TERRORISMThe Nasrallah Killing Is a Crushing Blow to Hezbollah
Hezbollah leader Sayed Hassan Nasrallah possessed a rare set of abilities that made the group a formidable foe to Israel and a power broker in Lebanon. His killing by Israel sharply weakens the threat posed by the group and its patron, Iran.
How much of a setback to Hezbollah is the Nasrallah killing?
It is a huge, potential game-changer. Nasrallah’s death is a crushing blow: one that follows on the heels of the systematic elimination by Israel of most of Hezbollah’s military leadership. In recent weeks, Israel has killed Fuad Shukr, head of Hezbollah’s strategic division and the movement’s most senior military authority; Ibrahim Aqil, the group’s operational chief who was responsible for Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit as well as that unit’s commander, Wissam al-Tawil; and over a dozen other senior commanders. Yet another senior commander, Ali Karaki, responsible for the group’s southern front adjoining Israel, was reportedly killed along with Nasrallah. Coupled with Israel’s sabotage detonation of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah for the communication of orders and important instructions, the group has likely been rendered operationally inert—at least for the foreseeable future.
Indeed, there are no clear successors to Nasrallah given his unique and unrivalled stature at the top of the movement. Sayed Naim Qassem, Nasrallah’s long-serving deputy, is a less well known outside of Lebanon and is arguably best known within Hezbollah for once having headed its religious education department. Qassem therefore arguably lacks Nasrallah’s military and strategic acumen and his political savvy. The only senior Hezbollah officers of any standing still alive is the mostly unknown Abu Ali Rida, the commander of its elite Bader unit.
Hezbollah retains its arsenal of an estimated 150,000 rockets and missiles—a figure thought to be ten times the number it possessed during the 2006 Second Lebanon War with Israel. Nasrallah once claimed that Hezbollah had upwards of 100,000 fighters, but in 2022 the Institute for Strategic Studies estimated that the group’s fighting strength in reality was about a fifth of that number. Regardless, with its leadership effectively decapitated and its communications compromised and its penetration by Israeli intelligence having made both possible, Hezbollah for the time being will have trouble mobilizing to engage in any kind of effective and sustained combat with Israel.
