Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader is unlikely to shift the paradigm of Middle East politics

 

By James M. Dorsey

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Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is likely to discover that the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah will not shift the paradigm of Middle East politics.

It’s a lesson Mr. Netanyahu should have drawn from decades of Israeli targeted assassinations.

Mr. Nasrallah joined a long list of leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and an assortment of others, including Iranian nuclear scientists, targeted by Israel.  Mr. Nasrallah took control of Hezbollah in 1992 after Israel killed his predecessor, Abbas Mousavi.

Abbas Mousavi. Credit: Navid-e-Shahid

Their deaths demonstrated Israel’s surveillance, intelligence, and military superiority. The killings produced short-term militant setbacks, domestic political successes for Israeli leaders, and, at times, an enhanced Israeli sense of security but failed to eliminate threats to the Jewish state’s national security.

The same is true for the United States’ 2020 assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force.

“Assassinating leaders of ideological movements may bring tactical successes, but it rarely delivers strategic victories,” said Middle East analyst Mohammad Yaghi.

“Assassinations are an especially risky bet when it comes to highly ideological and potentially suicidal terrorist groups; there is, after all, always a new guy waiting in the wings,” added Middle East commentator Dan Perry.

To be sure, the decimation of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq by an international coalition deprived the group of its territorial base but did not stop it from expanding in Africa and Central Asia.

Al Qaeda may be the exception that proves the rule.

 

Israel devastates Gaza. Credit: Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Furthermore, Israel’s year-long military campaign in Gaza, following 15 years of repeated bombings of the Strip in response to Palestinian missile attacks, has largely destroyed Hamas’ military infrastructure at a horrendous cost to innocent Palestinians but failed to diminish the group’s resolve or remove it from the political scene.

Moreover, the Gaza war raises the spectre of Israel being sucked into a debilitating guerrilla war, the beginnings of which have long been evident in the West Bank.

In Lebanon, Israel has dealt Hezbollah severe body blows.

Mr. Nasrallah’s assassination crowned two weeks of crippling Israeli strikes, including the killing of scores and wounding of thousands of Hezbollah operatives and disruption of the group’s communications when their pagers and walkie-talkies exploded, the taking out of many of the group’s top military commanders, and the bombing of its weapon arsenals.

In addition, Israeli military operations, particularly in eastern Lebanon, likely disrupt Iranian arms shipments to Hezbollah via Syria.

Credit: MissileThreat

That hasn’t stopped Hezbollah from continuing to launch missiles at Israel, albeit with less intensity than in the past year.

It is unclear whether the reduced intensity is the result of the Israeli attacks or a reflection of Hezbollah’s careful calibration to avoid hostilities from spinning out of control.

Sources close to Hezbollah said the group’s probable retaliation for Mr. Nasrallah’s killing was not dependent on identifying his successor.

They suggested the more immediate question was how to calibrate the group’s retaliation in ways to meet the challenge without sparking a regional war. The sources said Hezbollah was likely to retaliate sooner rather than later to demonstrate that it may be down but was not out.

Hezbollah’s retaliation could involve attacks on Israeli or Jewish institutions outside of Israel. Israel killed Mr. Mousavi after Hezbollah bombed the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

Credit: Global Atlanta

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This is not to justify Israel’s war conduct in either Lebanon or Gaza.

Nevertheless, if Hamas’ attack, despite its killing of hundreds of innocent civilians and kidnapping of 250 others, was the product of almost six decades of Israeli occupation and refusal to fully recognise Palestinian national rights, Hezbollah’s initiation of hostilities along the Lebanese-Israeli border constituted a unilateral act of aggression with grave consequences.

“The Hezbollah leader gambled on October 8 to join the fighting after Hamas' massacres in the south. In retrospect, it can be said that Nasrallah…gambled on his life – and lost,” said Haaretz journalist Amos Harel.

With his gamble, Mr. Nasrallah may have miscalculated regarding Iran’s willingness to back Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Hassan Nasralleh. Credit: Ynetnews

Iran, determined to avoid being sucked into an all-out regional war, has held back on retaliating for Israel’s assassination in Tehran in July of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and carefully calibrated its response to Israel’s attack earlier this year on the Iranian consulate in Damascus.

