The Atlantic Council -Hezbollah is ... in disarray by William F. Wechsler, After Nasrallah by Jonathan Panikoff, What’s next for Hezbollah, Israel, and Iran?

 

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

By William F. Wechsler Senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs; former US deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combatting terrorism 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 because 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 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 go 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.

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After Nasrallah, three quandaries shape the future of the war—and the Middle East

By Jonathan Panikoff Director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative; former deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East at the National Intelligence Council What now? Nasrallah’s death promises to fundamentally change politics in Lebanon, potentially the group’s future as Iran’s most critical ally in the region, and how Israel views the group. His death creates three interrelated quandaries—for Hezbollah, Iran, and Israel—that will determine if the region erupts in conflict and shape what it looks like for years to come. ... Iran’s quandary When Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh was killed in Tehran almost two months ago, world leaders warned that a response by Iran would risk setting off a regional war. The United States, which has spent much of the last year trying to prevent a regional conflict, sprang into action. Through both diplomacy and military warnings, it helped prevent an immediate Iranian response to the Haniyeh assassination. The death of Nasrallah is a heavier blow to Iran. Even though it happened outside of Iran, it’s likely to be viewed not just through a professional prism, but a personal one. Nasrallah and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have known each other for four decades and shared not only a political ideology, but a religious one. Hezbollah accepts the Iranian concept of velayat-e faqih or “guardian of the jurist”: a constitutional system subordinate to a theocratic construct, for which Hezbollah also accepts Iran’s supreme leader as the ultimate authority. Moreover, it bears noting that General Abbas Nilforushan, the deputy commander for operations for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was also killed in the attack on Nasrallah. IRGC leaders may view Nilforushan’s death as yet another reason to respond. How might they do so? The reality is that as much as Iran’s leaders sincerely mourn the loss of Nasrallah and Nilforushan, Tehran’s overriding priority remains regime stability and security. Iran is as averse as any actor in the Middle East to involvement in a broad, full-scale war, and for good reason. Iran’s power projection in the Middle East depends on its proxies. The catastrophic success of Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack refocused Israeli attention on the group in a manner it had not been in years. The subsequent, massive loss of innocent Palestinian life and utter destruction of Gaza are horrid realities of the war that will reverberate for years to come. But so too is the fact that Hamas, while not destroyed, has been massively degraded. Its fighting forces have seen upwards of 17,000 killed and its leadership ranks have been decimated. Iran’s terrorist partners and proxies in Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria have varying levels of responsiveness and connection with Iran, a reflection of varying political, religious, and other ties. If those proxies are no longer available to serve as a deterrent against an Israeli attack, then Iran’s domestic security, including its nuclear program, to say nothing of the regime’s stability, will be more precarious. It’s for that reason that Iran has almost certainly been hesitant for Hezbollah to take a bigger role in the post-October 7 conflict. After Nasrallah’s assassination, Iranian leaders will struggle to appropriately balance how involved they can be in the immediate response, their personal feelings for the Hezbollah leader notwithstanding. By declining to play a meaningful role in response, however, Iran risks lowering the cost to Israel of continuing to degrade Iran’s most important partner—militarily and organizationally, as well as the group’s command and control. Of all Iran’s partners and proxies, it is Hezbollah which has received the most money and advanced conventional weapons. Hezbollah is the pointy end of the spear for Iran. Launching a widespread and intense response that triggers a larger regional war—the exact response many in Israel are hoping for—may help Iran exact a bigger cost from Israel for killing Nasrallah and other Hezbollah leaders. Doing so would bolster its own legitimacy with its proxies. Tehran may reckon that if Israel concludes there is no meaningful price to pay for its actions, it will be more likely to come after Iran directly in the near future. Yet war with Israel carries huge risks. Tehran and Hezbollah would be able to inflict some short-term damage, but as it demonstrated in April, Israel simply has a military advantage. An Iranian military response to Nasrallah’s death is unlikely to result in a restoration of full deterrence against Israel. And Tehran would have to reckon with the challenge of fighting a broader regional war today that it probably cannot win militarily or diplomatically. That would risk jeopardizing the Islamic Republic’s primary goal of regime security.

