Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other top commanders in recent weeks is part of a dramatic shift in the country’s approach to the Lebanese militant group. Its longtime strategy of trying to deter Hezbollah has given way to something else: a relentless bombing campaign aimed at weakening the group and forcing it to sue for peace on Israel’s terms due to incapacity.
In so doing, Israel probably hopes that Hezbollah will agree to remove its fighters from the Israeli border area and then accept a broader cease-fire, enabling Israeli to return its 60,000 or so displaced citizens to their homes in the north of the country. This is a high-risk shift. Hezbollah has been hit hard, and it is possible that it may make major concessions to Israel, at least in the short term, or that its response is anemic due to Israel’s decimation of its ranks. Getting terrorist or militant groups to bend the knee is difficult, however, and even weaker groups can still lash out hard, as Israel itself has learned from experience. In the past, however, Hezbollah has shown itself to be strong and determined, both in fighting Israel directly and in using international terrorism to hit back outside the theater—both done with the support of its Iranian patron.
Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other top commanders in recent weeks is part of a dramatic shift in the country’s approach to the Lebanese militant group. Its longtime strategy of trying to deter Hezbollah has given way to something else: a relentless bombing campaign aimed at weakening the group and forcing it to sue for peace on Israel’s terms due to incapacity.
In so doing, Israel probably hopes that Hezbollah will agree to remove its fighters from the Israeli border area and then accept a broader cease-fire, enabling Israeli to return its 60,000 or so displaced citizens to their homes in the north of the country. This is a high-risk shift. Hezbollah has been hit hard, and it is possible that it may make major concessions to Israel, at least in the short term, or that its response is anemic due to Israel’s decimation of its ranks. Getting terrorist or militant groups to bend the knee is difficult, however, and even weaker groups can still lash out hard, as Israel itself has learned from experience. In the past, however, Hezbollah has shown itself to be strong and determined, both in fighting Israel directly and in using international terrorism to hit back outside the theater—both done with the support of its Iranian patron.
It is rare that such groups are defeated solely by the removal of a key leader, even one as formidable as Nasrallah. Over decades of counterterrorism, Israel has killed leaders of a wide range of Palestinian groups, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and many, many others. For the most part, these groups kept on fighting.
Groups that are well institutionalized often have a deep bench and clear succession plans, making them harder to destroy through leadership decapitation. Although the Israelis repeatedly killed senior Hamas figures, the organization regrouped under new leaders and kept on fighting. Nasrallah has long been under threat of assassination and almost certainly had a succession plan (current betting is on Hashem Safieddine) that will enable the group to keep going.
In addition, assassinations can lead groups to escalate with international terrorism, and Hezbollah’s own history shows this painfully. In 1992, Israel killed Nasrallah’s predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi. In response, Hezbollah bombed the Israeli Embassy in Argentina that year, killing 29 people. In 2012, as Iran and Israel fought a shadow war that included the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, a Hezbollah suicide bomber attacked a busload of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, killing six people as well as himself. International terrorism from Hezbollah, which so far has not been a feature of the post-Oct. 7 fighting, is back on the table.
Iran will assist Hezbollah, making it even harder to disrupt the group. Since its founding, Iran has played an active role in funding, training, and arming Hezbollah, and much of the group’s massive rocket and missile arsenal comes from Iran. In addition, Iran can offer Hezbollah leaders and fighters a haven in which to train and regroup. This haven is less than ideal, as Iran is far from Lebanon and Israel has shown it can conduct assassinations in Iran, but it is still safer than being on the front lines.
Yet, for all these limits, assassinations of leaders can diminish groups and make them more likely to make concessions. Both the Shining Path in Peru and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) suffered when their leaders were arrested. The U.S. attacks on the al Qaeda core, which killed Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, also hit the group hard—even though Zawahiri was hit in 2022, the group has not officially announced his replacement.
Succession in terrorist or militant groups can create numerous difficulties, and decapitation often worsens these. A new leader must earn the respect of group members, clarify policies, and otherwise consolidate power and authority. This takes time even in the best of circumstances. These problems are especially difficult if the campaign is similar to Israel’s against Hamas during the Second Intifada or the U.S. decimation of al Qaeda’s ranks. In such circumstances, which Hezbollah faces today, disruption is occurring at every level, with local commanders, recruiters, trainers, paymasters, and others all being removed at a rapid rate.
Moreover, Israel’s operations show it has fully penetrated Hezbollah’s communications network and that its intelligence services have superb intelligence on the group in general. Leaders in this situation face a choice: They can communicate and organize their forces—and die—or they can hide out and thus allow their organizations to drift without direction.
In addition to weakness, the broader threat of devastation to Lebanon may also shape Hezbollah’s thinking. As devastating as the recent Israeli attacks on Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, and southern Lebanon are, the destruction could be much worse—as the Gaza campaign shows. Given Lebanon’s already precarious economic and political situation, Hezbollah has so far hesitated to make a bad situation worse.
Even Iran may worry about escalation. Iran’s April missile and drone attack on Israel largely fizzled, and its other options for escalation appear limited given the country’s military and economic weaknesses and the risk to Tehran that the United States might become involved if Iran escalates. Iran, however, may turn to international terrorism, given its desire to hit Israel and the paucity of other options.
Finally, targeted killings can be good for public morale. Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack traumatized Israel, diminishing faith in its vaunted intelligence services and military forces. Tactical intelligence successes such as the pager operation and leadership strikes show Israelis in a visible and visceral way that their government is defending them.
The risk of a deterrent approach is that when it fails, it can fail disastrously. Before Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli leaders thought Hamas was deterred, and thus they did not degrade the group, allowing it to build its strength. The risk of shifting to attempts to coerce a group by weakening it, as Israel is doing now, is that you provoke a greater fight. Hezbollah, so far, has conducted only a limited war on Israel, using just a fraction of its arsenal and not engaging in international terrorism. This forbearance may soon change.
Hezbollah, of course, will want revenge for Nasrallah and its other fallen leaders and fighters. In addition, it may feel it has to respond, both for its own credibility and because Israel will not let up even if the group shows restraint. Given its massive rocket and missile arsenal that could reach all of Israel, the threat from the group remains lethal.
Israel, however, appears to be betting that degrading Hezbollah will hinder the group’s response and, perhaps, make it more likely to come to the table. The pace of losses is so intense, and the probable disarray high, that the group may seek a respite, even at the price of removing its fighters from the Israeli border and accepting a cease-fire on Israel’s terms.
Israel is rolling the dice. Hezbollah may be too weak to fight back and so bruised it makes concessions. But the group in the past has shown its resilience, and it may prefer to hit back harder rather than back down.