In the same vein, Iranian operatives were among the casualties of Israel’s assault on Hezbollah. Mojtaba Amani, Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, lost an eye when his pager was one of the communication devices that exploded two weeks ago.

Iranian general Abbas Nilforoushan was killed in last Friday’s bombing that targeted Mr. Nasrallah. Mr Nilforoushan was appointed as head of the Quds Force in Syria and Lebanon after his predecessor, Hassan Mahdawi, died in the Damascus consulate attack.

In a further indication of Iranian restraint, Iran’s Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, suggested Hezbollah rather than Iran would respond to Mr. Nasrallah’s killing.

Similarly, Mr. Nasrallah overestimated how badly Hamas had wounded Israel with its October 7 attack. In July, Mr. Nasrallah asserted that Israel was on the verge of its demise “Israel is weaker than a spider web,” Mr. Nasrallah said.

Source: Instagram

Speaking a month later on the 18^th anniversary of the 2006 war, Mr. Nasrallah claimed that “the Israelis now are having existential fears. They fear the entity’s existence and continuation.”

Notwithstanding Mr. Nasrallah’s miscalculations, the history of Israeli targeted assassinations and policy rooted in a belief that force rather than equitable solutions to political problems will guarantee the Jewish state’s security is at the core of Israel’s response to Hezbollah after a year of both sides waging a calibrated war of attrition.

Mr. Nasrallah leaves big shoes to fill by his successor, with deputy leader Naim Qassem, a co-founder of Hezbollah, and executive council head Hashem Safieddine, the late Hezbollah leader’s cousin, in the running. Mr. Safieddine is related by marriage to Mr. Soleimani, the assassinated Quds Force commander.

Naim Qassim (left), Hassan Nasrallah (center), and Hashem Safieddine (right). Credit: SBISALI

The sources close to Hezbollah suggested the group may take its time in announcing a new leader for security reasons, given Israel’s demonstrated intelligence capabilities.

A charismatic but polarizing figure viewed by many Lebanese Shiites as a spiritual guide, father figure, protector, and provider, Mr. Nasrallah transformed Hezbollah with Iranian assistance into the world’s most formidable, battle-hardened non-state militia and Lebanon’s most powerful political group with a mass following.

A cleric who studied in Iranian seminaries, Mr. Nasrallah was Hezbollah’s military commander, political leader, and religious guide all rolled into one.

His influence reached beyond Lebanon.

Long designated by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, alongside the United States and the European Union, as a terrorist organization, Hezbollah returned to the Arab fold in June as a result of the past year’s war of attrition with Israel in what amounted to a restoration of the group’s mantle as one of the armed Arab groups and institutions willing and able to confront Israel.

Source: X

The Arab League announced in June that it no longer designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Taking the lead, Iraq quietly allowed the group to open an office in Baghdad.

The League designated Hezbollah in 2016 because of the group’s armed support for President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war and its alliance with pro-Iranian sectarian groups in Iraq and Yemen.

This week, Iraq announced three days of mourning in response to Mr. Nasrallah’s killing.

Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani charged that the assassination showed Israel’s “reckless desire to expand the conflict at the expense of all the peoples of the region and their security and stability.”

Despite the Arab League’s gesture, Saudi and Emirati responses were muted.

Source: Instagram

Rather than condemn the assassination, Saudi foreign minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud warned that "this escalation will have... negative repercussions for the entire region.”

Mr. Bin Farhan called “upon all parties to show wisdom and to show restraint in order to avoid a true war from breaking out in the region."

At the same time, Mr. Nasrallah’s killing brought to the fore longstanding Arab distrust of Iran.

“Iran’s manipulation of sectarian divides…has further fragmented the Arab world, making it easier for external powers to exploit those divisions. By backing militias and non-state actors such as Hezbollah, Iran has sought to undermine Arab sovereignty and create chaos, all the while claiming to champion the Palestinian cause,” charged journalist Hani Hazaimeh, writing in Saudi Arabia’s English-language Arab News.

“The time has come to acknowledge that Iran is not the solution to the Arab world’s challenges — it is part of the problem,” Mr. Hazaimeh said.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.