Read more on the quandaries for Israel and Hezbollah

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

Hezbollah’s leadership losses could complicate picking Nasrallah’s successor The death of Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike on his headquarters will deliver a massive blow to Hezbollah’s morale, especially coming at a time when Israel, which has damaged the group’s military infrastructure and left some of its top commanders dead, is waging a powerful offensive against the Iran-backed organization. Technically, as happened in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Nasrallah’s predecessor Abbas Musawi in 1992, the party’s leading Shura Council should convene and elect a new secretary-general. The long considered favorite is Hashem Safieddine, head of Hezbollah’s executive council and a cousin of Nasrallah. Hezbollah is a robust institution with a strong chain of command that should ensure continuity at the leadership level. An unknown factor, however, is who within the upper echelons of Hezbollah died alongside Nasrallah. If other significant leaders were killed, it could complicate—and perhaps delay for a while—the process of reestablishing command and control over the entire organization, potentially leaving the party vulnerable to Israel’s next moves. Another pressing question is whether the death of Nasrallah will force Iran and Hezbollah to begin employing more advanced precision-guided missile systems that could potentially inflict far greater damage and casualties in Israel compared to the older, unguided rockets the group has been using until now. Or will cold rational logic continue to prevail, with Tehran ensuring a vengeful and angry Hezbollah does not fall into the trap of a full-force response against Israel? A response of that kind could lead to a major war, one that could erode Hezbollah’s capabilities and therefore reduce its deterrence effect for Iran. The coming days will tell. —Nicholas Blanford is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. The Lebanese government must now reclaim its sovereignty Nasrallah, the senior leader of Iran’s crown paramilitary jewel in the region, is dead. As the streets of Lebanon split between cheers of rejoice and cries of anguish, two courses of action must be prioritized to ensure that escalation is prevented and that order is restored. First, diplomacy must prevail. Now is the time for the international community, led by the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, to exert its full leverage on Israel to demand a complete and an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon. Within the last few days, what seemed to many Lebanese as empty speeches calling for a ceasefire were repeatedly ignored by Israel, which continued to violate its obligations under international humanitarian laws in the pursuit of its brutal aggressions on Lebanese territories. With Nasrallah dead and Hezbollah’s infrastructures eroded, insecurities and fears about what comes next fill the air. As a starter, the international community must act with urgency to ensure that an Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon is avoided. Second, the Lebanese government must immediately act to reclaim its sovereignty. Since October 7, 2023, too many innocent civilians have lost their lives, thousands have been injured, and hundreds of thousands have been displaced—all with an absent government that could neither provide the necessary medical resources, nor safety shelters, nor, at the very least, offer timely and official statements calling for a state of national emergency or denouncing Israeli attacks. To do so, the Lebanese government should start by ensuring the unconditional implementation of UN Resolution 1701, electing a president who could restore Lebanese unity, and reaffirming the role of the Lebanese Armed Forces as the sole protector of Lebanese territories. As the dust settles after a night of terror that loomed over Beirut, a new dawn appears for Lebanon. A nonstate paramilitary group has long depleted its institutions internally and acted on its behalf internationally to advance the foreign agenda of its Iranian benefactor. Now is the time for this Lebanese government to restore its grip on power over the country, making sure that the safety of its civilians is protected and its full authority over its internationally recognized territories is respected. —Nour Dabboussi is an assistant director at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs. The beginning of the end of Iran’s Axis of Resistance In the eighteen years since the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, the Iranian-backed group massively grew its domestic political influence and its regional posture as the nucleus of the Tehran-sponsored network of organizations that were supposed to challenge Israel and US-aligned interests in the Middle East. Most importantly, Hezbollah bragged about the unprecedented growth of its arsenal of missiles, rockets, and drones. It boasted of its counterintelligence, special forces, infiltration, and its quasi-conventional capabilities, as well as its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. Nasrallah regularly described Israel as a house of cards and weaker than “a spider’s web.” Within a period of ten days, however, almost the entirety of the group’s senior leadership, political and military, along with thousands of members and mid-level commanders, has been assassinated, eliminated, or rendered combat-ineffective—not to mention that the Israel Defense Forces have destroyed large quantities of strategic munitions that could have threatened Israeli cities and targets. Nasrallah’s assassination and the decimation of Hezbollah, which appears to be in disarray, are a massive defeat for the “resistance” propaganda that Iran and its proxies have promulgated for the past two decades. Indeed, this assassination demonstrates the futility of Tehran’s investing billions of dollars in Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, and Iraq to destabilize the region and attack Israel and US allies. The Islamic Republic bet big on these proxies, but their collapse in Gaza and Lebanon demonstrates how the region might be witnessing the beginning of the end of Iran’s Axis of Resistance. —Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is a resident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. Beware what may arise in Nasrallah’s place The death of Nasrallah propels both the Lebanese dynamic and the conflict with Israel into new, uncertain territory. Hezbollah’s origins may suggest what happens next: Its antecedents arose amid the tumult and trauma of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. As with so many groups and actors who have laid waste to the region, from dictators to al-Qaeda, its political lifeblood is the conflict with Israel. So long as that thunders on—and particularly with the relentless toll on women and children from bombing by the Israel Defense Forces—there is space for a version of Hezbollah to move forward. Of course, with so many of its senior commanders dead, the organization will reshape and reform. For all his faults, Nasrallah was a rational actor deeply socialized into the game of geopolitics. Despite fiery rhetoric around avenging the onslaught on civilians in Gaza, he never launched a major offensive against Israel or indeed the most sophisticated rockets within Hezbollah’s 130,000-strong arsenal. Alongside the death of Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s obituary may well be written. Equally, this could end up being a case of, “Be careful what you wish for.” —Alia Brahimi is a nonresident senior fellow in the Middle East Programs.