Nasrallah’s death has humbled Hezbollah

There are things we can say with some certainty about the wildfire sweeping across the Levant. There are others we can be less sure about. But we can make some educated guesses. More than ever the picture is complex. In the heat of battle reaching for simple explanations is unwise.

The killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, and virtually his entire top political and military team in Lebanon, is a huge blow to the organisation. Having recovered from a punishing encounter with Israel in the 2006 Lebanon war, it now finds itself, once again, on its knees. Hezbollah’s reputation as Israel’s most robust opponent and protector of the Lebanese people is in shreds. The drone and rocket offensive in support of Hamas in Gaza has turned into a war of survival.

The humbling of Hezbollah is also a body blow to its sponsor Iran. The theocratic state’s “Axis of Resistance” to Israel and Western influence in the Middle East comprising Hezbollah, Hamas, Yemen’s Houthi militia and Shia Muslim groups in Iraq and Syria, is gasping for breath.

Iran has spent years building alliances across the Middle East. Until the events of the past few weeks Hezbollah was the jewel in its crown. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, now faces a stark choice. Nasrallah’s death as well as the deaths of several leading members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, not only weakens its position as guardian of the true faith, it also humiliates it in the face of a rising (Sunni) Saudi Arabia.

Iran’s leadership may be militant, but it is not foolhardy. Iran’s weakened economy fluctuates between pessimism and panic. It faces unrest at home over rising prices and punitive measures against women. Above all it fears an Israeli attack on its nuclear programme. It will weigh all these factors carefully before responding.

The speed and pitiless accuracy of Israel’s assault on Hezbollah is a significant victory for Benjamin Netanyahu. With this one, bold stroke, he has turned the world’s attention away from his failure to defeat Hamas in Gaza and clawed back some of his battered prestige. He has bought himself time to shore up his position.

Lebanon 2024 is a textbook example of the Israeli military doctrine of overwhelming force. This states that, in the event of an attack on Israel the IDF must act immediately, decisively and with disproportionate force. American strategists call this “shock and awe”. Its aim is to paralyse the enemy and destroy their will to fight. It’s succeeded – for now.

The next step may well be a limited ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Two reserve brigades have been moved to the northern border to join the 98th Paratroopers Division. Israel wants what remains of Hezbollah to retreat beyond the Litani river (18 miles from its border) to allow the return of around 70,000 Israeli citizens.

The international community will scurry round to cobble together some kind of deal. Whether that does any good remains to be seen. A UN resolution after the 2006 war called for an Israeli troop withdrawal from Lebanon, a pullback beyond the Litani by Hezbollah and the deployment of UN and Lebanese peacekeeping troops. Much good that did.

Perhaps we should stop talking about “the international community” as if it were a real thing. As I argued in another piece the days when the West moved, like a pack of wolves, in one direction when America commanded, are over. There are now more big beasts in the global eco-system.

If Netanyahu emerges (for now) noticeably stronger from this developing crisis, Joe Biden, the outgoing US President, comes across as a lame duck with broken legs. There are limits of course (and always have been) to what the US can persuade Israel to do or not do. But, from his address to a joint session of Congress, to his remorseless upping of the ante, Netanyahu has walked all over the leader of the free world.

And then there’s Lebanon: poor, beautiful, battered Lebanon. I spoke to a close Lebanese friend at the weekend whose wife and children are in Beirut, calculating every day the risk/benefit ratio of staying or leaving as Israeli bombs got closer. These are hardy people who have lived through decades of war and who have evolved into a human species with a peculiarly high tolerance level of fear.

Nasrallah may be a martyr to the poor and dispossessed of Lebanon. Part of Hezbollah’s appeal, like that of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, was that it blended its anti-Israeli stance with an alternative to a corrupt and dysfunctional Lebanese state. It provides healthcare, schools, and infrastructure.

But many Lebanese will not mourn his passing. Hezbollah has a stranglehold over its political institutions and has exerted a profoundly reactionary influence over what was once the Middle East’s most liberal country. Founded during the chaos of the fifteen-year Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), it echoes Iran’s contempt for human rights.

We would be foolish, however, to imagine that any of this gets us any closer to an end to the suffering, let alone peace, in the Middle East. It doesn’t, for the simple reason that the more killing there is, the further away from dialogue we are.

Hamas is not beaten. The hostages are still in their private hell. Jewish settlers continue to rampage and kill in the occupied West Bank. The religious Right clamours for Palestinians to be deported to third countries so that the prophecy of a greater Israel may be fulfilled.

Western politicians mouth platitudes about a two-state solution, but the heart has gone out of that argument. Netanyahu sits, emboldened, at the centre of a movement that refuses to acknowledge that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, now in its 58th year, is the nub of the matter.

Monstrous things happened on October 7, 2023. But history did not begin then. It does, however, feel like the end of an epoch which began in 1948 when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the birth of the state of Israel.

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