At a moment when the Middle East map seems to have exploded, the words of the experts take on a nearly prophetic relevance. During his appearance on the program Al Rojo Vivo on laSexta, the professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid, Ignacio Álvarez-Ossorio, has drawn a bleak panorama of the situation on the border between Israel and Lebanon. Following the intense bombardments recorded in the last hours of this early March 2026, the analyst has been blunt: we are facing a scenario of «total war» where the rules governing the conflict until now have vanished.
For Álvarez-Ossorio, what we are witnessing is not merely another escalation in a decades-long chronology of frictions, but a paradigm shift in military and diplomatic terms. According to the professor, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to break with any type of operational restriction, operating under the premise that there are «no red lines left to respect». This absence of limits translates into attacks that no longer merely seek to dismantle Hizballáh’s infrastructure, but strike at the heart of Lebanese society, affecting residential neighborhoods and basic services.
The end of containment and international impotence
One of the most critical points of Álvarez-Ossorio’s analysis lies in the diplomatic loneliness in which international legality finds itself. The expert stresses with concern that «no international power can stop Israel». This vacuum of global authority is, to a large extent, the result of a very specific political circumstance. With the Trump administration in the White House bent on a direct confrontation with Iran through Operation «Epic Fury», Israel has found the definitive “blank check” to act on its northern border.
The professor explains that European diplomacy, traditionally more inclined to dialogue and to imposing sanitary cordons in the conflict, is today in a state of paralysis. Without Washington’s backing to press for a ceasefire, calls from Brussels or Paris fall on deaf ears. This perceived impunity by Tel Aviv is, in Álvarez-Ossorio’s view, the motor that drives the expansion of the offensive, turning Lebanon into a second front of mass destruction that emulates, in many respects, the devastation seen in the Gaza Strip.
Lebanon as collateral damage of the Iran-US axis
The situation in Lebanon cannot be understood in isolation from Tehran’s events. The analysis on laSexta directly links the pressure on Hezbollah with the attempt to dismantle Iran’s entire network of regional allies. In the face of the death of the Iranian regime’s leadership and the American military harassment in the Gulf, Hezbollah feels cornered. Ignacio Álvarez-Ossorio warns that an armed group with such capacity for fire, when cornered, tends to a «scorched earth» response, which only gives Israel more grounds to intensify its ground incursions.
The total war scenario also implies a humanitarian crisis of biblical proportions for a country, Lebanon, that was already grappling with an extremely fragile economic and political situation. Álvarez-Ossorio notes that the massive displacement of civilians to the north is not only a logistical problem, but a demographic pressure strategy aimed at destabilizing the Lebanese state from within. The disappearance of the red lines means that schools, hospitals and water-supply networks have become, under the rhetoric of the «national security», legitimate military targets in the eyes of the Israeli Defense Forces.
A conflict with no expiration date
Toward the end of his intervention, the professor issued a warning about the duration of this new cycle of violence. Unlike previous clashes that ended with a ceasefire mediated by the UN, the current conflict seems to have no diplomatic “exit ramp”. The logic of brute force has prevailed at the negotiation table. For Álvarez-Ossorio, the risk that Lebanon becomes a failed state under partial occupation is today a real possibility, which would generate a focal point of permanent instability that would affect the entire Mediterranean basin.
The world, according to the expert, is witnessing the confirmation that international law is today a tool of another century, unable to contain the geopolitical ambitions of the actors involved in 2026. The «total war» is not just an academic term; it is the description of a reality where Lebanese civilians have become pawns in a bloody chess game where victory is measured by the total annihilation of the adversary, regardless of human or historical cost.
