After Hezbollah confirmed the death of its leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli strike, what – if anything – can it do next?

The next 72 hours are likely to be full of Hezbollah’s remaining commanders assessing who is left, how safe it is to communicate and meet, and exactly what level of pain tolerance it retains as it tries to formulate a response.

What we don’t know is how much disruption has been done to the group’s rocket inventory by the wave of Israeli airstrikes over the past two weeks.

Israel appears to have very accurate information as to the whereabouts of Hezbollah leadership in real time, and so that is likely mirrored in what it knows about where Hezbollah has kept its munitions.

So far, we have yet to see a barrage of rockets from Hezbollah that has caused significant (and known) damage to Israeli targets. That may still come if Hezbollah’s remaining leadership decides that it has to project some kind of military strength to try to salvage morale and relevance in the region. But if it tries to project strength and fails, owing to Israeli interceptions, that will just compound its loss of face.

What is unknown at this point is how fervently Iran feels it needs to be dragged into this.

It has shown an extraordinarily high threshold for pain over the past months and may have a longer view in hand. The West and Israel should be mindful over the apparent change in tempo of Iran’s uranium enrichment and be petrified of losing the wider war of non proliferation in a region unable to step back from the brink.

Yet most profoundly, it is Israel’s next steps that matter most. It has shown that it has the intelligence advantage, military might, and tolerance for international condemnation of civilian casualties to continue to strike at will. But this risks turning a fortnight of brutal strikes into another longer term loss to Israeli prestige.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a defining choice to make. Does the past fortnight salvage his domestic reputation for security and leave him better placed to face the music of the cases against him? Or does he again calculate that an ongoing war without clear strategic direction is his best way forward?

Ultimately a wider field of vision must win out. Lebanon’s civilians – and its southern neighbors – need political accommodation and a ceasefire now, regardless of what it means for the fate of Israel’s current political elite.

One was a koala. The other was a husky. Both were arguably out of place on a warm August night in subtropical Brisbane, the capital of Queensland in Australia’s northeast.

Home security video captured the moment they locked eyes in a suburban backyard surrounded by a high metal fence.

With deep rumbling growls, the koala advanced towards the retreating dog, for a moment appearing as the aggressor in an encounter that typically ends with a dead marsupial.

But not this time.

From the street, neighbor Sophia Windsor heard growling and barking and raced to the backyard to see the dog shaking the koala by the belly, then the koala grabbing the dog around the neck.

“I wasn’t even really thinking, and I just pried the koala off this poor dog, who was now yelping, and then kind of wrapped up the koala then ran back out the front to the driveway where my daughter was waiting,” said Windsor.

“And she’s like, ‘You’re carrying a wild koala.’”

Koalas are very hard to see at night.

Their gray fur blurs with the bitumen on dimly lit roads, and they move deceptively quickly for a marsupial often seen languidly munching on leaves high in trees.

But for an endangered species whose population numbers are said to be unreliable due to their elusive nature, koala sightings are becoming all too common during breeding season in some areas in and around Brisbane. And not just in trees.

Day and night, they’re spotted close to busy roads, on fences, up power poles, in backyards, near swimming pools, in schools – places they aren’t safe.

Some are on the ground, having been hit by cars or attacked by dogs. Others are clearly sick, with dirty eyes and behinds – telltale signs of chlamydia, an infectious disease that spreads quickly in stressed populations.

And koalas in Queensland are stressed.

Experts believe the population declines that saw them listed as endangered in 2022 have not reversed.

And some fear that by the time Brisbane hosts the Olympic Games in 2032, the only koalas left in the “world’s koala capital” will be in forests far outside the city.

Rescued twice in 24 hours

After Windsor grabbed the koala off the dog, she stood with the injured marsupial tucked under one arm and desperately fumbled with her phone to call for help.

“I was running on adrenaline. I actually paused as I was doing it, and went, ‘Oh my God. They’re really soft and cuddly, like a real teddy bear.’ And that was whilst he was biting my hand.”

