During a year of conflict in the Middle East, Israel and the Palestinians have bled while Iran and its regional allies have benefited at virtually no cost. Now Israel appears to have reshaped the landscape with its devastating war on Iran’s most powerful proxy, Hezbollah, in Lebanon. Hezbollah’s leadership is decimated, its command and control in disarray, and its intelligence and inner workings thoroughly penetrated, exposed, and vulnerable. Its personnel and heavy equipment are being degraded on a daily basis. Tehran’s strategy of relying on Hezbollah and other militant groups to provide an Arab-forward defense against Israeli or American attacks on Iran’s homeland or nuclear facilities appears to be failing, potentially decisively.
Hezbollah is entirely a creature of Tehran, unlike Hamas and the Houthis, which, though backed by Iran, were not founded under the Islamic Republic’s tutelage and have religious and political differences with it. Established in the immediate aftermath of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and developed during the 18-year occupation that ended in May 2000, Hezbollah was the first Iranian-controlled militia in the Arab world, providing a model that Tehran has successfully replicated in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere.
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As such, Hezbollah has defined its regional role almost entirely around Iran’s objectives. From 2015 to 2017, for example, Hezbollah was the most effective ground force in Syria, propping up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s ally. Under Hassan Nasrallah, the leader killed in an Israeli strike on Friday in Beirut, Hezbollah became the driving ideological force within Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance in the Arab world.
Nasrallah’s role expanded after the 2020 U.S. assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the charismatic head of Iran’s Quds Force, which is responsible for coordinating militias abroad. Soleimani’s replacement proved far less inspiring in the Arab world. Nasrallah stepped into the breach, demonstrating a remarkable rhetorical prowess and willingness to bring ideological and strategic coherence to an unwieldy network of forces that do not always share the same goals. Nasrallah coined the phrase unity of fronts to suggest that the various Iran-backed militias would all act together in relative harmony and coherence, or at least mutual support, even when their interests diverged.
As useful as this framing has been, it may also have proved to be a fatal miscalculation—literally—for Nasrallah and other Hezbollah leaders since October 7. Some reports suggest that, in the summer of 2023, Hamas officials floated the prospect of an offensive against the Jewish state to Hezbollah and Iranian leaders. Hezbollah and Iran apparently took the conversation as aspirational and vague rather than as a specific plan. When Hamas attacked southern Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, Hezbollah therefore faced a crisis.
Nasrallah’s rhetoric of unity, along with Hezbollah’s longtime encouragement of Hamas’s fight against Israel, left the Lebanese group vulnerable to Hamas’s demand for assistance in the new war. But this was not Hezbollah’s assignment from Iran. Gaza has no strategic, religious, historic, or cultural significance for Iran or Hezbollah. Hamas, a Sunni group, fits very awkwardly into Iran’s otherwise almost entirely Shiite alliance. Indeed, Hamas and Iran were on opposing sides in the war in Syria, leading to a rift that lasted many years.
Although answering Hamas’s call in earnest was out of the question, Hezbollah, given Nasrallah’s previous rhetoric, felt it had to do something. Eventually, Nasrallah promised to intensify his organization’s struggle against Israel, but only along the Israel-Lebanon border. In the weeks following October 7, Hezbollah fired more rockets than usual in that area, but in most cases within de facto rules mutually accepted by Hezbollah and Israel: Tolerable engagement included attacks that occurred within a mile or so of the border, were aimed at military targets, and caused limited casualties. Hezbollah’s rocket attacks gradually escalated, reaching farther into Israeli territory. On some occasions, the brinkmanship with flying bombs proved lethal for civilians, most notably when 12 Druze teenagers and children were killed in an errant Hezbollah missile strike in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights in August.
