-Analysis-
BEIRUT — It is worth a closer look at the words of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah following the Israeli assassination last month of the group’s top military commander Fouad Shukr in Beirut and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. His rhetoric reflected a kind of confusion in handling the two separate but related assassinations, but it may also help reveal Hezbollah’s real intention.
Both assassinations came in the context of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians in Gaza for the past 11 months, with clear U.S. political, military and financial support for that war.
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The confusion apparently stems from Nasrallah’s persistent effort to combine two objectives in his speeches. The first is that he keeps pressing on the line of mobilization to reinforce the ranks of Hezbollah. To do this, he insists that the axis of resistance (Iran-backed militant groups) is achieving great successes, and that Israel is failing as its security, social and economic forces disintegrate.
The second is the justification. He tries to cover up the limited ability to confront Israel, by asserting that the goal of Hezbollah and the entire axis of resistance is to support the resistance (Hamas and other militant groups) in Gaza and stop the Israeli aggression in Gaza.
Nasrallah’s problem!
Nasrallah’s basic problem is that he refuses to acknowledge the truth. There is an Israeli consensus on waging a long war and expanding it to Lebanon and Iran with its human and economic losses (with the unlimited support from the U.S.). This is driven by Israelis’ awareness that they are facing an existential war, a belief reinforced by the nationalist and religious right. Nasrallah also appears to ignore the losses on the Palestinian side due to Israel’s unprecedented genocidal war, with no one able to mitigate or compensate for the scale of such losses, neither those from within the so-called axis of resistance, nor anyone else.
There are also Lebanon’s losses. Israel has killed more than 500 Lebanese (since October 8, 2023), including the best cadres of Hezbollah, compared to only 44 Israelis who were killed from Hezbollah shells. So the gap is very wide between the two parties on all levels.
For two decades, Nasrallah referred in his speeches to Israel as “weaker than a spider’s thread,” and exaggerated the capabilities of the resistance. Today his rhetoric has shifted, telling his troops to “act calmly and carefully, with courage and not with excitement.” He argued that making Israel wait and stand “on one and a half feet… is part of the punishment, part of the response, part of the battle, because the battle is a psychological and moral battle, of nerves, brains, weapons, and blood.”
Slogans only!
The second striking aspect in this regard is that Hezbollah, which had been threatening to eliminate Israel, now demands only that Israel halts its aggression on Gaza. He affirmed that “wiping out the entity is not our goal, our goal is to prevent it from winning” adding that the resistance is a “long-term and gradual” process.
It can be concluded from this that the Iranian regime and its proxy Hezbollah are busy releasing slogans and creating illusions for others, while they operate according to another equation, based on “strategic patience” and distancing themselves from any involvement in a battle with Israel and the U.S.
It grows ever more clear that the Iranian regime will not risk involving itself in a direct war with Israel.
There is no doubt that Hamas knew or exposed this shift from Beirut and Tehran with the blood and destruction it unleashed on Oct. 7.
Relative power
The above explains Nasrallah’s last speech (August 25), in which he appeared to have fulfilled his promise and done what he had to do, with a bombing operation that did not have any real effect on Israel, in human, economic or military terms. It was just another calculated and limited strike, aimed only at appeasing the “Hezbollah” audience and the “resistance and defiance” audience.
It grows ever more clear that the Iranian regime will not risk involving itself in a direct war with Israel, and will stay focused on maintaining regional influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen — not doing what’s best for the sake of Palestine, Jerusalem, or Gaza.
Ultimately, Iran knows the limits of its power, and is thus acting rationally, based on its perceptions of its power and the relative power of Israel and the United States. Its grandiose claims and illusions of exporting its revolution appear to be limitless, but are mostly just a cardboard attempt to magnify its card as a regional power.
