Israel targeted Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah with a massive airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs Friday, people briefed on the attack said, flattening part of a neighborhood in an attempt to kill the cleric who has led the group for three decades and built it into a fearsome foe.

For months, the Biden administration has been trying to avert a nightmare scenario in the Middle East of a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah. All those efforts may have just been thrown out the window.

Israel said it bombed Hezbollah’s Beirut headquarters, the heaviest attack on the Lebanese capital in almost two decades and a major escalation of a conflict that threatens to engulf the Middle East.

Top Israeli officials have threatened to repeat the destruction of Gaza in Lebanon if the Hezbollah fire continues, raising fears that Israel’s actions in Gaza since Oct. 7 would be repeated in Lebanon.

The Israeli military says it carried out a “precise strike” on the central headquarters of Hezbollah in Beirut