The 11 days that inflicted Hezbollah’s worst defeat in its history

In 2006, after 34 days of war with Israel, Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah recovered this Sunday lifeless in the rubble of a brutal bombing in Beirut, admitted in an interview that, if he could go back in time, he would not have ordered the surprise attack on a military patrol that triggered the conflict. “We did not even think 1% that it could lead to a war at that time and of that magnitude. If you ask me if I would have known […] that the operation would lead to a war of that magnitude, would it have? I tell you no, absolutely not.”

If this is how he thought after a conflict that ended in a moral victory and the zenith of Hezbollah’s popularity, for facing such a superior enemy, it is difficult to imagine what Nasrallah would think, if he were alive, after 11 frenetic days in which Israel has been beheading and demoralizing to the group like never before in its history, in a reminder to the world of what sometimes clouds rhetoric and fears: its military and technological superiority is indisputable. The support of the United States, too.

The Lebanese militia also hid a paper tiger, infiltrated to the depths without knowing it. And its great patron, Iran, has chosen to watch the decline from a distance into an open war against the Jewish State (and perhaps Washington, which has not hesitated to mobilize aircraft carriers) that it neither wants nor can win.

The result is probably the best strategic moment for Israel in almost a year. Just two weeks ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed mired in Gaza, with no direction other than the preservation of power, the inertia of devastation and the search for Hamas leader Yahia Sinwar. Today, he looks almighty again. And unpunished: his army has killed almost twice as many Lebanese in 11 days (more than 1,000) than in the previous 11 months, and with a higher proportion of civilians. It has also forced the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, who are sleeping these days in schools, apartments and even streets and parks in Beirut.

Hezbollah, as in 2006, did not expect to get this far. The attack on October 7, 2023 caught him as much by surprise as the political leadership of Hamas itself in exile. But the Israeli army began bombing Gaza in response and felt compelled to open a new front, in defense of its ally and Iran’s strategy. On the 8th, he fired rockets at the Sheba Farms – a territory that he claims and whose status the United Nations has called for negotiation since 2006 – and began a crossfire that Nasrallah sold in his speeches as a triumph, because it forced Israel to divert military resources from the Strip and kept 67,000 civilians out of their homes.

As Israel continued to bomb Gaza, so did they. In waves, but always more and always further. It only stopped during the week of ceasefire in the Strip, in November 2023. Both crossed red lines, but continued to adhere to unwritten rules: Israel – responsible for 80% of the projectiles – killed militiamen with quite precise bombings. and Hezbollah only targeted military targets. Only when a projectile (apparently by mistake) killed 12 minors in the Golan Heights (Syrian territory occupied by Israel) did Netanyahu go for the number two of Hezbollah, Fuad Shukr.

Unsustainable equation

The equation ended up being unsustainable. In Israel, displaced people increasingly called for crushing Hezbollah so they could return to their homes. In his measured and late response to the assassination of Shukr, he showed too much his fear of an open war, due to strategy, weakness or a mixture of both. Their projectiles and drones did not stop the lethal daily life in Gaza and their fear of a total war ended up becoming “a sign of weakness,” in the words of analyst Joseph Daher, professor at the European University Institute in Florence and author of the essay. Hezbollah: The Political Economy of Lebanon’s Party of God (Hezbollah: the political economy of Lebanon’s party of God).

Israel smelled blood. Months before, he had introduced explosives into the thousands of searches and walkie talkies that the party-militia commissioned and understood that it was their moment, with Gaza in the background, the United States with its head on the elections and the new president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, looking to the West to renegotiate the sanctions and the nuclear dossier. Mossad detonated the devices remotely. In two days, to increase the impact and confusion. The group lost hundreds of men, communications and confidence. Since then, the top leaders fell one after another, almost at their mercy and meeting in person. Last Friday, Nasrallah, who had survived assassination attempts, did not use electronic devices and barely saw people in the last two decades. The moral blow for his followers is such that some claim this Sunday that he is still alive and that a coup d’état from Hezbollah is coming.

The 11 days of Israeli lightning offensive have left the organization facing “its most difficult moment” in four decades of history, Daher says by phone. Israeli military planes have gone from crossing Dahiye – the Hezbollah stronghold on the outskirts of Beirut where Nasrallah was assassinated – breaking the speed of sound, to scare the population, to bombing it every few hours. They also fly over the main entry points, such as Beirut’s civil airport, ports or the border with Syria. Even in the Christian district of Achrafiye the constant hum of Israeli drones can be heard this Sunday. Like in Gaza.

Hezbollah has surpassed other assassinations. Like that of Abbas Al Musawi, Nasrallah’s predecessor, in 1992. Or that of Imad Mughniye, with a car bomb in Damascus in 2008 and of which the then Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has openly confessed this Saturday. the authorship. “But I have never experienced such serial beheadings of military and political commanders,” Daher emphasizes, before rushing to answer the question on the air: “Does this mean that it is the end of Hezbollah? No […] “It can continue to act politically and militarily.”

Abed Kaananeh, an expert in the Middle East Department at Tel Aviv University and author of an essay on Hezbollah, elaborates on the idea: “It was a big blow. Not just for those who support him. He was much more than the secretary general of Hezbollah. For many people in the Arab world it represented resistance to Israel. But it does not mean the end of Hezbollah or the war in the north [del país]”.

In Israel, where journalists toast live or distribute chocolates and the announcement of Nasrallah’s assassination is applauded on the beach, Kaananeh advocates caution. It is “too early” to gauge the group’s ability to engineer a spectacular retaliation. “He needs a few days to understand how to react. And, above all, how the Israelis have been able to infiltrate so much. They need it to be able to protect the next leader,” he says.

Daher recalls that the militia – considered terrorist by the US and the EU and which combines pragmatism with an Islamist concept of resistance in which there is no room for surrender – preserves a good part of its arsenal, including guided missiles like the one it launched for the first time. once last week against the Mossad headquarters, near Tel Aviv, and was intercepted.

The tremor of these 11 days will be felt throughout the Middle East, especially in Iran. For 11 months, he kept his pieces mobilized (some more fractious, others less) on the geopolitical board. The attacks against Israel from different points helped Tehran achieve its main objective: “Improve its strategic position in the face of negotiations with the West,” says the expert.

Without aspiring to reach the power of the alliance of Israel, the United States and a good part of Europe, it served as a card in the sleeve to hide or take out at convenience. A combination of militias in Iraq and Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, the Islamic Jihad in the West Bank… and, of course, the “jewel in the crown”: Hezbollah, which some analysts used to refer to as the silver bullet. You have to carefully calculate when to use it, because it is unique and the threat of doing so is part of its deterrent power.

Today, the gunpowder of the silver bullet is quite wet, which leaves Tehran in a delicate place. Daher sums it up: “Hezbollah is not a mere puppet of Iran. It also has its autonomous interests. But if one loses, the other loses. “The fact that Hezbollah has been weakened also leaves Iran weakened.”

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