Hezbollah Misjudged Israel’s Weakness and Iran’s Might

A succession of Israeli strikes have reset the military calculus in the Middle East, but it remains just as dangerous

By Yaroslav Trofimov, WSJ

DUBAI-Weeks after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, the leader of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah made a thunderous speech to explain why his men were joining the fight against the "Zionist enemy." Israel was "shaking and trembling" in fear, "weaker than a spider's web," Hassan Nasrallah said. Unlike previous conflicts with the Jewish state, this war "was historic and decisive," and all Iranian-backed resistance movements-from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq and Yemen were duty-bound to participate, he said.

Today, Nasrallah is dead, as is much of Hezbollah's senior leadership. The remainder of the organization has been decimated by a succession of blows that showcased a stunning pen- etration by Israeli intelligence.

In retrospect, this was the outcome of Nasrallah's making two strategic mistakes: grossly underestimating Israel, his foe, and overestimating the abilities of his patron, Iran, and its network of allied militant groups in the region.

Hezbollah possesses a vast arsenal of missiles and rockets, including precision-guided ballistic missiles. This was meant to deter an Israeli escalation, but its weapons haven't inflicted any significant damage.

More than 1,000 people have been killed in Lebanon since Sept. 16, according to the Lebanese health ministry, during Israel's campaign to end Hezbollah's strikes that have forced tens of thousands from their homes in northern Israel. Not a single Israeli has died as a result of Hezbollah strikes since Sept 19.

"We have seen a very important thing in the present clashes: While Hezbollah is acting like an army, they are no match to Israel in terms of firepower, in terms of air power, in terms of intelligence and in terms of technology," said Fouad Siniora, a critic of the Iranian-backed group who served as Lebanon's prime minister when Hezbollah and Israel fought a war in 2006.

To many in the region, meanwhile, Iran has demonstrated that its "unity of fronts" concept is a one-way street, with its allies in the region expected to shed blood for the Iranian regime, but without any reciprocity by Tehran. "Iran is ready to fight until the last Lebanese," Siniora quipped. While Hezbollah has become a victim of its own hubris, Israel now risks falling into a similar trap, especially if it launches a ground invasion of Lebanon and attempts to redraw Lebanon's political makeup. Its Lebanon invasion in 1982, which sought to do resulted in Hezbollah's creation and protracted occupation that ended in a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from southern Leb anon in 2000. Israel assassi nated Nasrallah's predecessor, Abbas Musawi, in 1992.

Despite the deaths of Nasrallah and many senior commanders, Hezbollah still retains thousands of battle hardened fighters and a large arsenal it could use to inflict significant casualties on prepared terrain in its southern Lebanese strongholds.

"Hezbollah can't wait for Israel to start operating on the ground in south Lebanon because that moment could become a game changer for them, a turning point that would let them rise from the ashes, and to once again regain support from the broader Lebanese society," cautioned Ksenia Svet lova, a former Israeli lawmaker and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

While Israeli commanders are aware of the perils of ground combat-and remember the losses of the campaign in 2006-the political problem is that Israel's stated goal-the return of some 60,000 Israelis displaced by Hezbollah attacks from areas along the border- is hard to achieve with air power alone. Despite recent blows, Hezbollah refuses to stop cross-border fire without Israel also agreeing to a cease- fire with Hamas in Gaza. "They can't do it-it would be a humiliating defeat for them," said Eyal Zisser, a specialist on the region and vice rector of Tel Aviv University, The dramatic weakening of Hezbollah creates a particular challenge for Iran, which has relied on the Lebanese group's missiles and rockets as a deterrent against any potential Israeli attack on its own nuclear program.

"It's transformative for the region because Hezbollah is not just another proxy for Iran. It's very much part of Iran's own defensive doctrine and its main tool of deterrence against Israel," said Michael Horowitz, head of intelligence at the consulting firm Le Beck International. "This puts Iran in a very difficult position because Hezbollah was built to defend Iran, but now Iran is faced with the dilemma of potentially having to defend Hezbollah."

Iran's calculations - less than two months after Israel assassinated the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a government guest- house-are further complicated by uncertainty about exactly how deeply Israel has penetrated its own security establishment. Iran, which is under Western sanctions, must procure much of its equipment and components through shady intermediaries. Israel, which infiltrated Hezbollah's supply chain to rig its walkie-talkies and pagers with explosives, could have similarly interfered with Iranian communications networks or weapons, military analysts said.

With the new Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, at tempting a charm offensive in the West-and a possible return to nuclear negotiations that would alleviate sanctions on Iran's battered economy- Tehran is likely to refrain from direct action on Hezbollah's behalf, said Vali Nasr, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a former senior State Department adviser.

"The mood in Tehran all along has been not to take the bait. They know that Israel wants war now because it has the intelligence and military advantage, because there is a political vacuum in the United States and because the U.S. Navy is sitting in the Mediterranean," Nasr said. "Iran is not ready right now because it's not the right time. But there will be a right time."

The Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, which killed nearly 1,200 Israelis and led to the invasion of Gaza that has resulted in tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths, was a humiliating intelligence failure for Israel. Yet, one of the reasons why Israel didn't keep a close eye on Gaza was precisely because, since 2006, Israeli military and intel- ligence services have been focusing on what they considered an inevitable war with Hezbollah. The sequence of strikes in September showcased how thoroughly Hezbollah had been infiltrated and helped restore the tarnished reputation of Israeli intelligence.

"These strikes are enormously devastating for Hezbollah publicly and operationally, obviously. But what is going to grow out of this new situation is unclear," said Andrew Tabler, a former White House and State Department official working on the Middle East who is now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy. "Does it really change the strategic situation? Not sure."