Hezbollah is damaged, not finished. But what will Iran do about it?

The death of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general for more than 30 years, is the latest in a series of stunning blows that Israel has landed on the militant group in the past few weeks. The organisation’s security has been thoroughly penetrated and many of its senior and mid-level commanders have been killed, along with hundreds of its fighters in the year-long attritional air campaign waged by Israel.

Nasrallah came to the position after the killing of Abbas Musawi and his family in an Israeli airstrike in 1993, and he will be replaced. Israel’s leadership decapitation strategy has killed a large number of Hezbollah’s senior military commanders but they, too, will be replaced.

Lebanese and Palestinian men hold portraits of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as they shout slogans during a protest against his assassination in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon.Credit: AP

There is no doubt that the organisation is badly damaged; the replacement leadership will also be under Israeli pressure and it will need to learn quickly or meet the same fate as their predecessors. But these types of conflicts aren’t won simply by killing the leadership.

While the organisation’s former leadership will not be mourned by most inside Lebanon, nor by many regional countries, the true extent of Israel’s success will become more apparent in months and years ahead. Hezbollah remains the most consequential political grouping within Lebanon, albeit with the implicit, and at times explicit, backing of its armed militia.

Domestically, Hezbollah’s weapons and financial support, provided by Iran and through other means, have allowed it to build a multi-faceted organisation that not only presented itself as a resistance movement but also the dominant political party and provider of social welfare to the Shiite community. Hezbollah and its political allies have also played the role of kingmaker and spoiler – the current impasse over the appointment of a new president is largely because of Hezbollah’s inability to gain a parliamentary majority for the appointment of its preferred candidate, Suleiman Frangieh.

Hezbollah will need to be careful in treading its political path. Sensing weakness, its internal political enemies may seek to impose government primacy in areas under its control. But if Hezbollah retains its political support from among its base Shiite constituency, and the financial means to satisfy its needs, there are limits to what its domestic opponents can do. The Lebanese economy is in ruins due to government neglect and corruption, while the Lebanese armed forces are in no position to try to disarm Hezbollah and would never attempt to do so for fear of setting off sectarian clashes and testing the unity of the army itself.

The impact on the broader “axis of resistance” and hence Iran’s broader security policy may be more pronounced. Iran relies on its non- and semi-state actor partners to act as a deterrent and to avoid becoming directly engaged in hostilities. Among the groups that it sponsors, none has been as long-lasting, closely aligned or as effective as Hezbollah. The group was a creation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, which sensed an opportunity to pressure Israel following the latter’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

Since that time, the group has grown in size, expertise and reputation. It has been deployed to areas of Iranian need to impart training and to take a direct part in the fighting. In Iraq, it helped Iran to train and mobilise Shiite militia groups; in Syria, it helped to stiffen the resistance of the Assad regime and bring Damascus more closely into Tehran’s orbit. But its main role had been to place direct pressure on Israel when Iranian interests required it to do so. The group’s presence on Israel’s border served as a very useful deterrent and removed the need for Tehran to respond directly to provocations.

Israel’s degrading of Hamas and Hezbollah’s military capabilities and the modest support provided by the Houthi movement and Shiite groups in Iraq have exposed the limits of Iran’s indirect deterrence. And the need for Iran to forewarn regional countries and the West about its April 2024 rocket and missile attack in response to an Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus speaks volumes about Iran’s understanding of its strategic weakness and its unwillingness to trigger a broader regional conflict.

The worst-case scenario regarding Iranian understanding of the implications of Hezbollah’s setbacks on its own security would be that it relies less on a policy of “defence in depth” via proxies and nuclear ambiguity and more on realising a nuclear capability and hence accelerate such plans.

Israel appears to have forsaken concerns over collateral damage in its targeting of Nasrallah and weapons and ammunitions stockpiles in the densely populated Shiite heartland of southern Beirut known as the dahiyyah. Here, hundreds of Shiite Lebanese have been reported killed. At the core of the Shiite faith identity are the events surrounding the death of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein, against overwhelming odds at the Battle of Karbala. It has imbued the faith with a willingness to sacrifice in battling more powerful forces. It is also a narrative that Hezbollah constantly employs among its followers.

For this reason alone, we should be cautious about predicting Hezbollah’s demise.

Dr Rodger Shanahan is a Middle East analyst and author of Clans, Parties and Clerics: the Shi’a of Lebanon.