Politics

How the myth of Hezbollah's invincibility died in the span of a week

Lebanese wake up to a new reality after Hassan Nasrallah's assassination. What happens next could have serious ramifications for Lebanon, Israel and the entire region.

An image of the late leader of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah with a black stripe for mourning is displayed on a television set airing a broadcast from the private Lebanese station NBN in Beirut on September 28, 2024.

How the myth of Hezbollah's invincibility died in the span of a week

Michael Horowitz

last update on 29 Sep 2024

The saying attributed to Lenin that there are decades where nothing happens and weeks, where decades happen, has never been truer than the week that Lebanon just experienced. It started on 17 and 18 September with the shocking explosion of thousands of pagers carried by Hezbollah operatives and concluded with an unprecedented wave of Israeli air strikes across Lebanon that marked one of the deadliest days in the country’s already bloody history.

In the space of a few days, elements of deterrence that long explained the complex dynamic between Israel, Hezbollah and Iran have been upturned. For decades, Iran has built up Hezbollah not only as one of its main proxies but as a critical element of the Islamic Republic’s own security doctrine.

The group’s estimated 150,000 missiles and thousands of drones, all acquired with the help of Iran over more than a decade, represent Iran’s own “insurance policy” against an attack by Israel. It offered Tehran the ability to saturate Israel with missiles in case the Israeli government acted upon its threat to bomb nuclear sites in Iran.

For more than a decade, this has led analysts and Middle East watchers (including myself) to view the dynamic between Hezbollah and Israel as almost similar to the “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD) dynamic that portended the rivalry between the two nuclear-armed cold war superpowers, the US and USSR. The certainty of being utterly destroyed in a conflict is partly what explained the lack of a full-scale and direct war between the US and the USSR.

The same was said of Israel and Hezbollah (and, by extension, Iran): Both Hezbollah and Israel were viewed as having the ability to inflict so much damage on the other that this paradoxically restrained both sides from all-out war.

Deeply penetrated

But a series of events have changed this dynamic. The explosions of the pagers and talkie-walkies, the methodical elimination of Hezbollah commanders, and the massive aerial bombardment have highlighted what few observers had seen: Israel has been preparing for this major conflict for more than 15 years.

A man holds a walkie-talkie after removing the battery during the funeral of persons killed when hundreds of paging devices exploded in a deadly wave across Lebanon the previous day in Beirut's southern suburbs on September 19, 2024

The attacks showed the group was deeply penetrated by Israeli intelligence—oddly, the same intelligence that failed to predict and pre-empt Hamas’s October 7 attack. It showed the enormous gap both between Hezbollah and Israel, but also inside Israel, between preparations made for a conflict in the north and preparations made for a conflict in Gaza.

Up until this point, most of the focus had been on Hezbollah’s own preparations and ability to improve its military capabilities. With the help of Iran, the group has stockpiled precision-guided missiles while battle-testing new “conventional” military capabilities in Syria. The group participated in large-scale battles, including the battle of Qusayr in 2013 on the side of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, as well as the infamous siege of Madaya, during which it starved residents of towns in the Qalamoun region of Syria.

Hezbollah certainly lost the support of many in the region at that time, but it also gained experienced troops, even fighting and coordinating with Russian special forces at times in Aleppo. This gave Nasrallah’s threat to “conquer the Galilee” (Israel’s northern region) more bite, as Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit showed that they were capable of carrying out offensive operations rather than just defensive guerilla tactics. In a massive blow to Hezbollah, Israel took out the entire Radwan leadership in a single strike in Beirut just days after the pagers explosions.

This is also what makes this conflict different from the previous first and second Lebanon wars, which have served to build Hezbollah as a central piece of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance”. During these two conflicts, Hezbollah was more clearly the underdog. Both those conflicts tarnished Israel’s image of “invincibility” (already damaged by the 1973 Kippur war).

But since 2006, Hezbollah has grown into a regional power of its own and built up its image as an impenetrable fortress with state-like capabilities. The conflict in Syria has also contributed to a narrative shift, as Hezbollah became an aggressor in a foreign country rather than a defender of its own nation. And despite contributing to the stalemate in Syria and helping al-Assad stay in power, the Syrian President appears in no rush to return the favour.

For its part, Iran itself has sent mixed messages as to whether it wants to intervene on the side of Hezbollah. Its focus has so far been on an ongoing effort by newly-elected President Masoud Pezeshkian (a “moderate”) to negotiate relief from continued Western sanctions. But more broadly, it should be noted that Hezbollah was created to protect Iran, not the other way around.

Hezbollah was created to protect Iran, not the other way around.

Untying the Gordian knot

In Israel, it appears a decision was made around the summer to end the war of attrition with Hezbollah. Since 8 October, Hezbollah has launched almost 9,000 missiles and drones at Israel, forcing more than 60,000 to flee the north and creating a de facto buffer zone inside Israel itself. This "war of attrition" favoured Hezbollah: It allowed the group to create a "solidarity front" with Palestinians in Gaza without engaging in a full-scale war.

Nasrallah tied himself to Gaza, stating, time and time again, that Hezbollah would only stop firing rockets into Israel if a ceasefire in Gaza was reached. Israel's failure to fully defeat Hama was compounded by its failure to restore security to the north.

This decision also showed the validity of the "unity of the arenas" concept. This concept—defended amongst others by Hamas's Saleh al-Arouri (who was himself killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut in January)—claimed that the Palestinian front formed, alongside the "Axis of Resistance" front in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran, was one single indivisible front. Israel was surrounded by a gradually tightening "ring of fire" that would eventually asphyxiate it. But Hezbollah's willingness to engage in a ceasefire talks with Israel following the beginning of Israel's aerial campaign, as well as Iran's reluctance to involve itself in the fight, have since shown that the idea is just that—an idea.

