Netanyahu has gambled on eliminating Hezbollah

An elderly man in dark robes and a white turban is rushed to a secret location somewhere in Iran.

Amid the smoking ruins, deaths and mutilations caused by Israel’s air campaign in Lebanon, there could be no more vivid illustration of the wildfire danger that has now been unleashed, killing Hezbollah’s leader.

The robed cleric is Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He has described Israel as a “deadly cancer and a damage to the region” that would “undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed.”

His regime has supported Hezbollah (the party of God) since the early 1980s and especially after Nasrallah became leader in 1992.

Now he is in hiding in his own country as Lebanese authorities, including Hezbollah, sift through the horrors and mutilate buildings left after the wave of Israeli airstrikes.

After crippling Hezbollah’s communications system – although Israel has not yet publicly confirmed this – with booby traps and then walkie-talkies, Israel unleashed an air campaign along Lebanon’s border with Syria, the Bekaa Valley, southern Beirut and the south of the country.

The goal is to end the existential threat that Hezbollah poses to the Jewish state, and the rocket attacks fired from across the border that have driven tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes along the border with Lebanon.

Israel has resisted all calls for a ceasefire. It clearly hopes to repeat the US-led campaign that rid the region of the so-called Islamic State, which focused on killing its ground forces but mainly eliminating its leadership.

However, Isis had no state support. Hezbollah has the support of Iran, which has provided it with weapons, money and training for decades.

Hezbollah also has broader regional appeal, even among Sunni Muslim countries in the Middle East, and fought Israel in support of the Palestinians and Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza.

The more people, especially women and children, were killed by Israel in Gaza, the more ordinary people in the region wanted to see a counterattack. Hezbollah tackled Israel by launching rocket attacks immediately after Israel’s attack, while, many say, the rest of the Arab world looked away.

Israel’s gamble is that it will brutalize its enemies in such a way that it can secure a secure future in the years to come. Benjamin Netanyahu has never shown interest in long-term strategic thinking, instead focusing on tactical survival.

American support, especially military support, has remained steadfast – even as the Israeli government has shifted to the far right and now has ministers who openly advocate the mass exodus of Palestinians from Gaza.

Netanyahu’s own Likud party is opposed to a “two-state solution” with the Palestinians. The policy documents reflect Hamas’s slogan: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” with a policy that says all territory between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea will fall under Israeli sovereignty.

Israel’s expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank has been condemned as “apartheid” by Israeli human rights groups, signaling to many that the state is not interested in peace with its immediate neighbors. Now Israel risks a much broader war.

Jordan has maintained a peace agreement and diplomatic ties with Israel for decades, but warned that Netanyahu “must be stopped.” “It is time to face the truth, and the truth is that unless Netanyahu is stopped, unless this government is stopped, war will involve us all,” Jordanian Prime Minister Amman Safadi said at the UN this week.

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Saudi Arabia was moving quickly toward “normalization” last year until Hamas unleashed its atrocities on October 7 and Netanyahu’s government retaliated with a military campaign that razed most of the Gaza Strip.

Prime Minister Faisal bin Farrah, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom, emphasized at the UN that “weapons will not solve anything”.

“We must strive for peace in our region, and that peace is firmly rooted in addressing the Palestinian issue,” the prince said.

But now there will be no normalization with Saudi Arabia. The Emirates and Bahrain will now feel that they have been naive in opening relations with Israel in the “Abraham Accords”, which are now deeply at odds with the sentiments on the streets in the Arab monarchies.

Before the Gaza war, Hezbollah’s regional position was terrible. It is a recognized Shia proxy of Iran. It is a state within the state of Lebanon. It sent 40,000 troops to fight alongside the murderous Assad regime in Syria.

It is widely blamed for the massive explosion of poorly stored fertilizer that devastated Beirut in 2020. It is labeled a “terrorist” organization by the US and Britain. It manages drugs and other contraband from South America. It is a money laundering mafia organization that claims divine legitimacy.

Israel has now restored Hezbollah’s reputation as a leading force in the “Azis of Resistance” and Nasrallah has now become a martyr.

Tehran’s leadership could retaliate by spreading its campaign against Israel more widely. The country has already ordered its Hezbollah representative in Iraq to launch drone strikes, and the Houthis in Yemen have been firing rockets at Israel for months.

After the loss of Nasrallah, Iran could unleash its swarm of attacks in the air and at sea – lashing out at Israel and probably the US. Hezbollah’s new leadership will be more violent and less calculating than the cleric Israel claims to have killed.

Netanyahu’s gamble is that by setting the Middle East ablaze, Israel will thrive in the ashes; it is uncertain whether this will prove to be correct.

Sam Kiley has been covering the Middle East for 25 years.