Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah Killed

The Israeli military says they got their man after years of intelligence collection.

AP (“Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in Beirut strike, Israel’s military says“):

Israel said Saturday that it killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, dealing its most significant blow to the Lebanese militant group after months of fighting. There was no immediate confirmation from Hezbollah.

If the claim is true, Nasrallah is by far the most powerful target to be killed by Israel in weeks of intensified fighting with Hezbollah. The military said it carried out a precise airstrike on Friday while Hezbollah leadership met at their headquarters in Dahiyeh, south of Beirut.

Israel’s Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said Saturday that the elimination of Nasrallah was “not the end of our toolbox,” indicating that more strikes were planned. He said that the strike targeting Hezbollah leadership was the result of a long period of preparation.

The Lebanese Health Ministry said six people were killed and 91 injured in the strikes Friday, which leveled six apartment buildings. Ali Karki, the Commander of Hezbollah’s Southern Front, and additional Hezbollah commanders, were also killed in the attack, the Israeli military said.

The Israeli military said it was mobilizing additional reserve soldiers as tensions escalate with Lebanon, activating three battalions of reserve soldiers to serve across the country. The call comes after it sent two brigades to northern Israel earlier in the week to train for a possible ground invasion.

Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an army spokesman, said the airstrike was based on years of tracking Nasrallah along with “real time intelligence” that made it viable. He said Nasrallah’s death had been confirmed through various types of intelligence, but declined to elaborate.

Shoshani said that Israel has inflicted heavy damage on Hezbollah’s capabilities over the past week by targeting a combination of immediate threats and strategic weapons, such as larger, guided missiles. But he said much of Hezbollah’s arsenal still remains intact and that Israel would continue to target the group.

“This isn’t a threat that has gone away,” he said.

Shoshani said it is “safe to assume” that Hezbollah will retaliate and that Israel is on “high readiness.”

But he said Israel hopes the blow to Hezbollah will change the course of the war.

“We hope this will change Hezbollah’s actions,” he said. “We have been looking for solutions, looking for a change in reality that will bring our civilians home,” referring to the approximately 60,000 Israelis who have been evacuated from their homes along the Lebanese border for almost a year. Earlier this month, Israel’s government said halting Hezbollah’s attacks in the country’s north to allow residents to return to their homes is an official war goal.

We’ve learned over the decades since the 9/11 attacks that killing senior leaders doesn’t necessarily destroy a terrorist organization. Indeed, Hassan was elevated to this post in 1992 after his predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi, met a similar fate.

Still, there’s a psychological effect on the enemy and a morale boost for the home team. Hezbollah has done a lot of evil over the last four decades and bringing justice to those who planned those atrocities is satisfying, if not strategically decisive.

FILED UNDER: Middle East, National Security, Terrorism, World Politics, , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is a Professor of Security Studies. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Stormy Dragon says:

    Hezbollah has done a lot of evil over the last four decades and bringing justice to those who planned those atrocities is satisfying

    Like remember the time they blew up six apartment buildings to get one guy? I’m glad they’ve finally been held to account for such a barbaric attack.

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  2. James Joyner says:

    @Stormy Dragon:

    The Lebanese Health Ministry said six people were killed and 91 injured in the strikes Friday, which leveled six apartment buildings. Ali Karki, the Commander of Hezbollah’s Southern Front, and additional Hezbollah commanders, were also killed in the attack, the Israeli military said.

    I’m not sure how to reconcile the “level six apartment buildings” and “six people were killed,” with at least four of those being “Hezbollah commanders.” These clearly aren’t high-rise apartments. This seems incredibly surgical if that’s right.

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  3. JKB says:

    Indeed, Hassan was elevated to this post in 1992 after his predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi, met a similar fate.

    It amuses me when people opine on how they’ll just replace the guy at the head of a wealthy, murderous organization. Yeah, that’s how militaries and mafias work. They plan for the loss of leaders. And for a terrorist organization, someone is always willing to seize the “assets” and live a life of luxury.

    On the other hand, that’s 32 years of alliances, coalitions, and minion building gone. And Israel has taken out what looks like the 2nd and 3rd tiers. That can mean internecine fighting which the Mossad can exploit, the IDF track and the killing of a lot of “good” fighters by their fellow “soldiers”.

    If that keeps Hezbollah shooting wild or shooting inside Lebanon, then that’s good.

    And if it is true that killing a leader has little impact, why do academics all fantasize about the impact of killing Hitler? The German college graduates had been inculcated with the ideas and values that came to be known as Nazism for more than 70 years. Long before Hitler was born, much less rose to power. Sure, it was only after the Germans saw and adopted the practices of the Soviets that the true horror was made raw, but the beliefs were there in the college educated Germans.