Before the pagers attacks, the balance of deterrence meant that even at the highest echelon of the Israeli state, there were doubts as to whether an operation against Hezbollah was sensible. In the very early days of the war, when Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant proposed a pre-emptive attack against Hezbollah over fear that the group was planning to carry an attack in the north similar to Hamas's "Al-Aqsa Flood" was shot down by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Repeatedly in the months that followed, the top Israeli military leadership told Netanyahu that the Israeli army was ready to take the initiative in Lebanon, but Netanyahu's mistrust of Gallant, and vice versa, played a big part in Israel's hesitation.

But this changed in August, when a major Hezbollah attack was thwarted by Israel. The group was, at the time, responding to the killing of its top military commander, Fuad Shukr, who Israel took out in Beirut.

AFP — A televised speech by Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah is broadcast on large screens as fighters and mourners attend the funeral ceremony for Fuad Shukr in the southern suburb of Beirut on August 1, 2024.

Hezbollah planned to launch hundreds of projectiles at Israel, to overwhelm its defences, and allow a volley of long-range drones and precision-guided missiles to hit two sensitive targets just north of Israel: The headquarters of the Mossad and the Glilot base, home to Israel's 8200 unit within Israel's AMAN (military intelligence).

In response, Netanyahu approved a limited pre-emptive strike, fearing that doing more would ignite the region. The results were above his expectations: Not a single projectile fired at Israel managed to take flight. Suddenly, claims by Israeli army commanders that they could be successful in the north, despite the catastrophic failure of 7 October, gained more credibility.

A new Gaza?

This gave Israel the confidence to take even more risks than before, moving away from a war of attrition and putting a lot more pressure on Hezbollah to untie itself from Gaza. The bet in Israel was that—for all their claim of solidarity with Palestinians—Hezbollah and Iran were not willing to engage in a full-scale war that would have unpredictable effects in the region.

The pagers and walkie-talkie attacks served, in that sense, to demonstrate this "unpredictability": This was not a conventional attack, nor one that Iran and Hezbollah could have anticipated. It was a terrifying "trick" of the kind we rarely see in modern warfare: one that instantly disables both combatants and their ability to communicate. After the blasts, Iran and its allies may also be left wondering if it was the only such trick Israel has. The lack of certainty is often one that encourages prudence, rather than recklessness.

The question now is where is Israel really willing to go to ensure that Hezbollah stays out of the fight. Israel has long threatened to "return Lebanon to the Stone Age", and to turn Lebanon into "another Gaza". These are no idle threats: In the first 24 hours of Israel's new operation, Northern Arrows, Israel carried out an unprecedented wave of air strikes.

According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, 500 people were killed in those strikes, marking one of Lebanon's deadliest days in a country that has seen many deadly days. Israel itself claims it was targeting weapons depots Hezbollah placed inside civilian buildings.

For Israel, the goal may be to convince Hezbollah that its position in Lebanon is untenable in the long run

What may be even more terrifying is that this is, by no means, the worst it can get. Both Hezbollah and Israel have made clear that they are willing to go even further. Israel has long threatened to expand its list of targets not only to Hezbollah but also to state infrastructure, including airports and electrical plants. Hezbollah has done the same: In a video published before the escalation, the group warned it would strike a number of electricity plants, the Ben Gurion Airport, the Dimona nuclear reactor and the Haifa and Ashdod ports.

In fact, we've already seen both sides take warning shots at the other: The Israeli electricity company said that one of its "strategic sites" was the target of a Hezbollah attack that failed due to "defensive measures". Hours later, Israeli shells impacted the vicinity of the Zahrani plant in southern Lebanon. Even without a conflict, Lebanon has already experienced an enduring electricity crisis and is only a few steps away from suffering a widespread blackout.

Both sides want to use the threat of attacking the other's "homefront" as a deterrent but are also effectively prepared to act on their threats. For Hezbollah, the goal is to increase the cost of a long war, making it unbearable and forcing Israel to back off. For Israel, the goal may be to convince Hezbollah that its position in Lebanon is untenable in the long run, as Lebanese may feel the price they are paying for having a de facto Iranian pawn making decisions on war and peace is higher than that of confronting Hezbollah (again).

For both, this is a risky bet, as Israelis may not be willing to pay a high price for crippling Hezbollah, while heavy-handed Israeli tactics could rally the Lebanese and Arabs and Muslims around the world behind Hezbollah rather than against it. What is clear is that finding out the answer to those questions would come with catastrophic civilian deaths.

Jaafar ASHTIYEH / AFP — Greek Catholic Archmandrite Abdullah Yulio (R) mourn Nasrallah's killing in the city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on September 28, 2024.

Long-term impact

Though it is still too early to draw any conclusions, the events of September have shaken the region to a point that cannot pass without consequences. One key question is how Iran will adapt, in the long term, to the possibility that one of its main defensive "shields" has been badly battered.

To be clear, the fight between Hezbollah and Israel isn't over, and Hezbollah is far from defeated. If Israel launches a ground operation, Hezbollah may still redeem itself as an insurgent group, which still forms the core of its identity. But the surprise crippling of Hezbollah may also prompt Tehran to look for a better insurance policy, in the form of a nuclear weapon, or conversely convince the Islamic Republic that it is much more exposed to a possible Israeli strike than it once thought, and aim for a return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

In other words, while the fateful week of September that started with pagers exploding contained decade-worth of events, it also has the potential to influence a decade's worth of geopolitical shifts in the Middle East.

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