Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, is notorious for carrying out outrageous and criminal murders of high-profile members of its opponents with impunity. For instance, on 31st July 2024, Israel killed Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh in a heinous attack in Tehran. This high-profile assassination campaign of its opponents is an old script that Israel has followed repeatedly in its deplorable history. It is a tactical tool employed by the Zionist state in waging a war of attrition against its enemies.
After recently degrading Hezbollah’s communication networks by launching a coordinated cyber-attack on its communication devices—pagers and walkie-talkies, Israel has been pursuing an offensive and escalatory military strategy to assassinate the group’s senior commanders. Hezbollah (the party of God) is a paramilitary Shia group based in Lebanon.
In the last couple of months, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave orders to kill two senior commanders of Hezbollah including Ibrahim Aqil and Faud Shukr in his desperate attempt to change the balance of power in the region. Last Friday 27 September, Israeli forces crossed all red lines and assassinated the supreme leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. He was killed using bunker blast bombs in a series of coordinated airstrikes in the Dahiyah suburb of southern Beirut.
The casualties of the Israeli airstrike also included other Hezbollah members — senior commander Ali Karaki, and a deputy commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Abbas Nilforoushan. These deadly strikes remind one of the atrocious Dahiya Doctrine—a strategy of disproportionate attacks on civilian targets to create deterrence—that Israel employed during the 1982 war.
According to the Iranian Embassy in Beirut, Nasrallah’s callous murder tantamount to a change in the rules of the game in the Israeli-Hezbollah cross-border conflict which began when Hamas launched its military operation—Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
This series of assassinations is another grave manifestation of Israel’s egregious provocations and miscalculation. The foolish tactical strategy of “escalate to de-escalate” could turn into a wider regional conflagration by dragging Iran and the United States into the conflict.
One is not surprised when Netanyahu acts genocidal and mad by carrying out disproportionate attacks, killing more than 700 Lebanese so far, in order to track down Hezbollah commanders when his domestic popularity is going downhill.
Uncertainty looms in the Middle East as it is on the precipice of a wider conflict after the latest assassination of Hassan Nasrallah which is a devastating blow to the movement. So, who was Hassan Nasrallah and what is his legacy?
The Early Life and Religious Education of Hassan Nasrallah
Hassan Nasrallah was born in Beirut in 1960. His father, Abdul Karim Nasrallah, was a vegetable and fruit seller in the suburbs of Beirut–the capital of Lebanon. From his early life, his deep interest in religious education led him to attend Shia seminaries in the Iraqi city of Najaf and the Iranian city of Qom.
His educational journey into the heart of Shia Islam, Iran, and Iraq transformed him into a renowned cleric and scholar in Shia theology. Moreover, this educational experience allowed him to forge close ties with the Islamic Republic and made him an ardent supporter of the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979 led by Ayatollah Khomeini.
In 1975, when the Lebanese civil war broke out, he had to flee with his family to southern Lebanon. There, Nasrallah joined the Shia militia group, Amal and rose through its ranks. As the Lebanese civil war intensified, he along with his other fellow members split from the Amal and formed a new group called Islamic Amal which later became Hezbollah during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
Over the decades, Nasrallah created a strong support base among his followers and became a revered leader among the Shia population. “He was like a father to us” as one of his supporters mourned his death in Beirut.
Taking Charge of Hezbollah
Hassan Nasrallah became the secretary-general of Hezbollah in 1992 at the age of 32 after the assassination of his predecessor, Abbas-al-Mosavi, in an Israeli helicopter raid.
After the 1982 Lebanon-Israel war, Nasrallah led Hezbollah forces through a protracted low-intensity war against Israel which lasted for nearly two decades until 2000. It ended when Israel decided to withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon, giving an unprecedented push to Nasrallah’s repute in the Arab world.
In 2006, Hezbollah fighters launched “Operation Truthful Promise” which was primarily aimed at capturing Israeli soldiers as hostages for a negotiated prisoner exchange and recapturing an occupied territory of the Sheba Farms area back to Lebanese control. The 34-day war ended with Israel pulling out its troops from southern Lebanon and agreeing on a prisoner exchange of the bodies of two captured Israeli soldiers for dozens of Lebanese prisoners.
The 2006 war was hailed as a major victory for Hezbollah and its leader, Nasrallah, who was elevated to the rank of a hero. His group’s ability to give a bloody nose to Israel brought him glory throughout the Arab World. Fighting the invincible Israeli army to a standstill was an unprecedented feat that no other Arab militia had accomplished in any Arab-Israeli conflict.
Over the span of around 30 years, Nasrallah was credited with transforming Hezbollah from a ragtag militia into a well-organized and powerful political and paramilitary force in Lebanese politics where his party enjoyed veto power in all important matters of governance and foreign policy. Owing to this political clout in Lebanon’s domestic politics, the group is attributed by many as a state within a state due to a power broker in Lebanese politics.
He also forged close ties with Iran and became a strong pillar of the so-called “Axis of Resistance” which also includes Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Houthis in Yemen, and Shia militias in Iraq and Syria.
Detractors of Nasrallah
However, Nasrallah’s legitimacy fell incredibly in the Arab streets after he sent his fighters to Syria to aid longtime dictator, Bashar-al-Assad, during the midst of the Arab Spring. His involvement in the Syrian quagmire was a huge blow to his undisputed popularity in the Arab world. Moreover, many Lebanese including both Sunnis and Christians questioned his dubious role in undercutting the mass national movement that called for a strong state in a new political order in 2019.
“We are against the government’s resignation because we will face a huge void. It could take one or two years to form a government and once it’s formed, it will be made up of the same political forces”
Nasrallah addressing his supporters in 2019
In a nutshell, Nasrallah left a heroic legacy when it comes to his legitimate resistance and struggle against the occupation, oppression, and excesses of the Zionist regime in the Middle East that has been usurping Palestinian, Lebanese, and Syrian territories. He is known as the defender of Palestinian rights in the Muslim world after his group opened another front against Israel in the North after the October 7th Hamas attack.
However, he is loathed by many others for undercutting a democratic political movement in his own country and projecting Iran’s regional interest in the Middle East. Nasrallah’s group has been designated a terrorist organization by both the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the Arab League because of its direct involvement in Syria’s conflict.
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