Those 11 days that gave Hezbollah the worst defeat in its history. international

In 2006, after a 34-day war with Israel, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was found lifeless in the debris of a brutal bombing in Beirut this Sunday, admitting in an interview that, if he could go back in time, he would Nahi Hota ordered a surprise attack on a military patrol, which started the conflict. “We did not think even one percent that this could lead to a war at that time and on such a large scale. If you ask me if I had known (…) that the operation would lead to a war on such a large scale, would I have done it? I tell you no, absolutely not.”

If he thought so after facing such a superior enemy, after a conflict that was a moral victory and at the peak of Hezbollah’s popularity, it is difficult to imagine that Nasrallah, had he been alive, would have 11 What would he think after days? Israel is decapitating and demoralizing the group like never before in its history, providing a reminder to the world that sometimes the cloud of rhetoric and fear prevails: its military and technological superiority is undisputed. . Also supported by the United States.

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

This outcome is perhaps the best strategic moment for Israel in almost a year. Just two weeks ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was stuck in Gaza with no direction other than the preservation of power, the inertia of destruction, and the pursuit of Hamas leader Yahia Sinwar. Today, he looks almighty again. And innocent: His forces have killed almost twice as many Lebanese (over 1,000) in 11 days as in the previous 11 months, and the number of civilians is even higher. It has also forced hundreds of thousands of people to be displaced, who these days are sleeping in schools, apartments and even on the streets and parks in Beirut.

As in 2006, Hezbollah was not expected to reach this far. The attack on October 7, 2023, took them by as much surprise as the exiled Hamas political leadership itself. But the Israeli military began bombing Gaza in response and felt forced to open a new front in defense of its ally and Iran’s strategy. On the 8th, it fired rockets at Shebaa Farms – an area it claims and whose status the UN has called for negotiations since 2006 – and opened fire, which Nasrallah praised in his speeches for victory. as it forced Israel to divert its attention. The strip was stripped of military resources and 67,000 civilians were forced from their homes.

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

unstable equation

The equation eventually became untenable. In Israel, displaced people called for Hezbollah to be crushed so they could return to their homes. In his measured and late response to Venus’s assassination, he showed great fear of open war due to lack of strategy, weakness, or a mixture of the two. Their projectiles and drones did not stop deadly daily life in Gaza and their fear of total war became “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: Political Economy of Lebanon’s Party of God (Hezbollah: The Political Economy of Lebanon’s Party of God).

Israel smelled blood. Months earlier, he had conducted thousands of searches involving explosives walkie talkie The party-militia was commissioned and understood that this was their moment, with Gaza in the background, the United States with its lead in the elections and Iran’s new president, Massoud Pezeshkian, calling on the West to renegotiate sanctions and nuclear Looking at the document. Mossad detonated the devices remotely. To increase effect and illusion in two days. The group lost hundreds of people, communications and confidence. Since then, top leaders fell one after another, almost at his mercy and began meeting him personally. Last Friday, Nasrallah, who survived the assassination attempt, said he did not use electronic devices and had barely seen people in the past two decades. The moral shock to his followers is such that some claimed this Sunday that he is still alive and that Hezbollah is about to be overthrown.

The 11 days of Israeli lightning strikes marked “the most difficult moment” the organization has faced in its four-decade history, Daher said by phone. Israeli military aircraft have gone from overflying the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahiye on the outskirts of Beirut, where Nasrallah was assassinated, to bombings every few hours, breaking the speed of sound, to terrorize the population. . They also fly to main entry points, such as Beirut’s civilian airport, ports or the border with Syria. Even in the Christian district of Achrafiye, the steady hum of Israeli drones could be heard this Sunday. Like in Gaza.

Hezbollah has reported other killings. Such as the case of Nasrallah’s predecessor Abbas al-Moussawi in 1992. Or the case of Imad Mughniye with the car bomb in Damascus in 2008, whose authorship the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert openly confessed this Saturday. “But I have never experienced such serial beheadings of military and political commanders,” Daher insists, before answering the question on air: “Does this mean this is the end of Hezbollah? No.” (…) You can continue to act politically and militarily.

Abed Kananeh, an expert in the Middle East department at Tel Aviv University and author of an essay on Hezbollah, elaborates on this idea: “It has been a huge blow. Not just for those who support him. He was much more than the secretary general of Hezbollah. For many in the Arab world it represented resistance to Israel. “But this does not mean the end of Hezbollah or the war in the north (of the country).”

In Israel, where journalists toast live or hand out chocolates and the announcement of Nasrallah’s killing is applauded on the beach, Kananeh advocates caution. It would be “too early” to assess the group’s ability to mount a spectacular counterattack. “He needs a few days to understand how to react. And the biggest thing is that how were the Israelis able to infiltrate so much? They need it to be able to protect the next leader,” he says.

Daher recalls that the militia – which is considered terrorists by the US and the EU and which combines pragmatism with the Islamic concept of resistance in which there is no room for surrender – preserves a good part of its arsenal, including its Guided missiles were also launched by Israel for the first time last week against the Mossad headquarters near Tel Aviv, and were intercepted.

The tremors of these 11 days will be felt throughout the Middle East, especially Iran. For 11 months, he held his pieces together (some more quarrelsome, some less so) on the geopolitical board. The attacks against Israel from various points helped Tehran achieve its main objective: “to improve its strategic position in the face of negotiations with the West,” the expert says.

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

Today the gunpowder of the silver bullet is quite wet, leaving Tehran in a vulnerable position. Daher summarized: “Hezbollah is not just a puppet of Iran. It also has its own autonomous interests. But if one loses, the other also loses. “The fact that Hezbollah has weakened has also weakened Iran.”

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