As Tehran watches its most valuable ally ebb and flow, questions are mounting about how it might respond. But not the clear answers.
Despite heavy losses, Hezbollah still maintains capable commanders and many of its strongest assets, including precision and long-range missiles that can inflict significant damage on Israel’s military and civilian infrastructure.
However, while Nasrallah’s assassination is unlikely to disrupt the movement’s operational continuity, his elimination is apparently “a huge and demoralizing blow to the ranks of his supporters and a absolute horror which temporarily paralyzes its simple stems”, estimates Professor Saad, from Cardiff University.
“This does not mean that the organization is paralyzed,” he added. “Hezbollah is an organization that was created to absorb this type of shocks… was built to be durable and outlast individual leaders.”
Furthermore, the successor he seems to be ready already.
Can she alone?
Before Nasrallah was killed, Iran’s official position was that Hezbollah is capable of defending itself,
However, after Friday air raidIran’s embassy in Lebanon has indicated that Tehran’s calculations may now change.
“There is no doubt that this reprehensible crime and reckless behavior represents a serious and revolutionary escalation and that its perpetrator will be duly punished,” the embassy said.
Iran’s justification for avoiding involvement in the conflict may no longer apply, said Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Washington-based Quincy Institute.
“If it becomes clear (to Iran) that Hezbollah in fact cannot defend itself after the bombing of Beirut, then Iran’s justification for staying out of the war will collapse,” he adds.
“And it is precisely at this point that Iran’s credibility, in the eyes of the remaining partners of the ‘Axis of Resistance’, will be in danger of crumbling if Tehran does not react”, he explains.
Iran is probably have been terrified of the effectiveness of Israel’s attacks, estimates Farzin Nandimi, senior associate at the (think tank) Washington Institute.
Tehran is likely already helping Hezbollah rebuild its military command structure and providing tactical and operational advice to its leadership, he adds.
However, if the group approaches the brink of collapse, it could “provoke a more forceful Iranian intervention”possibly in the form of missile and drone attacks, as seen in April when Iran blamed Israel for an attack on its diplomatic complex in Damascus. Nandimi added that while a larger attack is unlikely, it is not completely out of the question.
Saad, a Hezbollah expert at Cardiff University, believes an Iranian intervention would likely drag the United States into war, noting that Tehran is “the weakest link” in the conflict.
“He is the only member of the Axis who is a real estate company. All others are non-state or quasi-state actors. Therefore, Iran has the most to lose by joining,” he said.
“(Iran) is a conventional armed force, it probably wouldn’t do as well as Hezbollah in a war because it’s a completely different military infrastructure,” Saad noted. “Hezbollah knows its terrain and its adversary better than anyone.”
Why Hezbollah is important to Iran
Since its creation 40 years ago, the Lebanese militant group has been the crown jewel of Tehran’s so-called Axis of Resistance.
As a non-Arab Shiite state, Iran considers itself a “strategic solitude” in the Middle East. And so he sees Shiites in a Sunni-dominated region “as the closest thing he has to natural allies.”
From Tehran’s perspective, Hezbollah is fundamental to the Axis due to its capabilities and discipline, its geographic location, and its ideological and political proximity to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ah, an eventual destruction of Hezbollah would be recommended existential blow to the Axis.
“The organization is necessary to” maintain a strong military component on Israel’s northern border and keep Israel insecure. Iran designed Hezbollah to last long before Iran felt compelled to intervene.”
Internal shutters
But Iran also has internal balances to resolve. The escalation between Hezbollah and Israel comes at a delicate moment for the country’s new reformist president, who spent an entire campaign improving Tehran’s foreign relations and breaking the isolation that paralyzed its economy.
Just this week, President Massoud Pezheskian told the United Nations that his country is ready to cooperate with the West on its disputed nuclear program. He even named as his vice president Javad Zarif, an experienced US-educated diplomat who became the face of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers (which Trump abandoned in 2018).
Indicative of Pezeskian’s generally non-belligerent mood is his statement last Monday, a day in which nearly 500 Lebanese were killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Pezeskian said in New York that Iran was ready to “lay down its arms if Israel did the same.” The remark provoked a backlash from radicals in Tehran because it portrayed them as weak in the face of the enemy, according to reports.
Analysts estimate that, given the “deep unhappiness of a large part of the Iranian public” with the regime that governs them, Pezheskian’s priority is national reconciliation. Not war.
However, if Hezbollah is further humiliated, “Tehran may face a situation in which it concludes that war is on its doorstep, whether it wants it or not, and that it is therefore better to respond before Hezbollah weakens further.” .
To put an order of magnitude of Iran’s “humiliation”, it is easy to see that in Israel the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah is already considered a great victory.
For more than 30 years, Nasrallah was the heart of Hezbollah. With the help of its close allies in Iran, it transformed Hezbollah into a fighting force that in 2000 forced Israel to end a twenty-year occupation of southern Lebanon.
Nasrallah was Israel’s greatest enemy. In recent years, only Yahuah Sinwar, the mastermind behind the Hamas attack on Israel last October, has come close to the levels of hatred that Nasrallah generated.
Israel inflicted enormous damage on its enemy in Lebanon. The death of their leader is the biggest blow of all.
The question now is how Hezbollah – and Iran – will respond. Perhaps they are now concluding that unless they counterattack strongly, they will face strategic defeat, the BBC notes in its analysis.