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  4. James Joyner says:

    @JKB: I don’t think the Hitler analogy works here. Nasrallah took over an already-formed organization.

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  5. Kingdaddy says:

    Just because you can do something militarily doesn’t mean you should.

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  6. steve says:

    He deserved to die so good riddance. Long term killing these leaders hasn’t made much difference, but if Israel is really going tp invade Lebanon it might be a benefit in the short term. Given the poor performance of the IDF in some of their prior ground attacks in Lebanon may be a big benefit.

    Steve

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  7. charontwo says:

    @JKB: @James Joyner:

    So like Trump then?

    But is the GOP a terrorist organization? Let’s ask the people in Springfield OH.

    Bear in mind Hitler got his start as supposedly a mole working for the German Army reporting back on the Nazis – except he decided to switch sides and take over the Nazis.

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  8. Modulo Myself says:

    Israel’s problem is that they aren’t fighting evil in a war of spectacle. They have 60,000 people who have been forced out of their homes because of Hezbollah missile launches. Personally, it would require more than a few assassinations of a militia’s leaders to get me back into that house. Hezbollah has a budget of 700 million. They can keep on firing these missiles regardless of who is at the top.

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  9. Stormy Dragon says:

    @James Joyner:

    The article helpfully left out the rest of the Health Ministry’s statement that this was only the people they know of so far because they’re not sure how many people are buried under the rubble of the apartment blocks.

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  10. Michael Reynolds says:

    He was a bad man. It’s a good thing that he’s dead.

    The best outcome here would be if the murdering side of Hezbollah stepped back and the governing side of Hezbollah took precedence. Urban ground warfare is not easy, and Israeli soldiers will die, as well as Hezbollah soldiers and civilians. Hezbollah needs to decide if they want an Israeli ground invasion, or not.

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  11. Stormy Dragon says:

    @James Joyner:

    These clearly aren’t high-rise apartments.

    I mean, it would take a full 30 seconds on Google to find pictures demonstrating they were at least mid-rise apartments (not sure where the precise cutoff in the Lebanese building code is)

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  12. James Joyner says:

    @Stormy Dragon: That makes more sense.

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  13. Raoul says:

    Great, more killings. This tells me Israel has no exit strategy. Of course, Hezbollah will have a new leader, and he will order more rockets attacks, leading to more retaliatory strikes. Wash, rinse, repeat.

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  14. JKB says:

    @James Joyner: Nasrallah took over an already-formed organization.

    So did Hitler. But my point is that it is rare that removing one person will derail an organization that was built on decades of inculcated values.

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  15. charontwo says:

    @JKB:

    Reasoning by analogy has limitations as analogies are never exact and might not even be close.

    And, authoritarian power structures can vary a lot – are they very ideological, are they heavily religious, how tolerant of corruption and grifting are they, are they influenced by foreign powers etc.

    You might, for example, have something like Russia where the top guy surrounds himself with incompetents who are unlikely to overthrow him, especially as he sees to it no one gets too powerful.

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  16. Andy says:

    A pretty remarkable 10 days!

    We’ve learned over the decades since the 9/11 attacks that killing senior leaders doesn’t necessarily destroy a terrorist organization. Indeed, Hassan was elevated to this post in 1992 after his predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi, met a similar fate.

    This situation now is significantly different considering Israel has killed almost everyone in Hezbollah’s senior command structure. Then, the pager and tactical radio attacks decimated much of the mid-level leadership. Sooner or later, I bet we’ll have a Hezbollah leader without eyes or balls.

    Nasrallah’s replacement was killed today within hours of his appointment to the position, just to put a point on it.

    As a former intel guy, it is all quite remarkable – the degree to which Israel has had the drop on Hezbollah (and Iran) at so many levels is something I’ve never seen. The closest analogy may be the first Gulf War in 1991, which was massively one-sided in terms of information, intelligence and most everything else that matters in war. This is the kind of access and info we wished we had with AQ, ISIS, the Taliban, and other groups we fought for decades. It also provides a big contrast with Hamas, which Israel underestimated and clearly did not have nearly the intelligence access there that it does with Hezbollah.

    And now that Hezbollah is leaderless and paralyzed, Israel is methodically going after the weapon caches and more mundane military capabilities Hezbollah and Iran have spent decades and billions building up. And there’s really nothing Hezbollah or Iran can do about it.

    Speaking of Iran, two senior Qods force leaders were killed in the bunker with Nasrallah – yet more proof of the coordination and between the two. This is also a massive blow to Iran and its desire to have its proxies attack and threaten Israel. Hezbollah is/was the gem and center of Iran’s strategy, and now that’s in shambles – almost three decades of work down the toilet for them.

