homes and livelihoods in the north and an even greater number of people on the Lebanese side.

Domestic pressure is mounting for the Israeli government to “deal with” Hezbollah by pushing its forces north of Lebanon’s Litani River, from where they would have less chance of sending rockets into Israel.

“We don’t want to go to war,” says Lt Col Nadav Shoshani of the IDF, “but I don’t think any country could accept 60,000 of its citizens displaced. The situation has to end. We would like it to be a diplomatic solution, but Israeli patience is wearing thin.”

There are strong reasons for both sides not to go to war.

Lebanon’s economy is already fragile. It has barely recovered from the 2006 war with Israel and a renewed full-scale conflict would have a devastating impact on the country’s infrastructure and its people.

Hezbollah, for its part, would likely respond to a major Israeli attack and invasion with a massive and sustained missile, drone and rocket barrage that could potentially overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome air defences.

Nowhere in Israel is beyond its reach.

At this point, the US Navy, positioned offshore, could well join in on Israel’s side. Which then begs the question of what Iran would do.

It too has a sizeable arsenal of ballistic missiles as well as a network of proxy militias in Iraq, Yemen and Syria that could be mobilised to intensify their attacks on Israel.

One way to take the heat out of the tension on the Israel-Lebanon border would be for the conflict in Gaza to come to an end. But after nine months and a horrific death toll, a lasting peace has yet to be achieved.