“They have a really, really strong bite.”

She called a friend, who phoned John Knights, a veteran koala rescuer from the United Kingdom who’s caught more wild koalas than most Australians see in their lifetime.

Knights, 74, answers calls around the clock, jumping into a utility vehicle loaded with custom-made koala-catching paraphernalia: traps, cages, warning signs, poles, nets and countless tools.

He’s responded to more than 100 emergencies in two months – twice as many as last year – which he puts down to two strong rainy seasons that have led to a koala boom in Brisbane’s southern suburbs.

Knights says he’s not sure how much longer he can keep doing this – his pension doesn’t cover his rent and no one’s paying for this service.

However, before he had time to answer Windsor’s cries for help, she walked to a nearby tree and released the koala.

Big mistake.

Koalas have small brains that don’t cope well with being shaken.

Knights was concerned that after scurrying 20 meters (66 feet) up a tree, high on adrenaline, the koala might slowly deteriorate and die on the branch or be attacked again after climbing down.

So, an expert climber was called to catch it, but a rescue would have to wait until the morning.

Murray Chambers stood on the street, near passing traffic, observing the challenges that lay ahead of him.

“Everything,” he nervously laughed. “You’ve got power lines, which is a no-no for starters. Trees are interlocking, so he can jump from one tree to another.”

What about the height? “Been higher than that,” he said.

Chambers, from Koala Rescue Queensland, has been climbing trees to catch koalas for 20 years.

Now he receives fewer calls each week – sometimes five, sometimes none.

“We’re losing them, so there’s less cases,” he said.

Before long, Chambers inched his way up the tree and after several hushed minutes from onlookers, he caught the koala in a net as it tried to jump between branches.

Every koala transported to the RSPCA Wildlife Hospital for medical help gets a name and a numbered tag. Windsor’s finger-biting wild koala was assigned number 1561 and called “Trent,” after a nearby street.

Knights does not recommend people attempt to catch a koala.

As Windsor found out, they have a fearsome bite and sharp claws that can easily rip skin.

National rescue effort underway

Koalas mostly live down Australia’s eastern coast, and they’re endangered in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, as well as Queensland.

In 2022, a 10-year national recovery plan was launched to stop the decline in numbers and improve the size, quality and connectivity of koala habitat in the listed areas.

Millions of dollars have been spent on restoring koala habitat, but two years on, listed populations are still declining, and the long-term survival prospects for wild koalas remain “poor,” according to the annual report released in May.

The Queensland government had already introduced what it calls the “strongest koala habitat protections ever seen” in the state – with some payoff, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Environment, Science and Innovation (DESI).

Koala populations have stabilized in forests outside cities, but not in urban and semi-rural areas due to “human activity and domestic dogs,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

In the last six years, the RSPCA’s two wildlife hospitals in South East Queensland have treated more than 5,000 diseased and injured koalas.

With a euthanasia rate of 66%, most don’t make it.

Veterinarian Tim Portas says the animals are put to sleep if they’re unlikely to recover enough to survive on their own in the wild.

“I think within 20 or 30 years, if things don’t change, they’ll be gone in southeast Queensland,” Portas said.

“I often think, ‘Am I sitting here, seeing the last of Queensland koalas filtering through, as I work with them?’”

One of three subspecies, Queensland koalas are smaller and grayer than their southern cousins, and are the kind often seen in photos with celebrities and foreign dignitaries.

Habitat loss

As part of the national recovery plan, the federal government committed 76 million Australian dollars ($52 million) to the Saving Koalas Fund over four years to “support the recovery and long-term conservation of the koala and its habitats.”

The Queensland government added another 31 million Australian dollars ($21 million) for koala conservation in its latest budget, and says that, of more than 714,000 hectares of mapped koala habitat in the southeast, about half is exempt from any type of development.

Furthermore, the state has set “an ambitious target to commence rehabilitation to restore 10,000 hectares of koala habitat in South East Queensland by 2025,” the spokesperson said in the statement.

