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    • Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah dies in Israeli airstrike
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    Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah dies in Israeli airstrike

    Madoc Meredith Posted on

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    WASHINGTON – Hassan Nasrallah, the revered and despised longtime leader of Hezbollah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Friday, the Israel Defense Forces said.

    Nasrallah, “the leader of the terrorist organization Hezbollah and one of its founders, was eliminated by the IDF,” the Israeli military said in a statement on Saturday.

    “According to precise intelligence,” the statement said, warplanes “carried out a targeted attack on the headquarters of the Hezbollah terrorist organization, which was located under a residential building in the Dahieh area of ​​Beirut.”

    Hezbollah confirmed Nasrallah’s death and said it would continue its fight against Israel “in support of Gaza and Palestine and in defense of Lebanon and its steadfast and honorable people.”

    The beheading attack on Israel’s strongest neighboring enemy was a political earthquake for the region and threatened an armed response by Iran and its proxies in Iraq, Syria and Yemen against Israeli and US targets.

    “It’s huge,” said Mohamad Bazzi, director of the Kevorkian Center for Near East Studies at New York University. “It is a serious blow to Hezbollah. It’s a blow to Iran.”

    Nasrallah was among the most important leaders in the Middle East, commanding tens of thousands of fighters and armed with missiles supplied by the Shiite Islamist movement’s patron, Iran. Hezbollah rules southern Lebanon and its nearly one million inhabitants independently of the weak Lebanese government.

    “The attack was carried out while Hezbollah’s top chain of command was operating from headquarters and promoting terrorist activities against the citizens of the State of Israel,” the Israeli statement said.

    The airstrike on Dahiyeh on Friday shocked Beirut. A security source in Lebanon told Reuters that the attack – a rapid succession of powerful explosions – left a crater more than 20 meters deep.

    Further airstrikes on Dahiyeh and other parts of Lebanon followed on Saturday. Huge explosions lit up the night sky and more attacks occurred in the area Saturday morning. Smoke rose over the city.

    The death of the militant movement’s long-time top commander came after a week of Israeli strikes that Tel Aviv said were intended to neutralize Hezbollah’s military capabilities and allow 60,000 residents of northern Israel to return to their homes, damaged by months of rocket fire from beyond the border had been evacuated from the Lebanese border.

    More: Netanyahu vows to continue Hezbollah attacks and rails against Israel’s critics in UN speech

    Hezbollah has been firing rockets at Israel since Hamas’s rampage in southern Israel on October 7 and Israel’s ongoing invasion of the coastal enclave.

    In the last week, more than 1,500 people have been killed and more than 90,000 displaced in Lebanon. In addition, 100,000 people have had to flee since October.

    A key figure in the “Axis of Resistance”

    Among his supporters, Nasrallah was praised for standing up to Israel and defying the United States. To his enemies, he was the leader of a terrorist organization and a proxy for Iran’s Shiite Islamist theocracy in its struggle for influence in the Middle East.

    “There’s no doubt that he’s a particularly important figure,” Bazzi told USA TODAY. “He is very charismatic, an excellent speaker.”

    Still, Bazzi said, “His star has fallen in the Middle East since Hezbollah became embroiled in the Syrian civil war,” when Hezbollah fighters were key to the survival of Bashar al Assad’s brutal government.

    Nasrallah’s regional influence was evident in the nearly year-long conflict sparked by the Gaza war, when Hezbollah entered the fight by firing on Israel from southern Lebanon in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, and Yemeni and Iraqi groups followed suit and operated under the leadership of Nasrallah as part of an Iranian-led “Axis of Resistance.”

    “We are facing a major battle,” Nasrallah said Aug. 1 in a speech at the funeral of Hezbollah’s top military commander, Fuad Shukr, who was killed in an Israeli attack.

    More: Israel fires the first Hezbollah rocket aimed at Tel Aviv as the group says it targeted a spy agency

    Pager explosions and a reversal of fortune

    But when thousands of Hezbollah members were injured and dozens killed when their pagers and walkie-talkies exploded in an apparent Israeli attack last week, that battle began to turn against his group.

    In response to the attacks on Hezbollah’s communications network, Nasrallah vowed to punish Israel in a speech on September 19.

    “This is a reckoning that will come, its nature, its size, how and where? We will certainly keep this to ourselves and in our closest circles, even within ourselves,” he said.

    He has not given a radio speech since then.

    More: The US, EU and nine other nations are calling for a 21-day ceasefire on the border between Israel and Lebanon

    Meanwhile, Israel has escalated its attacks dramatically, killing several senior Hezbollah commanders in targeted strikes and launching a massive bombardment in Hezbollah-controlled areas in Lebanon, killing hundreds of people.

    Israel said Friday’s attack also killed Ali Karki, whom it identified as the commander of Hezbollah’s southern front, and other leaders.

    Iran accused Israel on Friday of using U.S.-made “bunker buster” bombs in the attack.

    “Serious security breaches”

    “There have clearly been serious security breaches in Hezbollah,” Bazzi said. “The question arises as to how and why he moved at this point in time.”

    “This is serious and in some ways decapitating.” Still, Bazzi added: “They are also – Nasrallah himself expressed this – built as an organization that continues to exist even when leaders are killed.”

    Nasrallah was recognized as a charismatic speaker even by his enemies, and his speeches were followed by friends and enemies alike.

    Wearing the black turban of a Sayyed, a descendant of the Prophet Mohammad, Nasrallah used his speeches to rally Hezbollah’s base but also to issue carefully timed threats, often wagging his finger.

    In 1992, when he was just 35, he became secretary general of Hezbollah, becoming the public face of a once shadowy group founded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in 1982 to fight Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.

    Israel killed his predecessor Sayyed Abbas al-Musawi in a helicopter attack. Nasrallah led Hezbollah when its guerrillas finally drove Israeli troops out of southern Lebanon in 2000, ending an 18-year occupation.

    Hezbollah and Israel fought a war to a standstill in 2006.

    Contribution: Reuters

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    Madoc Meredith
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