After the murder of Hassan Nasrallah, a long-time Hezbollah head, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a big success and that it would” change the balance of power in the region for years to come.”
This may be going further than the circumstances warrant, yet. As a result of Netanyahu’s ordering the attack so he could say primary responsibility for the incident, Nasrallah’s death is undoubtedly a remarkable personal triumph.
And it goes a long way toward restoring the trust of the Jewish people in Netanyahu as a security guarantee for Israel. However, some inquiries are then arising from this course of action. Does Israel, for instance, build a earth war against Hezbollah in Lebanon?
If it does, Hezbollah would undoubtedly find itself at its weakest as a result of the Jewish assault on its walkie-talkies and pagers earlier this month, which left its communications system engulfed.
Additionally, Israel has murdered the majority of Hezbollah’s command government and eight of its nine most senior military leaders.
To maintain this is a profound win, Israel actually needs to follow up somehow. It needs to take the option of Hezbollah’s chaos to eliminate as much of the business and its army of 150, 000 weapons, missiles and drones as it can.
In addition, Hezbollah would undoubtedly be able to seriously hurt Jewish ground makes if they invade southern Lebanon, not least of which because it is said that the border region has an extensive hole system.
And Hezbollah is a huge business that claims to have as many as 100, 000 soldiers, while US intelligence believes it’s likely there closer to 40, 000–50, 000. Perhaps so, that is a fierce range of extremists.
Hezbollah, yet, does not want to get involved in more struggling with Israel at this stage, if it can prevent it. It’s important that, even after Israel’s most recent problems, Hezbollah has not been firing dozens of missiles, rockets and drones regular into Israel, which it is believed to be capable of doing.
May Hezbollah recover?
Without a doubt, this has dealt the business and the leadership of Hezbollah a devastating blow.
The first thing the team needs to do is re-establish its authority. There are two brands that have already been suggested: Hashem Safieddine, Nasrallah’s aunt, and Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s assistant secretary-general.
The new administration therefore needs to find out how deeply Israeli intelligence has penetrated Hezbollah. The death of Nasrallah and the pager-talkie-talkies ‘ blast demonstrate that Israel has incredibly sophisticated knowledge regarding Hezbollah’s inside operations.
Finally, Hezbollah has lost a lot of experience in the eye of the Syrian public. People in Lebanon who oppose Hezbollah’s status as a position within a state will now be yet more opposed because they will claim that it is not actually protecting Lebanon from Israel.
Hezbollah has never been in such a dire circumstance before. That’s why whoever succeeds may do a significant job of restoring its reputation as a fighting power.
Hezbollah is a significant business that is a significant component of Lebanon’s social scene, but it has the potential to re-establish itself. The Hezbollah-led alliance has a bloc of more than 60 chairs in the Syrian parliament – not a majority but substantial however. Additionally, it offers social services to the poor Shi’a people of southern Lebanon and southern Beirut.
The other big issue is whether Iran, Hezbollah’s defense backer, will respond to the shooting of Nasrallah.
Iran promised retribution in July when Israel killed Hamas political head Ismail Haniyeh, but it has not yet done so.
In Baghdad in 2020, the US killed Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Quds Force in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, with more than a dozen missiles fired at two bases in Iraq cover US soldiers, and that was it.
In April, its response to the Jewish dying of some Muslim Revolutionary Guard officers in the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, was more powerful. Tehran launched about 300 rockets, drones and missiles at Israel.
But it also telegraphed its retribution well in advance, and Israel’s Iron Dome, with the help of US defense support, was able to avoid any major damage. These new reactions demonstrate that a larger war is currently not in Iran’s best interests.
What direction does the area take?
Hezbollah has few friends in the Middle East, primarily because it is a violent branch of the majority Shia religion, which has been perceived as opposed to the pursuits of more modest Sunni Arab states, including Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf state.
In the end, there will be some unintended happiness among Sunni Arab leaders that Nasrallah has left because he was perceived as a potential source of great difficulty for the region.
Quickly, following the 2006 conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, Nasrallah was the most popular president in the Muslim world, according to opinion surveys. That did n’t last very long, but he remained influential across the region.
The other thing that would allow Sunni Arab states and leaders to relax about the removal of Nasrallah and the region’s ongoing conflict, including the conflict in Gaza and the Lebanon issue, is that all the fighting is causing outrage on the streets in nations like Egypt, Jordan, and others in the area, including Egypt. Sunni officials are irritated by this, making the area more fragile.
The Houthi rebels in Yemen and Shia militia teams with bases in Iraq are the only ones who are currently prepared to support Hezbollah. However, they are both a short distance away and are unable to directly impact the issue in the area.
It’s unlikely that Iran’s leaders will encourage these proxy groups to join a situation that could escalate into a situation that could escalate beyond the region because it does n’t want an entire war there.
So there are many athletes who want to bring some sort of normalcy back to the area. That includes the Biden administration, who fears that the Democratic voting in the November US national election will be divided by the ongoing problems.
This plays into Netanyahyu’s arms, as he is able to work independently of US attempts to grip him in. Whatever he does, he may continue to receive US defense support.
Ian Parmeter is study professor, Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National University
This content was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original post.