In the past year, even the most cautious Israeli leaders began to see advantages to a major offensive against Hezbollah. By degrading and humiliating the Lebanese group, Israel could inflict a heavy price on Iran and its regional network. Israel’s willingness to court a broader conflict gave it “escalation dominance,” the ability to control the pace and intensity of the confrontation. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared at the United Nations General Assembly meeting last week that Israel is “winning,” he was alluding to this dynamic. At least in the short run, Israel has achieved its goals of inflicting a heavy price on Iran and restoring the reputation of its own security services, which had been publicly discredited by their failure to prevent the October 7 attack.
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Indeed, recent events have showcased Israel’s extraordinary ability to gather human intelligence within Iran and Hezbollah. The July assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s chief diplomat and titular political leader, was a startling demonstration: Israeli agents managed to place a bomb in a key Iranian-intelligence safe house in Tehran and then detonate it months later when Haniyeh and his personal bodyguard were alone in the house—thereby avoiding Iranian casualties that would have further escalated tensions. In another stunning coup, Israeli agents succeeded in placing explosives in thousands of pagers procured on the black market by Hezbollah, all of which were detonated simultaneously in mid-September. The next day, a smaller group of walkie-talkies exploded at once. Nearly 3,000 Hezbollah operatives or associates, along with numerous civilians and several children, were killed or maimed in the two incidents.
In recent months, Israel has shown the ability to kill key Hezbollah leaders almost at will, including the military chief of staff Fuad Shukr in July; his successor, Ibrahim Aqil, earlier this month; and now Nasrallah himself. Israel could not have arranged all of this solely by intercepting the militant group’s communications. Israeli intelligence has infiltrated Iran and Hezbollah far more deeply than it has Hamas, whose leader, Yahya Sinwar, apparently remains unharmed in Gaza.
Hezbollah is now caught in a trap of its own making. It sought to have a limited border confrontation with Israel to maintain its credibility as a “resistance” organization, but not an all-out war. Israel called its bluff, and now the group is in profound disarray. Hezbollah could tacitly sue for peace by stopping rocket attacks across the Israeli border. That would hand another victory to Netanyahu, who could claim that he has restored security to northern communities by force. Even though those areas will remain vulnerable as long as Israel is enmeshed in an endless two-front war against Hezbollah and Hamas, the illusion of security through unyielding confrontation with all neighboring adversaries is a primary goal of the current Israeli government.
The Iranian regime, meanwhile, may have to rethink its fundamental strategy toward opposing Israel and ensuring its own survival. Its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has considerable experience establishing and running foreign militias and will presumably help Hezbollah rebuild. Although the group might never regain the regional authority it developed under Nasrallah, it may feel comfortable returning to its origins as a guerrilla organization fighting Israel with limited means. Given Hezbollah’s fealty to Iran’s interests, it will almost certainly pursue this path if that’s the instruction from Tehran. Regardless, Tehran’s confidence in the group as the centerpiece of its forward defenses has surely waned. Iranian leaders will likely focus on a dual strategy of moving steadily toward nuclear weaponization while trying to negotiate sanctions relief, if possible, with Washington.
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The United States will also face a dilemma if Israel concludes, after battering Iran’s defenses in Lebanon, that now is the time for a decisive strike against Iran’s nuclear sites. Because many key facilities are heavily defended and, in some cases, buried deep underground, Israel may not possess the conventional firepower to cause much damage but might calculate that the U.S., with its far greater arsenal, would ultimately feel obliged to join the effort. Washington has lost control of Israel’s strategic calculations, if it ever had any, but remains committed to Israel’s security.
Although Israel appears to have prevailed decisively in the short term, the long-term equation is likely to yield no winners. Israel remains mired in guerrilla conflicts. The U.S. is trying to prevent Iran from going nuclear but lacks leverage to achieve that without military intervention. Iran’s regional strategy has proved fundamentally ineffective and woefully vulnerable to a determined Israeli pushback. The potential risks are enormous. With Iranian acquiescence, Hezbollah could decide to unleash its remaining stockpile of missiles—out of vengeance, a desire to “restore deterrence,” or a simple instinct to use it or lose it.
All of the parties involved have been playing a dangerous game since October 7. The question is whether any of them have the wisdom to now pull back from the brink.
theatlantic.com