    Opening the Pandora’s Box of war is always risky – there’s a reason war is best avoided unless absolutely necessary. Hezbollah and Iran thought they could attack Israel and that Hezbollah’s missile capabilities would deter Israel and keep the war limited. It turns out that was a foolish assumption – many who start wars delude themselves with similar foolish assumptions. It couldn’t happen to a nicer group.

    Finally, it’s important to note just what a bad actor Hezbollah is and was. Although the Jew/Israel haters and useful idiots in the West are whinging their asses off, there’s a reason the rest of Lebanon and most of the ME outside of Hamas, Assad, and Iran are celebrating this. Hezbollah murdered thousands, used famine as a weapon (Google the siege of Madaya for a taste of the reality of what an urban seige can really look like – unlike the supposed “Genocide” Israel is accused of committing), not to mention all the American blood on their hands. Although it’s probably too much to ask for, especially with Iranian meddling, it would be great if Hezbollah could be fully disarmed and become just another political party in Lebanon instead of holding the rest of Lebanon hostage as Iran’s bitch.

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  17. dazedandconfused says:

    @Andy:

    Agree this is the most effective decapitation project I’ve ever seen. Damn near the entire chart of Hezzie leadership has been taken out. They may be rudderless. Probably are.

    I would quibble with the characterizations of Hezb’allah a wee bit though. It’s a day being celebrated by AQ, ISIS, MB and all other Sunni jihadists in the Levant as well, not just the Israelis. An organization totally devoted to the destruction of Israel is not the full picture of what they are…or perhaps were.

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  18. de stijl says:

    How could escalation possibly go wrong?

  19. Andy says:

    @dazedandconfused:

    I would quibble with the characterizations of Hezb’allah a wee bit though. It’s a day being celebrated by AQ, ISIS, MB and all other Sunni jihadists in the Levant as well, not just the Israelis. An organization totally devoted to the destruction of Israel is not the full picture of what they are…or perhaps were.

    That’s a fair quibble. There are a lot of Sunni bad actors that are happy with Hezbollah/Iran losing. But there are also a lot of normal people who just want to live their lives.

    And I agree – Hezbollah isn’t entirely about the destruction if Israel, they have an actual political community and constituency in Lebanon. Hence why – ideally – I’d like to see them become a normal political party instead of Iran’s strategic weapon operating contrary to Lebanese interests. Iran could have poured billions into making Hezbollah and its constituency a partner in making Lebanon and Lebanese society better and wealthier – instead, they spent those billions weaponizing the group for a war with Israel, and then started that war without Lebanese approval and are currently in the process of getting their asses kicked. Not to mention all the other very undemocratic things Hezbollah’s done along with helping the murderous Assad regime starve its own citizens. They both have legitimate political power and interests but are also a malevolent force.

    This has really been the long-term problem with Israel’s enemies – after 3/4 of a century, they keep thinking that violence and war will get rid of the Jews, and they keep losing those conflicts and losing ground again and again —the very definition of insanity.

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  20. JohnSF says:

    This also indicates that Iran made a massive miscalculation.
    Hezbollah was supposed to continue rocket attacks on northern Israel, to show the value of Iranian support for Hamas, while holding its main missile force in reserve.
    The problem was: in reserve for what, exactly?
    1) Deter an Israeli main-force strike on Hezbollah?
    Or
    2) Deter an Israeli strike on Iran?

    The indications are than Tehran was going with 2).
    But failed to work out the implications of the resulting failure of 1).

    It may be that Israeli wrecking of Hezbollah command/communications has rendered a massive counter-strike difficult to achieve
    (We don’t know, as yet, how far Israeli strikes have damaged actual Hezbollah missile forces)

    The other factor: within Lebanon, the “mythology” of Hezbollah was of an organization immune to Israeli penetration and subversion ops.
    This has been demolished.
    It’s quite clear Israel has very good actionable intelligence on Hezbollah, and NOT just from electronic sources.

    And other Lebanese actors are going to be looking at Hezbollah, and figuring the odds.
    And may now be inclined to receive, and exchange intelligence with Israel.
    And to act on it.
    The very recent Hezbollah pronunciations of wrath against any Lebanese who may dare defy them is a “tell” in this regard.

    An overlooked side note: the Syrian government has ordered its forces to stop using electronic devices for communication.
    And it’s a fair bet that IRG forces in Syria are also rather nervous about comms security.

    Netanyahu may be a fool.
    But the recent chain of events indicates the Israeli military staff and security agencies are not.

    The next stage: is Iran now prepared, as it was not before, to roll the dice on a missile war escalation?

    Or accept the humiliation of Hezbollah, for the time being?

