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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called on Israel and the Iran-backed groups it is fighting in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon to call a truce after the Israeli military said it had killed a top official for Hezbollah, a militant group and political party that controls much of southern Lebanon, who had been widely expected to be the group’s next leader.

“Now is the time to turn those successes into an enduring strategic success,” Blinken told reporters as he prepared to leave Jordan on October 23 for Saudi Arabia on a tour of the region for talks on how to bring the current fighting to an end.

Late on October 22, Israel said Hashem Safieddine, a senior figure inside Hezbollah, was killed in an air strike on the Lebanese capital on October 3, ending weeks of speculation as to whether the man expected to take over the group was alive. The previous Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in Israeli air strikes in Beirut on September 27.

Safieddine headed Hezbollah’s executive branch, which oversees the group’s political affairs. He was also a member of the decision-making Shura Council as well as the Jihad Council, which runs the group’s military operations.

The United States designated Safieddine a terrorist in 2017. Hezbollah is considered a terrorist organization by Washington, although the European Union has only blacklisted its armed wing. Hezbollah’s political party has seats in the Lebanese parliament.

The current war between Israel and the Iran-backed groups Hezbollah and Hamas — which has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union — was triggered after Hamas militants made an incursion into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people. They also took some 240 people back to Gaza as hostages.

Israel has since launched a withering offensive that, according to the Hamas-led Heath Ministry in Gaza, has seen almost 43,000 people killed while displacing virtually all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people.

Israeli forces have killed many senior figures from Hezbollah and Hamas, including the Palestinian militant group’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, who was suspected of being the mastermind behind the October 7 attacks.

Sinwar was killed last week by the Israeli Defense Forces, prompting senior officials from the United States and other Israeli allies to seize on what they see as an opportunity for a new scenario for the region.

Israel has also been under pressure from many allies, including the United States, for the rising number of civilian casualties in Gaza as a result of the war, and accusations that it has been hindering aid supplies to the territory, where hundreds of thousands are living in a growing humanitarian crisis.

“The focus needs to be on getting the hostages home, ending this war and having a clear plan for what follows,” Blinken said on October 23.

Neither side, however, appears prepared, at least publicly, to seize on the so-called opportunity Blinken and others say is there for the taking.

Just hours before Blinken spoke, the Israeli military leveled a suburban Beirut building that it said housed Hezbollah facilities.

The strikes and a later one that sent thick columns of flames shooting into the night sky came shortly after an Israeli military spokesman issued evacuation warnings for the neighborhood.

Another strike came with no warning hitting the nearby office of a pro-Iran broadcaster, the station said. It said the office had been empty since the conflict began. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said one person was killed and five others, including a child, were wounded.

Iran-backed Hezbollah said in a statement late on October 23 that it had escalated its attacks on Israel, using “precision missiles” for the first time, and launched new types of drones on Israeli targets.

It later said it had targeted an Israeli military factory on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

The Israeli military said four projectiles were identified as having been fired from Lebanon. Two were intercepted and one fell in an open area. There was no immediate indication of any defense facility around Tel Aviv having been hit.

Meanwhile, Hamas continues to refuse to release the remaining hostages it holds unless Israel stops its attacks in Gaza.

With reporting by Reuters