The Biden administration supports Israel’s stepped-up attacks on Hezbollah, the State Department’s top spokesperson said on Tuesday, suggesting that the three-week cease-fire the U.S. introduced in late September is no longer feasible as Israel seeks to push Hezbollah away from its northern border.

“We do support Israel launching these incursions to degrade Hezbollah’s infrastructure so ultimately we can get a diplomatic resolution that allows 1701 to finally be fully implemented,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters. 

He was referring to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, the unenforced diplomatic agreement that ended the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war with promises — and with which Hezbollah failed to comply — that the Iran-backed terror group would move north of Lebanon’s Litani River. 

Hezbollah’s leadership announced on Tuesday that the group would support a cease-fire with Israel, two weeks after the Biden administration and several European and Arab allies introduced the idea. But Miller threw cold water on Hezbollah’s apparent interest in reaching a deal.

“There is an obvious lack of faith in Hezbollah’s ability to do what it said in 2006, and do what it’s saying it would do now, which is agree to an actual cease-fire that would allow Israeli civilians to return home and allow Lebanese civilians to return home,” said Miller. “We continue to ultimately want a diplomatic solution to this conflict. But as you’ve heard me say for the past several days, Hezbollah’s forces in southern Lebanon refuse to fully implement United Nations Security Council 1701.” 

Israel is not currently calling for a cease-fire, Miller stated.

Miller did not formally say the U.S.-led cease-fire push is dead, but he acknowledged that “it is a different world you’re looking at today than it was several weeks ago.”

“It is a very different situation now, when several weeks ago that would require Hezbollah at the height of its power to decide to pull back from the border to increase security and Hezbollah today, which has been significantly degraded and now finds itself on the back foot, made clear by the statement they made today calling for a cease-fire for the first time,” Miller said, pointing out that Hezbollah seems to want a cease-fire because they are faring poorly on the battlefield.

“The reason it’s hard to answer the question is: Is Hezbollah calling for a cease-fire, or is Hezbollah calling for a cease-fire and agreeing to pull back beyond the Litani River, which is something that they haven’t said that they would do? That would be full implementation of 1701,” Miller said. In other words, the Biden administration remains skeptical that Hezbollah is interested in Washington’s end-stage diplomatic goal: Hezbollah leaving its position in the south of Lebanon to implement the U.N. resolution. A short-term cease-fire would be only a means to reaching that ultimate goal, which Miller says is unchanged.

Also on Tuesday, another U.S. official warned that Israel risked overstepping in Lebanon. “We’re in regular touch with Israeli leaders where we express our concerns about civilian casualties and about the risk of mission creep,” National Security Council chief of staff Curtis Ried said at a State Department briefing about the humanitarian situation in Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released an English-language video on Tuesday directed at Lebanese citizens, calling on them to “free your country from Hezbollah.” The video led some to question whether Israel had expanded its stated war aims in Lebanon, which are focused on returning 60,000 displaced Israelis to their homes in northern Israel. 

Miller declined to comment on Netanyahu’s video. 

He said the U.S. wants to see Lebanon “break the stranglehold that Hezbollah has had on the country and remove Hezbollah’s veto over a president, which has kept the country in a political stalemate for two years and kept it from moving forward in electing a president, and remove Hezbollah’s ability to block the state from being the sole entity that can exercise force in southern Lebanon.”