section_path: Spillover
section_name: Spillover
paragraph_text: Spillover
  
  The war's spillover has resulted in a major escalation of existing tensions between Israel and Iran, with groups in the Axis of Resistance launching attacks on American military bases, and the Yemeni Houthi movement attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea and incurring a US-led military operation. Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and the Houthi movement in Yemen launched limited attacks against Israel shortly after the start of the war. Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria have also traded attacks with the US and IDF.
  
  Israel has bombed targets in and around Damascus throughout the war, with an attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus on 1 April 2024 leading to a series of retaliatory airstrikes on Israel in response. On 31 July, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran, where he had traveled to attend the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian, and on 1 October, Iran fired approximately 200 missiles at Israel.
  
  By the end of 2024, a year-long exchange of strikes between Israel and Hezbollah escalated into an Israeli invasion of Lebanon, before it was paused after a ceasefire. Under the November 2024 agreement, Israeli forces were to withdraw from Lebanon by January 2025, but Israel refused and the deadline was extended to February 2025, where Israel withdrew its forces from Lebanese villages but kept Israeli forces maintaining five military outposts on highlands in Southern Lebanon, against Lebanon's wishes. The crisis has also seen the fall of the Assad regime and an ongoing Israeli invasion of Syria. Israeli defense minister Israel Katz in April 2025 declared that Israeli forces would indefinitely remain in "security zones" that they "cleared and seized" in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.