Why Iran’s impotence has been exposed, and Netanyahu’s the big winner

On Friday, on the outskirts of Lebanon’s capital of Beirut, the leaders of Hezbollah filed into their bunker 20 metres underground to meet with the Iranian general responsible for arming and directing them.

Some Hezbollah commanders had a complaint in mind, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal. Hezbollah is the world’s most heavily armed non-state military force, according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Illustration by Dionne Gain.Credit:

Iran has spent billions of dollars over decades helping arm it with an estimated 150,000 rockets and missiles. Yet the terrorist army does not make its own decisions.

It is a creature of the ayatollahs in Iran. Its chiefs swear loyalty to the Supreme Leader of the Shia theocracy, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And, on Friday, some Hezbollah commanders reportedly were smarting under the restraints he’d imposed on them.

Lebanon-based Hezbollah, the “party of God”, had been firing missiles into Israel for nearly a year in a regular but restrained fusillade. It had been effective in forcing Israel to evacuate some 60,000 of its citizens from its border regions, and keeping them evacuated.

But now the Zionists had humiliated and hurt Hezbollah. By detonating thousands of booby trapped paging devices and walkie-talkies while they were in the hands and pockets of Hezbollah members, Israel had brought death deep inside their communities, their homes, their families.

The Hezbollah leaders wanted Iran to free them to unleash greater violence, deeper into Israel. In the presence of their storied leader, Hassan Nasrallah, they would put their case directly to Iran’s General Abbas Nilforushan, the deputy commander for operations of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps. But the “party of God” leadership was prematurely called to higher consultation, taking the Iranian general with them. Israel had tried and failed to kill Nasrallah many times in his three decades as Hezbollah leader, including at least two occasions when its bombs failed to penetrate his protective bunkers.

But now Israeli jets dropped a tightly timed chain of massive 2000-pound missiles to tear deep into his shelter, each explosive smashing a hole through concrete for the next bomb to penetrate further.

US President Joe Biden described it as “a measure of justice” for a man who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Israelis as well as hundreds of Americans and dozens of French citizens over the decades.

The assassination shows not only that Israel has mastered the technical ability to penetrate protected bunkers, but that it has achieved highly sophisticated intelligence capabilities, human and signals. The Israelis knew exactly when and where Nasrallah would be there.

The killing of Nasrallah is a major event, a “historic turning point” according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Among Shia Muslims, Nasrallah was regarded as second only to Khamenei in stature. The ayatollah announced an extended national mourning of five days accordingly. Among other groups in Lebanon, however, he was not loved but loathed. Hezbollah is a parasite on Lebanon, one that has overtaken its host.

For all its significance, it’s just one piece of a much bigger picture. Israel’s move against Nasrallah is part of a sudden and savage, deep and wide assault on thousands of Hezbollah targets including its missile launchers and weapon and fuel stockpiles as well as its fighters and commanders.

“This is the beginning of the end of Hezbollah as we have known it for the past several decades,” Lina Khatib of London’s Chatham House think tank told the Washington Post.

And the new campaign against Hezbollah is, in turn, just one part of Israel’s sweeping offensive against Iran’s proxy militias. Hezbollah is the biggest of the groups comprising the so-called “ring of fire” lit by Tehran to burn Israel to death.

Israel for years has lived under threat from these groups – Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and various smaller militias in the Iranian satrapies of Syria and Iraq.

But today Israel is routing Hamas, dismembering Hezbollah, assailing the Houthis and effectively suppressing attacks from the lesser militias in Syria and Iraq.

What of the running news media refrain, repeated near-daily for months now, that each act of aggression “pushes the region to the brink of an all-out war”?

It’s pretty much there already, and Israel is winning; the only potentially seismic intensification would be a decision by the ayatollahs to escalate their war on Israel from an indirect one to a direct one. But Tehran is in no mood to fight Israel frontally, state-on-state.

First, its impotence has been exposed. When it assailed Israel with more than 300 missiles and drones in April, Israel closed ranks with the US, France, Britain and Jordan to block and destroy all but a handful. Israel suffered no serious damage.

Second, Tehran’s priorities are elsewhere. Iran’s reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, elected in July after Khamenei decided to allow more conciliation and less confrontation, is seeking to reconcile the regime with the Iranian people, relaxing its repressive hijab fanaticism, and to renegotiate Iran’s status as a pariah with the West. Who’s afraid of the ayatollahs now?

Netanyahu says Israel is “changing the balance of power” in the Middle East and few impartial analysts would disagree. But what will he do with Israel’s newly asserted power?

Israel needs the judgment to be able to recognise “the culminating point of victory” when it arrives, in the words of the great Prussian strategist Clausewitz, to convert military gain into sustainable new political reality.

Netanyahu may yet manage this but so far, he’s proved unwilling or unable to develop any strategy beyond the military. The only interest in political strategy he’s demonstrated to date is in his narrow, personal one of holding power at any cost.

His failure to prevent the Hamas attack a year ago pummelled his political standing in Israel; the country’s success against Hezbollah has restored it, according to the polls. To the point where Israeli commentators are speculating that he’ll call an early election to capitalise on his recovery and extend his grip on power. Can Netanyahu escape his own bunker mentality?

Peter Hartcher is international editor.