Yes, Nasrallah Hit Makes The U.S. And Iran Look Weak — But This Won’t End Well For Israel

-Analysis-

PARIS — In the aftermath of the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in southern Beirut — in one of the most massive targeted bombings ever in the Lebanese capital — Israel is cautiously celebrating an undeniable victory.

The event isn’t a starting point, but a kind of culmination of a sequence that began nearly two weeks ago with the chillingly effective transformation of communication devices into weapons of war. That sequence continued with the almost systematic elimination of the people at the top of the terrorist organization, led for more than 30 years by Nasrallah.

Yet Israel can only wonder what form the response will take from what remains of Hezbollah, if not Hamas, and not to mention Iran. What has happened is a bonafide historic turning point in the war in Lebanon, if not in the region. But this isn’t the end of the story. What will the Houthis or Iran’s allied militias do in Syria or Iraq?

Whatever happens in the coming days (A new escalation of violence? A brief period of shock from the side of the conflict that has suffered the hardest blows?) Washington and Tehran seem united by the same feeling of powerlessness. They appear almost as spectators, rather than like real actors, in a tragedy that is beyond their control.

The U.S., which is the Jewish State’s most important ally, may openly support the elimination of Nasrallah. But doesn’t the killing also show that the country has been unable to exert any kind of pressure on Israel to push its “protégé” to implement a temporary ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon?

Benjamin Netanyahu seems more sensitive to the internal pressures of the most extreme members of his coalition than to the external ones coming from the international community.

Has Iran abandoned Hezbollah?

In light of what has happened in Beirut, it now seems as though Netanyahu had just been trying to stall, in order to give his intelligence services and his army the opportunity to execute a scenario that had been thought out meticulously over time — perhaps, even put into motion in the aftermath of the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006. That was a painful and frustrating conflict for Israel: was not winning the war the same as losing it?

For its part, Iran gives the impression that it has virtually abandoned Hezbollah to its fate, concerned above all with saving its own regime, which wouldn’t survive losing a war against Israel.

Iran already fired thousands of missiles at Israel last April, but the result was the demonstration of the extreme efficiency of the Jewish State’s defense system, rather than Tehran’s desire for revenge after the elimination of some of its highest ranking officers in Syria.

Assad’s accident

The Israeli audacity and the very severe blows dealt to Hezbollah in Lebanon constitute a strategic defeat for the Islamist regime in Iran. Was their main disciple, Hezbollah, then — despite its multiple weapons and the discipline of its men — only a paper tiger, much more vulnerable than almost all analysts thought?

What lesson will Lebanese learn from Nasrallah’s death? As victims of Israeli bombings, were they not left defenseless by an actor who oppressed them politically, at least as much as it was helping some (especially the poorest Shiites) economically and socially?

Hezbollah’s assistance to Bashar Al Assad’s regime in Syria has been as decisive as the help provided by Moscow. Perhaps it was the munitions that were intended to help the Damascus regime which exploded, probably accidentally in the port of Beirut, causing so many victims and damage in 2020.

American embarrassment, Iranian weakness

For the U.S., doesn’t Israel’s extreme audacity represent a form of defeat, if not humiliation? On the eve of a presidential election, as uncertain as it is important, can the U.S. allow itself to be “distracted” by external issues? The Israeli Prime Minister seems to have perfectly integrated, in his strategic audacity, both American embarrassment and Iranian weakness.

Given its demographics and geography, Israel desperately needs allies.

History will tell whether Netanyahu’s boldness has gone too far or not, and whether Israel, and beyond that, the Jewish people, will not one day become the victims of his cold determination.

The Jewish people as a whole represents the statistical margin of error in calculating the Chinese or Indian populations: about 15 million. Israel, with a Jewish population of 8 million, knows that, ultimately, it can only count on itself for its security. But it should also understand that, given its demographics and geography, it desperately needs allies.

A Pyrrhic victory?

Yes, in the end, this latest triumph over Hezbollah will likely prove to be a Pyrrhic victory? It can’t make us forget that Israel’s security depends on the state’s legitimacy. There are victories that ultimately wind up weakening the victor — as it becomes a victim of its own hubris, convinced it can do whatever it wants.

The world has changed.

The world has changed. It has become less and less dominated by a West full of remorse towards Israel and the Jewish people.

In the eyes of the countries of the Global South, Israel is an overbearing and cynical power. It’s no accident that South Africa has been the primary voice denouncing Israel before the international courts. For today’s world (and perhaps even more so tomorrow’s) Israel appears more as the anachronistic embodiment of Western imperialism rather than the key player in the resistance to Islamic fundamentalism.

China, like South Africa or Brazil, has no particular feelings for the State of Israel. Faced with these powers, which are in some way emotionally neutral (with the exception of South Africa, which hasn’t forgotten the assistance that Israel provided to the apartheid regime), Jerusalem can no longer hide behind the shield of remorse and guilt. After this undeniable stunning blow, nothing would be more dangerous for Israel than to rush headlong in the same direction.