"If [Israel] invades Gaza and there are massive civilian casualties, which seems almost inevitable, then there will a very powerful temptation for Hezbollah to come. And if Hezbollah comes in, then possibly Iran comes in, and this could spin out of control"

John Mearsheimer, the Univ. of Chicago scholar, has been one of the most prescient voices on US foreign policy and wars. --Glenn Greenwald

Glenn's show starts @ 5:05. 

His interview with John Mearsheimer starts @ 7:25.  Topics they discuss as shown in the title are Israel Gaza, U.S. support for Ukraine, and the role of "America First" foreign policy.  The show aired on October 30, 2023.

Hardly anybody expected the Middle East to blow up.  We were focused on Ukraine, to a lesser extent on China, and all of a sudden . . . .

Israeli rhetoric says they're going to move in ground troops, but who knows for sure?  If they invade Gaza and there are massive civilian casualties, which seems almost inevitable, then there will a very powerful temptation for Hezbollah to come.  And if Hezbollah comes in, then possibly Iran comes in, and this could spin out of control.  One wants to remember that Hezbollah has 150,000+ rockets and missiles, many of which are quite accurate, and if they were to come into the war and unleash a good chunk of that missile force at Israel, the damage would be enormous, and of course, the Israelis would lash out at Lebanon and particularly at Hezbollah.  And if Hezbollah were in trouble, would the Iranians come to the rescue?  So a number of ways that this can spin out of control.  

First, for Hezbollah or Iran, the costs of getting into war would be enormous.  The costs would be enormous, but sometimes states, or organizations like Hezbollah, are willing to pursue extremely costly strategies because the political incentives to do so are so great.  If they saw something horrible happening to the Palestinian population, they may feel compelled for political reasons to absorb those enormous military costs.  Second, it is possible that public opinion in these countries will encourage the elites to pursue these costly war strategies.

In 1948, when a series of Arab armies invaded Israel, which had declared its independence, it's important to understand that those Arab armies did not want to fight against Israel.  They understood that they could not win the war against Israel.  They were too weak.  But popular opinion, and public opinion, in effect, pushed them to attack Israel, and in the end, they were defeated because they were inferior.  One doesn't want to underestimate these circumstances where public opinion in the Arab world might be strong enough to push the elites to start a war that would be very costly.