Hezbollah is diminished, decapitated, and in disarray—but still dangerous

Israel’s assassination of the Hezbollah leader “is likely to inflame tensions,” according to the Washington Post, and it will keep the region “locked in a new cycle of violence,” according to the New York Times. Noting the civilians that died in the attack, including children, the US State Department spokesperson urged “all concerned to exercise maximum restraint.” If this all seems familiar that’s becnause it is—all three of those quotes are from more than thirty years ago, after the Israeli strike in 1992 that killed Hassan Nasrallah’s immediate predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi.

Today Hezbollah is diminished, decapitated, and in disarray. The details are yet to emerge, but my bet is that the strike that killed Nasrallah was a target of opportunity for Israel that presented itself only over the last week. It likely emerged due to Hezbollah’s increasingly sloppy communications protocols in the wake of Israel’s impressively effective pager and walkie-talkie bombing operations that killed dozens and blinded hundreds if not thousands of Hezbollah operatives, and the subsequent elimination of the senior chain of command of the Radwan Force, Hezbollah’s special operations unit. With these operations, along with the operations in Syria and Iran, the Israeli Defense Forces and Mossad have regained much of the credibility they lost on October 7.

Hezbollah launched the newest phase of its unending war against Israel on October 8, responding to Hamas’s unprecedented terrorist attack the day before with a promise that “our guns and our rockets are with you.” As such, it would have been military malpractice for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pass up an opportunity to eliminate the leader of the enemy forces. It was nevertheless a courageous political decision. If the strike had been unsuccessful or if the intelligence had been wrong, the buck would have stopped with the prime minister. If a similar opportunity emerges to kill Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, with a similar potential for civilian casualties, Netanyahu should absolutely take that as well—as those I speak with in the US government have concluded that a ceasefire is now unrealistic and that removing Sinwar appears to be the only way to bring the fighting in Gaza to a suitable close.

And make no mistake, the United States would have done exactly the same if, for example, in the weeks after 9/11 President George W. Bush had been told of a brief window for a strike against Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda high command—even if they were hiding in a deep basement under a densely populated part of Kabul. We would have accepted a similar number of civilian casualties as proportionate to the enormous military advantage that would have been gained, and the vast majority of the American public would have been overjoyed, just as the Israeli public is celebrating today. Moreover, especially with the benefit of hindsight, it is undeniable that if such an operation had been possible at the time, it would have saved countless lives—American, Afghani, and all those others who had the misfortune to live among any of the numerous al-Qaeda networks and inspired organizations over the subsequent decades.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran, not anyone in Lebanon, will soon appoint Nasrallah’s successor, and most anticipate Hashem Safieddine getting the job. But whoever is promoted from the shrunken remaining pool of Hezbollah’s leadership cadres, he will have the opportunity to halt attacks on Israel, withdraw the group’s units beyond Lebanon’s Litani River, and agree to a ceasefire negotiated by the United States and France. Doing so will allow tens of thousands of innocent civilians to safely return to their homes in northern Israel and tens of thousands of innocent Lebanese to return to their homes in the south. This would be in Hezbollah’s interest and, more importantly, in Tehran’s as well. One can only hope that the group seizes this opportunity.

Similarly, if there are enough anti-Hezbollah forces left within Lebanon, and especially if there are some within the Lebanese Armed Forces, now is the time to make their voices heard and power felt. The 17 October Protest movement that began in 2019 failed to bring down the Hezbollah-dominated power structure, and even Hezbollah’s responsibility for the 2020 Beirut explosion that killed hundreds of Lebanese wasn’t enough to shake Hezbollah’s hold on the country. Nothing would do more for peace in Lebanon than a million people on the streets protesting against the disaster that Hezbollah has wrought upon them.

But if Hezbollah remains in control in Lebanon and refuses to withdraw its forces from Israel’s border, as is required by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, then we should anticipate an Israeli ground incursion and associated air campaign to force Hezbollah’s fighters to retreat—and I suspect that Netanyahu won’t stop at the Litani. In the absence of a lasting ceasefire, the next Hezbollah leader will immediately become a legitimate target. In that case, I doubt that he will live to rule as long as Nasrallah, and perhaps not even as long as al-Musawi, who lasted less than a year.

However, it’s also worth remembering that after al-Musawi’s death, Hezbollah became more dangerous. In 1992, a suicide bomber from the Iran-backed and Hezbollah-linked Islamic Jihad Organization attacked the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. Then, two years later, Iran and its proxies bombed a Jewish community center in Argentina. Together these terrorist attacks killed more than one hundred civilians and, as is almost always the case with the so-called Axis of Resistance, the damage wasn’t collateral but the objective itself. And after Nasrallah succeeded al-Musawi, Hezbollah emerged with the most seats in the Lebanese general elections, beginning on its path to dominate Lebanon politically as well as militarily. Five years after Israel’s withdrawal from all of Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah, with the support of Syria and Iran, assassinated Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and consolidated its power in Lebanon. Two years after that, in the wake of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas took control of the territory by force of arms. Hezbollah and Hamas have grown in power ever since, driving the suffering of the Lebanese and Palestinian peoples, and making this war increasingly inevitable and potentially devastating, a warning Atlantic Council publications have made for years.

