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By Brendan Cole
Senior Reporter
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Israeli said it killed Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah in a Beirut air strike on Friday, dealing a stunning blow to Iran, the Middle Eastern nation's most implacable foe.
The chief of the Iranian-backed militant group had reportedly been the target of Israel's attacks on the Lebanese capital on Friday, and there had been rumors that he had been hit.
Considered by many regional analysts and supporters as the most charismatic leader in a network of proxies that projected Iran power across the Middle East, Nasrallah rarely appeared in public but cultivated a cult like following with his televised speeches.
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Nasrallah's death delivers the most significant blow to the Lebanese militant group after months of fighting. The killing will also affect Iran, the group's main backer, and one expert told Newsweek that Tehran "has two choices now—both are very bad."
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday: "Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Hezbollah terrorist organization and one of its founders, was eliminated yesterday, together with Ali Karki, the Commander of Hezbollah's Southern Front, and additional Hezbollah commanders."
The IDF said that several top Hezbollah commanders were also killed along with Nasrallah in a precise airstrike as the group met at its headquarters in Dahiyeh, south of Beirut, the Associated Press reported. Iranian media reported Saturday that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan was also killed alongside Nasrallah.
Nasrallah had headed Hezbollah since 1992 and, with help from the IRGC, oversaw the buildup of a huge arsenal of missiles and its forces outstripped the Lebanese army, becoming a state within a state.
Nasrallah took over leadership of Hezbollah after his predecessor was killed by an Israeli helicopter gunship. He spent his last days increasingly isolated as Israel disrupted the militant group's communications and wiped out an entire generation of its most talented and experienced commanders. The intelligence breaches that paralyzed Hezbollah would also have caused terror in Tehran whose communications networks overlap with the Lebanese militia's. Iran's ambassador to Lebanon was injured by an exploding pager along with many Hezbollah leaders.
Israel is widely thought to have launched last week's exploding pagers attack, but it has not taken responsibility for it.
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Despite representing the Shi'ite community in a country driven by sectarian feuds, Nasrallah became a revered figure nationally when Israel ended its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000. Hezbollah also built a strong political presence in Lebanon with a powerful faction in parliament.
It was the alliance with Iran that transformed Hezbollah from an obscure faction descended largely from the Shiite Amal movement into a Middle Eastern powerhouse that represented a greater security threat to Israel than any of the Arab nations that surround it.
Nasrallah, who was trained in Iran, obtained an arsenal of long-range missiles, rockets and other weaponry. Its forces soon easily outstripped the Lebanese army, becoming a state within a state. In 2006, a Hezbollah raid on Israel's military triggered a devastating response and dented Nasrallah's reputation inside Lebanon where he was criticized for drawing the small country into Iran's orbit. Nasrallah said he regretted that confrontation.
However, when civil war broke out in Syria, Nasrallah sent his forces to fight for President Bashar Al Assad, an Iranian ally. That deployment cemented Nasrallah's status in Iran's proxy network which includes Hamas, Yemen's Houthis and militias in Iraq.
Nonetheless, it was opposition to Israel that defined Nasrallah's career for decades, even in the face of personal loss. When his Israeli forces killed his eldest son, Nasrallah refused to exchange his remains for those of Israeli soldiers, saying he was proud to be the father of a martyr
His position on Israel was identical to that of the clerical regime that took control of Iran in the 1979 revolution. "I am against any reconciliation with Israel," Nasrallah told The Washington Post in 2000. "I do not even recognize the presence of a state that is called 'Israel.' I consider its presence both unjust and unlawful...Hezbollah refuses any conciliation with Israel in principle."
When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 Israelis and taking more than 200 hostage, Nasrallah committed Hezbollah to a strategy of persistent rocket attacks on northern Israel, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israeli civilians. Those rocket attacks continued this last week as Hezbollah suffered after blow morale sapping blow from Israel's military and intelligence agencies
In comments reported by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Herzi Halevi, IDF chief, said the attack had been planned for a long time and that "this is not the last of the toolbox; there are more tools to go." Halevi added that, "whoever threatens the state of Israel, we'll know how to get to him."
There have been tit-for-tat attacks between both Hezbollah and Israel following the October 7 raid by Hamas into southern Israel that preceded the bombardment of Gaza.
This month, Iran promised retribution for attacks blamed on Israeli on electronic devices linked to Hezbollah members, which killed dozens and injured thousands.
Following Israel's bombardment of Beirut, the successful targeting of the Hezbollah leader by IDF will be seen as an escalation and a major provocation to the group's key backer, Iran, as the world awaits Tehran's next move.
"The main challenge for Iran is the lack of proper options for confronting Israel without entering into a full-fledged war that Iran has been trying to avoid," Hamidreza Azizi, a research fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin, told Newsweek on Saturday.
"Iran has two choices now. Both are very bad," Azizi said. "One is to enter into a war. Any move at this moment would trigger massive Israeli response and the chain of actions of reactions that will definitely result in a bigger war, and Israel has made it clear that it is ready for that."
The other option, Azizi added, would be "to do nothing and just wait for international efforts to stop the war in Gaza and Lebanon, which doesn't seem to be really effective." This would see Tehran "lose all these kind of fronts that they have been building in the region—from Lebanon to Syria."
Following the Israeli bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus in April, Tehran launched ballistic and cruise missiles, and loitering munitions toward Israel in retaliation, which were intercepted.
This showed that Iran's options for retaliation against Nasrallah's reported killing are quite limited, Azizi said.
Drones wouldn't work because of the geographical distance so Tehran would have to rely on its more-advanced ballistic missiles, which are limited in number, or mobilize its regional proxies in the Axis of Resistance.
"The problem there is that there is a serious lack of command, because, after the killing of Qassem Soleimani in 2020, it was actually Hezbollah and Nasrallah who were in charge of this network," Azizi said.
"It seems that Israel leaders really are determined to use the momentum after October 7 and the war in Gaza to degrade Iranian influence on the region at any cost, so this is the predicament that Iran is in."
Newsweek has contacted the Lebanese and Iranian foreign ministries for comment.
Update 09/28/24, 6 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with further information and comment from Hamidreza Azizi.
Update 09/28/24, 9 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with further background about Nasrallah.
Update 09/28/24, 12:38 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with further background information.
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