Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

The IDF opened its Lebanon ground campaign in early March 2026, cutting the region's last roads north and destroying the Zrarieh Bridge over the Litani on 14 March, the first bridge strike of the war .

By 9 April it carried out its largest single Lebanon operation, killing 254 people in one day and deploying two armoured divisions inside Lebanon for the first time since 2006 . That opening phase set the pattern the front has followed since: repeated Ceasefire announcements from Washington running alongside an IDF ground presence that never fully paused.

On 22 March the IDF struck Tehran at what observers called unprecedented scale, hitting Isfahan, Karaj, Ahvaz and Bandar Abbas simultaneously: enrichment infrastructure, centrifuge components, oil production and IRGC Navy command in one pass .

Three days earlier it had bombed Malek Ashtar University of Technology, a sanctioned nuclear-weapons research site, extending its campaign from enrichment infrastructure into weaponisation knowledge on the same day the US struck Natanz . The IDF's Iran campaign ran in parallel with, not in place of, its Lebanon ground operations.

On 1-2 June the IDF captured Beaufort Castle north of the Litani, the first occupation of the position since its 2000 withdrawal, continuing to advance even as Trump's 1 June Ceasefire covering Beirut explicitly excluded the southern front .

The pattern persisted into August: forces detonated the four-storey Sheikh Naim Mahdi School in Eastern Zawtar on 12 August, one of a month of demolitions the town's mayor called the worst yet, while Ceasefire talks on expanding protected zones stayed stalled .