Hezbollah, even in its extraordinarily weakened state, is still a dangerously well-armed force, with far more weaponry that it had the last time that Israel killed its leader. Notwithstanding Israeli military successes, it is safe to assume that Hezbollah still possesses well over a hundred thousand surface-to-surface rockets and missiles, many of them made far more accurate by Iran’s long-term “precision project,” along with an arsenal of drones. If used in tandem, these are enough to overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome and put Israeli population centers at risk. If accompanied by the full force that Iran could launch toward Israel, that would likely be enough to overwhelm US-led air defenses in the region as well.

Given that, the winner of the next all-out war between Hezbollah and Israel will be the one that “goes first and goes big” and thus eliminates the other’s second strike capacity. It may be that Israel sees the current situation, one with presumably less effective Hezbollah command, control, and communication systems, and with Lebanese civilians fleeing from the areas of greatest vulnerability, as the best environment imaginable to successfully preempt a Hezbollah response. That would be a tremendous roll of the dice for any Israeli prime minister to make, one that risks a worst-case scenario with tens of thousands of Israelis dead or wounded.

It may be that Hezbollah, with the support of Tehran, decides its existence is at stake and it’s worth going down fighting, hoping to unleash its arsenal before Israel can make it inoperable. In an environment in which Israeli intelligence penetration is probably at its apogee, that would be a huge risk for Hezbollah and for the Lebanese people (not that Hezbollah has exhibited much care for their wellbeing). It may be that Khamenei decides, given the potential loss of the crown jewel of his proxy network and his local deterrent to an Israeli strike, that the time is right to become a nuclear power, as Iran’s breakout capacity of producing fissile material for a nuclear weapon is down to one or two weeks. Yet that might invite US military action, since US President Joe Biden promised that the United States would “never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.” These are all highly risky decisions, but very real scenarios for the days to come. It would be far better if Hezbollah simply halted the war it started and retreated back beyond the Litani River.

But as Israel’s history with Hezbollah demonstrates, decapitation operations are often necessary to win the battle but always far from sufficient to win the peace. For all of its tactical and operational successes in the wars since October 7, 2023, Israel has made a number of important mistakes. It refused to going into the tunnels in Gaza City during the first months of the war, and thus delayed the wider operations unnecessarily. It did not hold areas it had cleared of Hamas, thus forcing Israeli forces to fight again and again for territory it had previously won. And it refused Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) requests to plan to move innocents from Rafah, thus delaying that critical operation for months. The result, as former IDF chief of staff and recent war cabinet observer Gadi Eisenkot concluded, is that Israel is over five months behind where it should be in Gaza.

But the central mistake has been Netanyahu’s refusal to offer a vision for peace for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, one that takes advantage of this incredible Israeli diplomatic opportunity. It has a window in which it has never been stronger, its enemies never weaker, and the potential for assistance never greater from like-minded Arab leaders, who similarly despise Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran and its Axis of Resistance are all violently opposed to a successful two-state solution—seeking one would help defeat them ideologically as well as militarily.

The alternative is a reoccupation of Gaza and likely of southern Lebanon—and it is clear from experience how those will end—along with a creeping annexation of the West Bank. This disastrous course would only encourage Israeli extremists, serve to validate Israeli’s antagonists, and further its own self-isolation. And underlying all of these mistakes is Netanyahu’s refusal to create a national unity government, as then Prime Minister Levi Eshkol did during a similar existential moment before the 1967 war. Instead, he has chosen to rely on a far-right coalition that limits his ability to serve Israeli national security interests because it includes partners that, like the Kach party before them, represent views that should have no place in Israeli society, much less seats in its cabinet.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin used to say that Israel should “fight terrorism as if there’s no peace process and work to achieve peace as if there’s no terror.” With the killing of Nasrallah, Netanyahu has proven he understands the first part. But unless he comes to understand the second, Israel will never be able to achieve the security it requires, and someone in my place thirty years from now will be writing the same article, yet again.

William F. Wechsler is the senior director for Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council.

Further reading

Sat, Sep 28, 2024

Experts react: Hassan Nasrallah is dead. What’s next for Hezbollah, Israel, and Iran?

New Atlanticist By Atlantic Council experts

On Saturday, Hezbollah confirmed that its leader had been killed in an Israeli air strike. Atlantic Council experts share their insights on what might come next for the already war-torn region.

Iran Israel

Mon, Sep 23, 2024

The Third Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah has begun. What’s next?

New Atlanticist By Alex Plitsas

Israel’s massive aerial bombardment campaign on Monday targeting Hezbollah stockpiles, depots, and launchers in southern Lebanon could be a prelude to a ground invasion.

Conflict Iran

Thu, Sep 19, 2024

Israel’s communications attacks push Hezbollah into an uncomfortable corner

MENASource By David Daoud and Natalie Ecanow

Hezbollah has no choice but to retaliate—but the group is unlikely to declare a full war given its constraints.

Conflict Iran

Image: Mourners carry the coffin of late senior Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukur, killed in an Israeli strike, in Beirut, Lebanon, 01 August 2024. Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that Fouad Shukur was killed in an Israeli strike on 30 July in the Haret Hreik neighborhood in Beirut. At least four people were killed in the attack according to Lebanon’s state media. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has said in his speech at the funeral of slain commander Fouad Shukur, that Israel’s attack on Beirut “is not a response to the strike on Majdal Shams. It is part of the war and a response to the Lebanese support front.”. Matrix Images / Sultan Mounzer