Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike on the militant group’s headquarters in Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighborhood on Friday, in a dramatic escalation of fighting between the two sides. The attack occurred just an hour after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
The assassination of Nasrallah, who led Hezbollah for more than three decades, was part of a broad military campaign against the Iran-backed organization in recent weeks, in which Israel struck more than a thousand targets across Lebanon and remotely detonated pagers and walkie-talkies used by the group’s members.
Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike on the militant group’s headquarters in Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighborhood on Friday, in a dramatic escalation of fighting between the two sides. The attack occurred just an hour after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
The assassination of Nasrallah, who led Hezbollah for more than three decades, was part of a broad military campaign against the Iran-backed organization in recent weeks, in which Israel struck more than a thousand targets across Lebanon and remotely detonated pagers and walkie-talkies used by the group’s members.
Hezbollah confirmed Nasrallah’s death in a statement on Saturday and pledged to “continue its jihad in confronting the enemy [Israel], in support of Gaza and Palestine.” The statement did not mention who would succeed Nasrallah.
Israel and Hezbollah are longtime enemies and fought a direct war in 2006 that lasted just over a month, ending in a stalemate. The current conflict dates back nearly a year to Oct. 8, 2023, when Hezbollah began firing rockets on Israel in solidarity with Hamas, which had carried out a bloody attack on the country on Oct. 7, sparking the war in Gaza.
Since then, the two sides have traded near-daily strikes across the Israel-Lebanon border, and the conflict has now reached the brink of all-out war.
For months, speculation has mounted as to whether Israel would launch a ground invasion of southern Lebanon in a bid to push the militant group north beyond the Litani River, which cuts through the country.
But the Israeli military is in effect already at war with Hezbollah, operating under concepts developed in the wake of the 2006 war in Lebanon that prioritize the rapid destruction of its adversary’s firepower and leadership.
Over the past two months, Israeli airstrikes have reportedly killed a series of senior Hezbollah commanders, starting with Fuad Shukr, the group’s most senior military commander, in an airstrike in Beirut on July 30.
On Monday, some 500 people were killed in Lebanon as Israeli jets struck more than 1,600 targets across the country in what was described by a New York Times analysis as one of “the most intense air raids” seen in modern warfare.
The potential ramifications of Friday’s strike extend well beyond Lebanon and could force Iran to respond to the decimation of the leadership of its most prized and well-armed regional proxy.
Iran announced on Saturday that Abbas Nilforushan, the deputy operations commander of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was also killed in the strike on Friday.
News of Nasrallah’s death comes after a series of setbacks for Tehran’s proxies in the region and will “sharpen the dilemma for its leadership on whether to enter the fray against Israel at great potential risk to its direct interests,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group.
The New York Times reported on Friday that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had called an emergency meeting of the country’s Supreme National Security Council after the strikes.
“It will definitely increase the fighting and may bring Iran into it directly,” said Michael Mulroy, a former top Middle East policy official at the U.S. Defense Department.
Nasrallah’s death comes less than two months after Israel’s apparent assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July—following the inauguration of the country’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian—in an embarrassing lapse of security for the Iranian regime. On Saturday, Reuters reported that Khamenei had been moved to a secure location amid heightened security.
Despite claims by Israeli officials that they would prefer a diplomatic solution to the standoff with Hezbollah that has driven tens of thousands of Israeli and Lebanese civilians from their homes on both sides of the border, Friday’s strike underscored the country’s determination to keep piling the pressure on the militant group even as its partners in the West scramble to find a diplomatic off-ramp.
On Thursday, Netanyahu’s government appeared to reject the Biden administration’s push for regional calm—including a 21-day cease-fire proposed by the United States and nearly a dozen allies.
In the wake of Friday’s airstrike, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Middle East and the world were at a precarious moment. “I will let Israel speak to their operations and their objectives,” he said, noting that the United States has “been clear about what we see to be the best path forward,” referring to the recent efforts to broker a cease-fire.
The Pentagon received notification from Israel of the operation against Nasrallah only as it was underway on Friday. Speaking to the press on Friday afternoon, U.S. President Joe Biden said Washington had “no knowledge of or participation in” the strike on Nasrallah.
“This is clearly an indicator that Israel was not close to a cease-fire as described by the [United States], and it is unlikely now that Hezbollah will be interested in those negotiations,” Mulroy said.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed on Friday that it had targeted the group’s headquarters in Beirut, located under a series of residential buildings. Israeli media has reported that as many as 300 people were killed. It was not clear that the Israeli strikes had ended, as the IDF called on residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs to leave their homes on Friday night.
Born into a poor family in a suburb of Beirut in 1960, Nasrallah studied in Islamic seminaries in Iraq and Iran and was part of a generation of young Shiites who were heavily influenced by the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.
Nasrallah joined Hezbollah in the early 1980s, shortly after the group was founded with support from the IRGC in the wake of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
During the 1980s, the group carried out a series of mass casualty attacks, including the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings that killed almost 300 U.S. and French service members.
A charismatic leader and shrewd strategist, Nasrallah was described by the Washington Post in 2006 as a cross between former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Marxist guerrilla leader Che Guevara. He cut a distinctive figure, with a long white beard and black turban, the latter signifying his descent from the Prophet Mohammed.
He rose to become Hezbollah’s secretary-general in 1992, after Israel assassinated his predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi. Under Nasrallah’s leadership, Hezbollah moved into Lebanese politics—while maintaining its military wing—winning seats in the parliament and entering the country’s cabinet for the first time in 2005.
After fighting a 34-day war with Israel in 2006 that ended in a stalemate, Hezbollah’s military capabilities have only expanded. The group is believed to be the most heavily armed nonstate actor in the world, although Israel’s recent campaign against Hezbollah is thought to have diminished its capabilities.
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