But conservationists say it’s nowhere near ambitious enough, given the scale of deforestation that’s occurring elsewhere.

“It’s an incredibly low ambition and woefully inadequate,” said Natalie Frost, from the Queensland Conservation Council.

In Queensland, over 320,000 hectares of “woody vegetation” was cleared during the 2021-22 financial year, according to government figures.

Of that, 88% was cleared for pasture, mostly for cattle grazing, while 1% was for development.

Greenpeace said most of the clearing required no permission.

“What we know from Queensland deforestation data is each year, 70-80% of all deforestation requires no state level approval or oversight. On top of this, the majority of deforestation is never sent to the federal government for approval,” said Gemma Plesman, senior campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific.

“Aussies would be horrified to know that we are bulldozing koala habitat at the rate that we are,” she said.

Most of the clearing was carried out in the Brigalow Belt, north of Brisbane, and in the Mulga Lands, to the southwest – areas identified as having the state’s highest koala population estimates, according to the 2022 conservation advice.

Climate change is also making the state’s inland areas drier and hotter, depleting nutrients in the leaves that koalas rely on to survive.

“A lot of the population modeling suggests that koalas will be shifting eastward and southward … and so along the east coast where we’re getting increased pressures from urban development,” said Frost.

Koala habitat squeezed in cities

With a human population of 2.5 million, Brisbane is one of Australia’s fastest-growing capital cities.

On the city’s outskirts, land is being cleared for new housing developments and amenities to service expanding suburbs.

Jo Murray has been living in Lawnton, a 40-minute drive north of Brisbane’s city center, in the Moreton Bay region, for 40 years.

When she first moved in, she was surrounded by dozens of koalas living in eucalyptus trees, their main source of shelter and food.

“If you went out for a walk early morning or evening, you would be almost sure to see a koala,” Murray said.

Over time, blocks have been cleared for housing and, earlier this month, woodcutters arrived next door and cut down towering Eucalyptus tereticornis trees, known as forest red gums, up to 28 meters (over 90 feet) tall, to make way for another prospective residential development.

Landowners are able to clear 500 square meters – about the size of an NBA basketball court – without formal permission. Separate exemptions exist for firebreaks and road access, among other reasons.

Garth Nolah, from Nolah Property Developments, who advised residents of the tree-clearing, said a development application would be submitted soon and declined to comment further.

She said she has saved local koalas Beau and Louis multiple times over the years and can’t face having to do it again.

“Once those trees all go, Beau and Louis are not going to be with us,” she said. “I don’t want to be the one who picks either of them up.”

Months earlier, when Murray learned that the neighboring lot had been advertised for sale, she started a petition and wrote emails to the state government pleading for something to be done to protect the trees.

Murray said the lack of response to her emails – and the subsequent loss of the trees – had made her question Queensland’s commitment to protecting urban koalas.

“If they’ve decided that they don’t want koalas in urban areas, and they’re not prepared to protect them, then they should just tell us,” she said.

Declining numbers

Most of the ambition for vast tracts of new koala habitat in Queensland lies outside Brisbane’s established inner-city suburbs.

Creating corridors within older residential areas requires much more inventive measures, according to Dr Bill Ellis, an expert in koala ecology from the University of Queensland.

Fences have been built with log climbers that offer escape routes from busy roads, and two years ago Brisbane City Council built a bridge over a thoroughfare near a wildlife reserve.

The bridge has helped many possums cross the road, and at least one koala, based on footage from a wildlife camera from the last eight months.

“Brisbane is the koala capital of the world and we are committed to making sure it stays that way,” Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner said in a statement.

Ellis said the bridge is a promising start, but that “some relatively dramatic interventions” are required to ensure koalas survive in suburban Brisbane.

“It may be that we need a whole lot of those bridges, and we’ll get a whole lot of movement, I’m not sure,” he said.

“But the capacity to move koalas from one side of a road to the other is not beyond us. It’s just a question of willpower and money.”

