The Biden administration is divided over Israel’s military escalation against Hezbollah with some senior officials viewing it as a reckless bombardment likely to produce more deadly cycles of violence and others seeing it as a potentially effective means of degrading the Lebanese militant group and forcing it to back down.

Senior officials are publicly calling for de-escalation as the administration tries to find a diplomatic off-ramp to the metastasizing Middle East conflict. In the past two weeks, Israel’s brazen sabotage of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies and a series of airstrikes have killed hundreds, including a top Hezbollah commander on Friday.

“Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest,” President Joe Biden said in a speech to the United Nations on Tuesday. “A diplomatic solution … remains the only path to lasting security to allow the residents from both countries to return to their homes on the border safely.”

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As he spoke, Israel’s military continued to pound Lebanon with airstrikes.

On Oct. 8, a day after Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel, Hezbollah opened a second front, shelling Israel from the north. Israel has fired back, and the conflict has displaced almost 70,000 Israelis from their homes along the border and at least 100,000 people in southern Lebanon before the latest wave of violence, according to the United Nations.

Since then, U.S. officials have been trying to find a diplomatic way to end the conflict, and fears are rising that the escalation could trigger a regional war that no one particularly wants. Hezbollah has said it would end its rocket and missile attacks if there is a cease-fire in Gaza. But Israel has insisted that the attacks on northern Israel must end and refuses to link the conflict with Hezbollah to hostilities in the Palestinian enclave.

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Israeli leaders want to push Hezbollah back from its positions in southern Lebanon far enough to create a buffer zone that would allow displaced Israelis to return to their abandoned homes in the country’s north.

A senior U.S. State Department official, speaking to reporters at the outset of this week’s U.N. General Assembly in New York, took a dim view of the approach of intensifying military pressure on Hezbollah until it backs down — a controversial strategy some are calling “escalate to de-escalate.”

“I can’t recall, at least in recent memory, a period in which an escalation or intensification led to a fundamental de-escalation and led to profound stabilization of the situation,” said the official, who, like others interviewed, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

Other administration officials are “cautiously supportive of the strategy to de-escalate by putting pressure on Hezbollah,” said Matthew Levitt, an expert on Hezbollah at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former U.S. counterterrorism official. “They are vigorously pursuing a diplomatic effort, but the leverage for it has been the Israeli escalation.”

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The Biden administration is in “active discussions” with Israel and other countries to secure a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, unlinked to separate — and deadlocked — efforts in Gaza, according to a U.S. official. Meanwhile, Washington says it will not directly intervene in the conflict even as the U.S. military positions resources in the region.

Officials said the United States would bolster Israel’s air-defense capabilities in the event of an overwhelming attack on Israeli territory, such as occurred on April 13, when U.S. forces offshore and in the air helped shoot down hundreds of incoming Iranian missiles and drones.

They emphasized that under no foreseeable circumstances would the United States aid Israel’s offensive, or fire into Lebanon or any other country, including Iran, which has said the ongoing Israeli attacks on Hezbollah would not go unanswered.

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The U.S. policy of military support to Israel is not a blank check, said a senior defense official, who, like others interviewed, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

“As we’ve said to them, it’s not unconditional,” the defense official said. “You cannot open a new front, and there are no consequences. And that’s not, in fact, the fastest way to return your citizens to the northern border.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “has been very clear that opening a front with Lebanese Hezbollah at this moment is not the path forward to unwind the tensions there,” the official said.

Biden and top aides, including National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, were “working very hard” on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York to find a diplomatic resolution to the spike in fighting, said a senior administration official.

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Vice President Kamala Harris has not addressed the attacks in Lebanon that have taken place in recent days, but in the past she has forcefully stated that Israel has a right to defend itself against Hezbollah. According to a readout from a Monday afternoon meeting in Washington with President Mohamed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates, the two leaders “discussed the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, and our work to prevent the conflict from escalating and reach a diplomatic solution that would allow populations on both sides of the border to return to their homes.”

“We don’t believe it’s in Israel’s interest for this to escalate, for there to be an all-out war there,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told ABC News on Tuesday.