    And is Hezbollah prepared to continue to submit to the dictates of Tehran?

    4
  21. JohnSF says:

    @dazedandconfused:
    There are also a lot of Sunnis, pretty likely the majority, who are not jihadists.
    (Same applies to most Shia, for that matter)
    Even the Muslim Brotherhood are not universally bad actors.
    Same applies to Amal, which was once the main Shia group in Lebanon, before Hezbollah took the leading position, due largely to Iranian/Syrian sponsorship and force.

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  22. JohnSF says:

    @de stijl:
    Escalation can go wrong.
    Or it can go right.
    It depends.

    4
  23. JohnSF says:

    @JKB:
    Wut?
    The NSDAP was almost entirely of Hitler’s devising.
    It incorporated various previously existing groups (Stahlhelm etc)
    But the organization did NOT pre-exist Hitler’s leadership.

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  24. Andy says:

    @JohnSF:

    Excellent points and comments!

    It’s a big question as to what happens next, especially over the long term.

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  25. MarkedMan says:

    @Andy:

    they have an actual political community and constituency in Lebanon

    if I remember correctly they have a presence in Lebanon because they murdered every politician and prominent person who objected to their takeover – and many schmoes on the street.

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  26. JohnSF says:

    @MarkedMan:

    “…because they murdered every politician and prominent person who objected”

    At least in part.
    And because they had the backing of the Syrian (Alawite) state and the IRG.
    Both of whom are less secure than they were, upon a time.
    Which is why they may now be feeling a bit nervous.
    There are LOT of other Lebanese with scores to settle.
    Including Amal.
    Many of whom are not inclined to either forgiveness, or gentleness, or legal proceduralism.
    (Doesn’t mean said parties love the Israelis, either. But a little dealing?)

    A thing: a LOT of Hezbollah membership was covert; it relied upon both secrecy and fear, as well as its open leadership.
    The Israeli pager op “outed” a lot of the concealed command hierarchy.

    It was an attack with multi-level ramifications, none of which are at all good for Hezbollah.

    (Incidentally, some people to seem to think the pager attack wrecked Israeli coms interception: thing is, pagers are essentially one way only devices.)

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  27. Modulo Myself says:

    Do people really think this is going to stop Hezbollah from firing rockets in the immediate future? There have been a lot of five-star reviews of Israel’s strategy and military in the past year, and what’s the result? They can’t agree to legitimate cease-fire offers from any party in the conflict, despite having destroyed Gaza. They have killed more hostages than they have saved. Saudi Arabia has said that there’s no treaty without a two-state solution. Of the numerous accusations regarding everything from torture to shooting children in the head to intentionally targeting aid workers, Israel and America have offered the kind of defenses Trump or Eric Adams would offer. Unless your will to believe is rated 100% MAGA, it’s hard to understand the confidence.

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  28. JohnSF says:

    @Modulo Myself:
    Hezbollah actually has (or perhaps, as things are going, had) a large missile arsenal it has not used.
    Which is the point.
    It has not used that arsenal because Iran has forbidden it to do so, because Iran wanted to hold that force in reserve as a deterrent against an Israeli attack on Iranian targets.

    But, at the same time, Iran also wanted Hezbollah to continue limited rocket attacks into Israel, to show that both Hezbollah and Iran could support Hamas.
    Israel has called that hand.
    Hezbollah can continue to fire; but unless it resorts to its heavy missile arsenal, it’s going to be on the losing end of the exchange.
    And if it does (or even can) use the heavies, Iran loses its deterrent shield.

    That is the Iranian miscalculation.

    The Israeli government miscalculation is that any of this resolves their longer-term strategic dilemma; and indeed it may make it worse if it empowers the far right settlers in the West Bank.
    Overlooked: the Israeli courts vs Netayahu govt. fight is ongoing.

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  29. dazedandconfused says:

    @Andy:

    Most of the Lebanese I’ve met believed the key to Hezb’allah’s support was they got the credit for chucking Israel out of Lebanon, and without that, half of the country would’ve been another West Bank. They view it as the only credible military force they have, the only defense against Israel and actors like ISIS and other radical groups, some funded by Saudis who’ve never completely abandoned the dream of Wahabi-tizing the Levant. Between Israel and Lebanon the paranoia works both ways, it would seem, so I wonder how accurate the depiction of Hezb’allah as totally dedicated to the destruction of Israel is. Israel has nukes, worse comes to worst, and everybody knows it.

    Nevertheless they really screwed the pooch this time. Gross underestimation to how Israel would react to the strikes on the Shebaa farms, an act probably intended as a token gesture, and a similar mistake on Israel’s capability to rip them several new ones without having to invade. Effed around and found out, as deserved.