He hopes that koalas will survive in suburban Brisbane long enough for international visitors coming to the Olympics to see them in 2032.

“Either we change what we’re doing in southeast Queensland, or we’re going to be sending people well out of the city and well out of our suburbs in order for them to see a koala,” he said.

“And I think that’d be pretty sad.”

Trent’s second chance

In some ways Trent was lucky – the husky who shook him was a pleasant pet called Nine Nine who, at 12 years old, was not a natural predator for a lost koala.

According to the vet’s notes, Trent suffered superficial wounds to his chin, some chest trauma and mild abdominal bleeding.

“Stress attributed to hospital environment, ready to go back out there,” the notes added.

So, five days after the dog attack, Knights chose a tree several meters off the track on Mount Gravatt Outlook Reserve in Brisbane’s southern suburbs where Trent could feel more at home.

He was accompanied by some members of an eclectic and growing team of volunteers, who come together when called to hold a torch, carry a net, or “tree-sit” – sometimes through the night – to stop koalas from wandering into traffic.

The group includes a midwife, tattoo artist, public servant, automotive spray painter, student, speech pathologist, software engineer and at least one retiree – all local residents who are desperately concerned for the welfare of an Australian national icon.

Releasing koalas is one of the rewards of what can be a heartbreaking task.

So far this year, they’ve counted at least 52 dead koalas within a six-kilometer radius of nearby Whites Hill Reserve. Another 26 are assumed to have been euthanized by wildlife vets due to injury.

Having received a tetanus shot for her koala bite – a rare injury even in Australia – Windsor watched as Knights opened the cage and Trent bounded up a tree.

“That was amazing. That was worth every bite one thousand times!” Windsor said.

Knights reckons he’s saved thousands of koalas during his 10 years of service.

He says they need more trees to be able to move safely through urban areas and rejects any suggestion that koalas have become urbanized or accustomed to navigating suburban streets.

“They’re frightened. They’re lost,” he said.

“If they were urbanized, they wouldn’t be running into the traffic, they wouldn’t be turning up in backyards, they wouldn’t be falling into swimming pools. They’re not urbanized at all,” he said.

“They’re looking for somewhere to live.”

The last 48 hours in the Middle East – in which Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and continued to bombard the Iran-backed group across Lebanon – have once more ratcheted up fears that this long-running conflict could spiral into a wider regional war.

Nasrallah’s killing, in a huge set of Israeli airstrikes on his underground headquarters in Beirut on Friday, marks a significant escalation in the conflict between Israel and the Lebanon-based militant group, which has been firing on Israel since the start of its war against Hamas in Gaza.

It is also the latest in a string of major blows to Hezbollah, which has now lost multiple commanders and was already reeling after pagers and walkie-talkies owned by its members exploded earlier this month, killing dozens and maiming thousands.

Israel has warned that a “new era” of war was beginning with its “center of gravity” moving north, in a reference to the Lebanon border. One of its stated war aims is to return tens of thousands of its own civilians displaced by cross-border fighting.

Hundreds of thousands have been displaced within Lebanon due to the recent fighting, while more than a thousand have been killed since the airstrikes escalated last week, according to Lebanese government officials.

Israel has raised the possibility of a ground incursion into Lebanon, which, if undertaken, would be the fourth Israeli invasion of the country in the past 50 years.

Hezbollah has vowed that it will “continue its fight to confront the enemy,” while Iran, which backs the group as part of its network of regional proxies, has given an assurance of its solidarity.

Here’s what we know so far and where things might go next.

Escalating conflict

Israel has pounded what it says are Hezbollah targets in the Lebanese capital of Beirut and elsewhere in the country on Friday and Saturday, including the attack on the capital’s southern suburbs that killed Nasrallah.

Some of the strikes have come in densely populated areas, flattening residential buildings. Israel has said Hezbollah stores weapons in civilian buildings, which the group denies, and accuses Hezbollah of using residents as “human shields.”