“While we won’t get involved in the conflict itself there,” he said, “we can do what we have to … to make sure Israel can defend itself.”

A second senior defense official said the Pentagon had not received any request from Israel for direct assistance since the latest escalation with Hezbollah began. But the official noted that the U.S. military stands ready to assist if Israel’s air defenses are besieged.

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The official pointed to the defensive assistance the U.S. military provided in April when a pair of U.S. destroyers positioned off the Israeli coast in the Mediterranean Sea, a Patriot missile defense battery in Iraq and American jets downed dozens of Iranian munitions headed for Israel.

The United States has been working for months to broker a deal in which Hezbollah forces would commit to a cessation of violence and move north away from the border. A senior Israeli official said the government continues to support a deal.

But Hezbollah’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah, has pledged that attacks will continue until there is a cease-fire with Hamas. U.S. and Israeli officials have said they doubt such a deal is coming anytime soon.

Recognizing that the talks are at an impasse, the Israeli official said the increased military operations in Lebanon in recent days were intended to persuade Hezbollah to negotiate and were not intended to start a broader war. “We think that it might make Hezbollah seek a diplomatic solution,” the official said.

“The key element of this strategy is deterrence,” the official said. “We will not let Hezbollah drag us to a war of attrition. We do not seek war, but we will not and cannot be seen as deterred from it, because that will encourage Hezbollah to escalate.”

Some U.S. officials are skeptical that the strategy will pay off and have questioned why Hezbollah leadership would suddenly reverse course. Another U.S. official said it is foolish to assume that the more aggressive bombing of Lebanon would force Nasrallah into submission. “He needs to save face, too,” said the official.

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Israeli officials are unapologetic about their escalating effort to hit Hezbollah in Lebanon. “We are attacking our enemies in Lebanon, we are attacking Hamas in Gaza, and we are not in a position that we are waiting for the mercy of the world to support us,” Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon said in an interview.

The escalating campaign against Hezbollah is driving increasing urgency at the United Nations to defuse the situation before a broader conflict erupts.

With Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warning reporters that his nation had held back to give space for a cease-fire deal between Israel and Gaza, some leaders worry that Iran’s security establishment may eventually snap back.

“The question is how far can Israel go against Hezbollah before it will be impossible for the [Iranian] president to hold back domestically,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said in an interview at U.N. headquarters Wednesday. “So we’re living on loaned time before there is internal logic in Iran that drives it.”

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Still, Iran does not want to see Hezbollah engulfed in a major war with Israel, said Middle East experts. A substantial amount of Hezbollah’s missiles, rockets and other weapons are provided by Iran, in no small part as a deterrent against Israeli assaults on its nuclear program.

“It’s clear that Iran wants as much of the powder kept dry as possible,” said the Washington Institute’s Levitt.

The United States, along with Western and regional allies, including Britain, France and Jordan, came to Israel’s defense on April 13, when Iran launched an unprecedented direct attack on Israel, firing hundreds of drones and missiles at its enemy.

Tom Karako, a missile defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that during that attack Israel shot down more than 550 munitions, illustrating the country’s ability to deflect a massive aerial assault with what American officials have acknowledged was only “additive” help from the United States.

Fending off a similar assault from Hezbollah is “probably going to come down to Israeli capacity, supported by U.S. capabilities,” he said.

In that scenario, Karako said, the United States would face challenges because of the proximity of Hezbollah forces. While U.S. officials had hours of warning during Iran’s missile and drone launches in April, that would not be the case with munitions fired by Hezbollah, which sometimes strikes its targets in northern Israel before air defense sirens have time to sound.

For now, though, Hezbollah seems disinclined to launch an all-out attack, though Nasrallah has vowed a firm response for Israel’s recent escalation. “It is still playing by the rules,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow with the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

“They’re trying to minimize destruction because they fear retaliation and they believe there are no red lines for Israel when it comes to the international community,” he said. “It’s a thin line they’re walking. And it’s giving Israel a great maneuvering ability to define the battlefield.”

Abigail Hauslohner and Matt Viser in Washington, Michael Birnbaum and Yasmeen Abutaleb at the United Nations, and Kareem Fahim in Beirut contributed to this report.