Decapitated Hezbollah faces the most precarious moment in its history

The silence was deafening. On the afternoon of September 28, almost 24 hours had passed since Israel’s assassination attempt. Hassan Nasrallahleader of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia. The Israeli army pronounced him dead the same morning. But Hezbollah has said nothing, neither about its fate nor about the massive attack on its headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Even the media, which tend to be very combative, remained silent. Finally, the group confirmed his death around 2:30 p.m.

At that time, Israeli planes had already carried out waves of further airstrikes across Lebanon. Israel said its goal was to destroy Hezbollah’s additional rocket and missile arsenal, including anti-ship missiles that could be fired at natural gas rigs in the Mediterranean. Israel sees itself in a race against time to destroy what it can before its enemy can regroup.

Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel the morning after Nasrallah’s death, but it was not a different tactic than in previous days. The group is unorganized. It is too early to speculate on how she might retaliate, as even her surviving leaders do not yet know the answer. However, it is not too early to conclude that Nasrallah’s death will reshape Lebanon and the region in ways that were unthinkable a year ago.

Since Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel in solidarity with Gaza on October 8, Nasrallah thought he could keep the border conflict open but limited. The unwritten rules of engagement lasted until July 27, when a Hezbollah rocket aimed at an Israeli army base overshot its target, killing 12 children on a soccer field.

At the time, Israel’s operations in Gaza were coming to an end, and Govt Benjamin Netanyahu took the opportunity to change the rules with Hezbollah. Three days later he murdered Fuad Shukrthe military leader of the group. The attack was not an isolated incident, but rather a prelude to a series of attacks in September, including the detonation of thousands of planted locators and airstrikes against Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenal.

The Israeli military began preparing the attack that killed Nasrallah two days earlier. When he learned that the leader of Hezbollah had arrived at his headquarters for a meeting, the attack was authorized. It was the result of 18 years of planning. Israel tried unsuccessfully to assassinate him during the 2006 war and then devoted much of its intelligence resources to infiltrating Hezbollah and its communications with Iran.

His possible successors are By Naim Qassemhis representative and Hashem Safieddinewho heads the group’s executive board. The first is a 71-year-old civil servant, an uninspiring choice. Safieddine seems the most likely candidate. He is ten years younger than Qasim, is Nasrallah’s cousin and maintains close ties to Iran: his son is married to the daughter of Qasim Soleimani, the famous Iranian general who was assassinated by the United States in 2020.

Whoever takes the reins will face the most precarious moment in Hezbollah’s four decades of history. It’s not just that Israel destroyed almost all of its military leadership and wiped out centuries of experience in two months. It’s also about the group being humiliated in the face of Lebanese public opinion that was already against Hezbollah for its iron grip on politics.

The “Party of God” is the main guardian of Lebanon’s political order: its thugs helped quell a popular pro-reform uprising in 2019 and two years later forced the state to halt an investigation into a massive explosion at the port of Beirut. Few will rejoice at Nasrallah’s death as Israeli planes kill scores of civilians across the country, but many will feel a bit of Schadenfreude. There may now be an opportunity to loosen Hezbollah’s grip, even if, as it always does in Lebanon, this will raise concerns about sectarian strife.

For years, Hezbollah has been a faithful servant of Iran. The group has played a key role in supporting the bloody regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and provides training and leadership to other Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Yemen. It is therefore not surprising that some Arabs reacted to Nasrallah’s death with joy. In Idlib, a rebel-held part of Syria, people handed out candy to celebrate: Syrians will remember Nasrallah as the butcher whose men starved them to death. The Gulf countries are silent, but it is certain that the champagne corks were popping in the palaces of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

The service gave Nasrallah every reason to hope that Iran would come to his aid, especially after Israel carried out a shocking assassination in Tehran. Ismail Haniyehthe leader of Hamas. This has not happened, in part because Iranian leaders fear that they, too, have been infiltrated by Israel. They are also concerned about how publicly showing support for groups like Hezbollah could affect their standing in the country. Faced with growing discontent over a moribund economy, the regime does not want to be seen to invest more resources in a proxy that appears to be losing the war against Israel.

September 28. Ayatollah Ali Khameneisupreme leader, announced that he would make an “important statement” on events in Lebanon. When the statement came, it was blank. Israeli attacks will not damage Hezbollah’s “solid structure,” Khamenei said, and the group will continue to fight Israel.

In the long run, however, the events of the past two weeks could reshape Iran’s security policy. For decades, it considered the militia to be its main deterrent against an Israeli or American attack; now he is witnessing the eradication of his most powerful militia. Some Iranians have already begun to argue that their country should build and test a nuclear bomb: if conventional deterrence fails, only nuclear deterrence remains.

Khamenei has long preferred to stay just below the nuclear threshold. Recent events may change your mind. Even if not, he is 85 years old; The decision won’t always be yours. However, such a move would lead Iran to a kind of impasse. It once relied on Hezbollah to protect its nuclear facilities from attack; If you go after the bomb because you can no longer trust Hezbollah, these devices will be exposed.

Watching the news in the early hours of Saturday morning, one Arab official saw a parallel with the Six-Day War of 1967. Not only because Israel dealt a swift and furious blow to Hezbollah, but also because both conflicts seemed to shatter illusions that they had ruled region for a long time.

Gamal Abdel Nasser, the charismatic ruler of mid-century Egypt, cultivated a myth of martial prowess. Israel’s swift victory in 1967 put an end to this illusion (it didn’t help that half the Egyptian army was tied up in a futile war in Yemen). It was the beginning of the end of the conflicts between Israel and the Arab states and the Arab nationalist ideology that Nasser defended. Egypt’s prestige never recovered.

For years, Nasrallah has spoken of an “axis of resistance,” a constellation of Iranian-backed militias engaged in the fight against Israel and the United States. He said they are strong and united. After, Israel beheaded the most powerful militias in a matter of weekswhile Iran stood idly by. Hezbollah is not going to disappear: it has thousands of armed guerrillas, an arsenal of long-range missiles, and a popular support base. But the army that comes out of this war will be very different from the one that went into it.

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