Lebanese civilians say they cannot heed warnings from Israel’s military to avoid places where Hezbollah is operating, because the group is highly secretive. The warnings also often come just minutes before a building is struck.

Residents from Beirut’s southern suburbs have been fleeing to escape Israeli bombardment, with many seen sleeping in public places with no space left in makeshift shelters.

The latest attacks come after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brushed off a ceasefire proposal brokered by the United States and France that called for a 21-day pause in fighting across the Israel-Lebanon border.

The White House has said it had “no knowledge of or participation in” Israel’s Friday attack on Beirut, with US President Joe Biden describing Nasrallah’s death as a “measure of justice for his many victims,” including Americans, while calling for de-escalation in conflicts across the Middle East.

Earlier Saturday, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Peter Lerner said the military was preparing for the possibility of a ground incursion, but it was only one option being considered.

What will Hezbollah – or Iran – do?

In the wake of Nasrallah’s killing – and the attack on pagers and walkie-talkies – Hezbollah’s remaining leaders are likely to be assessing how to meet, communicate and respond.

Some of the factors that will impact that response – such as the extent to which Israeli strikes have reduced the group’s munitions – remain unknown. But analysts say the setbacks faced by the group are unlikely to leave it completely weakened.

“Hezbollah has taken the biggest blow to its military infrastructure since its inception,” said Hanin Ghaddar, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and author of “Hezbollahland.”

The group, however, still retains skilled commanders, as well as many of its most powerful assets – including precision-guided missiles and long-range missiles that could inflict significant damage to Israel’s military and civilian infrastructure, said Ghaddar.

So far, there has not been a major barrage of rockets from Hezbollah that has caused significant, known damage to Israeli targets. And even in the wake of Nasrallah’s killing the group has yet to launch a major retaliation at the level that could see Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system overwhelmed and its power grid affected.

But the latest development raises the potential for a shift.

Another key question is the extent to which Iran could get involved.

The state has appeared wary of moving into direct conflict with Israel, even as their long-standing shadow war has been pushed further into the open in recent months – and observers say direct Iranian retaliation could also draw the US further into the conflict.

A senior US official said the US believes Iran will intervene in the conflict if they judge that they are about to “lose” Hezbollah. The combined effects of Israel’s operations against Hezbollah had already taken hundreds of fighters off the battlefield, according to that official and another person familiar with the intelligence.

Iran’s embassy in Lebanon in a social media post Friday called Nasrallah’s killing a “serious escalation that changes the rules of the game,” and said its perpetrator “will be punished and disciplined appropriately.”

The Iranian envoy to the United Nations on Saturday also requested an emergency meeting of the Security Council to “condemn Israel’s actions in the strongest possible terms.”

But the space for diplomacy seems limited, especially as months of work on a ceasefire deal for the war in Gaza have seen little lasting progress.

“At best, it’s a question of deterrence, management and maybe, if Hezbollah, the Israelis and the Iranians are open to it… agreements that will contain conflict,” he said.

Hezbollah is believed to be the most heavily armed non-state group in the world. Backed by Iran and based in the eastern Mediterranean country of Lebanon, the Shiite Islamist group has been engaged in confrontations with Israeli forces on Lebanon’s southern border since October 8.

Hezbollah first fired at Israel to protest the war in Gaza, demanding a ceasefire there as a condition to end its attacks. Cross-border hostilities have since escalated, culminating in the death of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in an Israeli strike on the Lebanese capital Beirut.

The cross-border conflict and recent developments have raised the specter of a regional conflagration and amplified intense diplomatic efforts to de-escalate tensions. Though no match for Israel’s military might, Hezbollah’s increasingly sophisticated arsenal has the potential to inflict significant damage on Israel.

Israel would also have to contend with Hezbollah’s strategic depth. The group is part of an Iran-led axis of militants spanning Yemen, Syria, Gaza and Iraq. Some of these groups have increased coordination significantly since October, when Israel launched a war in Gaza after Hamas-led militants attacked the country. This axis is known in Israel as the “ring of fire.”

