The White House says Iran is still “ready” to attack Israel, while its top general says fears of war have “eased.”

The top US general said the risk of a regional war breaking out had diminished after a fierce exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah, while the White House continued to claim Iran was “ready” to attack.

General Charles Q. Brown, chairman of the U.S. Air Force's Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Reuters on Monday that the likelihood of a regional war had diminished “somewhat,” joining Israel and Hezbollah in seeking to draw a line under the recent wave of tensions that has brought the Middle East to the brink of regional conflict.

At the same time, the White House said it still believed Iran was ready to attack Israel and warned that such a move would lead to US intervention.

“We believe they are still in position and ready to launch an attack should they choose to do so. That is why we have this increased troop presence in the region,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday.

Brown arrived in Israel on Sunday, hours after Israel launched a series of nighttime attacks on Hezbollah and the Iran-backed group Hundreds of rockets fired at Israel.

The region had been in a critical situation for more than three weeks, preparing for retaliation by Hezbollah and Iran for the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and senior Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut.

Brown did not cite specific U.S. intelligence that led to his assessment, but both Israel and Hezbollah issued statements that analysts say suggest they would refrain from escalation.

Analysts had previously told MEE that Israel's two attacks appeared to have put Hezbollah and Iran on the defensive, underscoring the intelligence penetration of their operations and their dominance in Israel's escalation.

“What we already knew before the assassination of Haniyeh and Shukr has now become even clearer. Hezbollah and Iran cannot afford a full-scale war with the US and Israel because they are weaker,” Thomas Juneau, an Iran expert at the University of Ottawa's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, told MEE.

“The reaction is over”

“At this point, we consider the response to be over and the country can breathe a sigh of relief,” Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Sunday after Hezbollah's attack, adding that the group “now reserves the right to respond at a later date if the results of Sunday's attack are not sufficient.”

The region is still awaiting Iran's reaction to Haniya's killing in Tehran, but the Islamic Republic also appears to be tempering expectations by describing Hezbollah's attack on Sunday as a victory for the so-called “Axis of Resistance.”

“Despite the full support of its backers, including the United States, Israel has lost its deterrent power and its ability to predict the time and place of even a limited and calibrated attack,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani wrote on X.

There is little evidence that Hezbollah's attacks have caused serious damage. One Israeli soldier was reportedly killed by shrapnel from Israel's own missile defense systems and two others were injured.

According to Lebanese media reports, Brown will also travel to Lebanon.

US authorities are trying to contain the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel. The US considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization and instead passes messages to Lebanese politicians who speak to Hezbollah.

Israel's killing of Shukr, Hezbollah's top military commander, appears to have poisoned relations between Hezbollah and Amos Hochstein, the Biden administration's traditional crisis manager in Lebanon.

Al-Akhbar news agency reported that Hochstein misled Hezbollah by suggesting to Lebanese officials in talks with the group that Israel would not attack Beirut last month.

A senior Arab official briefed on Hochstein's messages had previously told MEE that the US had warned Hezbollah that Israel would launch attacks in eastern and southern Lebanon in retaliation for an attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, but would stop short of a direct attack on Beirut.

Hours later, Shukr was killed in a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut.

The US is a major backer of the beleaguered Lebanese forces, which are outgunned and outnumbered by Hezbollah. The US wants the Lebanese military to eventually be stationed along the UN-marked blue line between Lebanon and Israel as part of a plan to de-escalate tensions.

Hezbollah, which continues to engage in daily firefights with Israel, says it will only stop its attacks if a ceasefire is reached in Gaza. The fighting has displaced around 90,000 Israelis and a similar number of Lebanese.