For nearly a year, Hezbollah’s partners in the region have been engaged in a simmering conflict with Israel and its allies. Yemen’s Houthis have sporadically fired at vessels in the Red Sea, an artery of global trade, as well as on Israel. Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of hardline Shiite factions, has also launched attacks on US positions in that country. The axis has conditioned the cessation of those hostilities on a ceasefire in Gaza, rebranding themselves as a “supportive front” for Palestinians in Gaza, as described by a senior Hezbollah leader.

In September, Israel stepped up its direct confrontation with Hezbollah. In back-to-back attacks, hundreds of Hezbollah’s pagers and walkie-talkies exploded, killing at least 37 people and injuring thousands, before an Israeli airstrike on Beirut killed a senior Hezbollah commander. In response, Hezbollah has vowed “a battle without limits.”

Following the twin communications attacks, Hezbollah launched what it said was a ballistic missile at Israel, targeting the headquarters of Israel’s intelligence service Mossad. It is believed to be the first ballistic missile to be launched by militant group toward Israel. The strike, which was intercepted, reached near the bustling city of Tel Aviv.

Hezbollah’s fighting force emerged from the rubble of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Beirut. At the time, it was a rag-tag group of Islamist fighters supported by Iran’s fledgling Islamic Republic. This was followed by a meteoric rise in the group’s military and political might. In 2000, its guerrilla fighters forced Israeli forces to withdraw from south Lebanon, ending a more-than-20-year occupation. In 2006, it survived a 34-day war with Israel that wreaked havoc on Lebanon.

During Syria’s uprising-turned-civil war in the 2010s, it fought on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as he brutally quashed armed opposition forces and inflicted a huge civilian death toll. As it fought in the trenches of that nearly decade-long war, Hezbollah became seasoned in urban warfare and solidified its alliances with other Iran-backed groups fighting in Syria. It also cleared a vital supply route for weapons between Iran and Lebanon, via its partners in Iraq and Syria, further bolstering its arsenal.

Hezbollah’s military capabilities have notably grown since its last war with Israel in 2006. Military analysts estimate Hezbollah to have between 30,000 and 50,000 troops, but earlier this year its leader Nasrallah claimed it has more than 100,000 fighters and reservists. The group is also believed to possess between 120,000 and 200,000 rockets and missiles.

Experts say the group’s biggest military asset is the long-range ballistic missile, of which it is estimated to have thousands, including 1,500 precision missiles with ranges of 250–300 kilometers (155–186 miles).

Throughout its decades-long conflict with Israel, Hezbollah has been engaged in asymmetric warfare. It has sought to grow its political and military might, while seeking to establish deterrence despite Israel’s military superiority.

But Hezbollah threads the needle carefully. Provoking Israel’s full firepower could significantly degrade the group’s capabilities, setting it back years – if not decades – and destroying large parts of Lebanon, which has buckled under the weight of its years-long financial crisis.

As the confrontations at the border continue, Hezbollah has sought, with some success, to undermine Israel’s vaunted missile defense system known as the Iron Dome. It has tried to do so by attacking its platforms and overwhelming it with swarms of drones and short-range missiles in order to open a path for other projectiles to reach deeper into Israeli territory.

The full extent of Hezbollah’s arsenal is not clear. In response to Israel’s twin wireless device attacks, Hezbollah fired a barrage of missiles across the border into northern Israel, and said it hit an air base with Fadi 1 and Fadi 2 missiles – a longer-range weapon not known to have been used so far in nearly a year of conflict.

Hezbollah’s chances of survival in an all-out war with Israel is hinged on whether or not it can outsmart these systems which have in recent months intercepted thousands of airborne weapons from Iran, Gaza and Lebanon.

Because of Hezbollah’s growing power, a possible all-out war between Israel and Lebanon would thrust the Middle East into uncharted waters. The diplomatic effort to prevent it is likely to continue at a breathless pace.