Hezbollah’s continued losses in its war with Israel have created a disastrous situation for Tehran, according to Michael Eisenstadt, director of The Washington Institute’s Military and Security Studies Program.
Iran’s “preferred way of war is to operate through proxies, and Hezbollah was always the diamond in their crown,” he told CNN’s Michael Holmes.
“It played a major role both in their struggle against Israel and their efforts to create what they call ‘the axis of resistance’ in the region,” he said, referring to the alliance of Islamist militias across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen who give Iran strategic depth against its enemies.
“This is a setback that will take many years, if not decades to recover from,” Eisenstadt said.
How – or if – Tehran will respond remains unclear.
While this will be a difficult situation for Iran to step back from, it has in the past been known to abandon its allies to their fate, Eisenstadt said.
Iran has also been put in a vulnerable place with one of its main proxies significantly weakened, he said.
“I think they’ll probably be very careful going forward.”
AlJazeera published the list of Leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah killed by Israel.
Hezbollah
Hassan Nasrallah – An Israeli military spokesman announced that the Hezbollah chief had been “eliminated” in strikes on the Lebanese capital on Friday. Hezbollah later confirmed his killing. In 2006, Nasrallah was also rumoured to have been killed during Israel’s last war with Hezbollah, but he later re-emerged unscathed.
Ibrahim Qubaisi – An air strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut on September 24 killed Qubaisi, a commander and leading figure in Hezbollah’s rocket division, two security sources said.
Ibrahim Aqil – Hezbollah’s operations commander, who served on the group’s top military body, was killed by an Israeli strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs on September 20. Aqil, who has also used the aliases Tahsin and Abdelqader, was a member of Hezbollah’s top military body, the Jihad Council. The United States accused him of having a role in two deadly bombings in Lebanon that killed hundreds of people.
Ahmed Wahbi – He was identified as a top commander who oversaw the military operations of the Radwan special forces in the Gaza war until early 2024. He was killed in an Israel strike that targeted several top commanders, including Ibrahim Aqil, in the Beirut suburbs on September 20.
Fuad Shukr – An Israeli strike on the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital on July 30 killed Hezbollah’s top commander Fuad Shukr, identified by the Israeli military as Nasrallah’s right-hand man. Shukr was one of Hezbollah’s leading military figures since it was established by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps more than 40 years ago. The US imposed sanctions on Shukr in 2015 and accused him of playing a central role in the 1983 bombing of the US marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 military personnel.
Muhammed Nasser – The senior Hezbollah leader was killed in an Israeli air strike on July 3 in Tyre, Lebanon. Israel claimed responsibility, saying he headed a unit responsible for firing from southwestern Lebanon at Israel. Nasser, also known as Hajj Abu Nimah, was also reportedly responsible for a section of Hezbollah’s operations at the frontier with Israel.
Taleb Abdallah – The senior Hezbollah field commander was killed on June 12 in a strike claimed by Israel, which said it had hit a command and control centre in southern Lebanon. Security sources in Lebanon said he was Hezbollah’s commander for the central region of the southern border strip and was of the same rank as Nasser. His killing prompted the group to fire a heavy barrage of rockets across the border at Israel.
Hamas
Mohammed Deif – Israel’s military said Deif was killed after fighter jets struck in the area of Khan Younis in Gaza on July 13 after an intelligence assessment. The elusive Deif had survived seven Israel assassination attempts. Deif, one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, is believed to have been one of the masterminds of the October 7 attack on southern Israel on the eve of the Gaza war.
Ismail Haniyeh – Haniyeh was assassinated in the early hours of July 31 in Iran, according to Hamas. He was reportedly killed by a missile that hit him directly in a state guesthouse where he was staying in Tehran. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack.
Saleh al-Arouri – An Israeli drone strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs of Dahiyeh killed Deputy Hamas chief Saleh al-Arouri on January 2, 2024. Arouri was also the founder of Hamas military wing, the Qassam Brigades.
Iranian officials
Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in the elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and his deputy Mohammad Hadi Hajriahimi were killed in an Israeli air strike in April that destroyed the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
BBC factsheet about Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah
Hassan Nasrallah became leader of Hezbollah in 1992 at the age of 32, after his predecessor Abbas al-Musawi was assassinated in an Israeli helicopter strike.
One of his first actions was to retaliate to the killing of Musawi. He ordered rocket attacks into northern Israel that killed a girl, an Israeli security officer at the Israeli embassy in Turkey was killed by a car bomb, and a suicide bomber struck the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 29 people.
Nasrallah also managed a low-intensity war with Israeli forces that ended with their withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, though he suffered a personal loss when his eldest son Hadi was killed in a firefight with Israeli troops.
Following the withdrawal, Nasrallah proclaimed that Hezbollah had achieved the first Arab victory against Israel. He also vowed that Hezbollah would not disarm, saying that it considered that “all Lebanese territory must be restored”, including the Shebaa Farms area.
There was relative calm until 2006, when Hezbollah militants launched a cross-border attack in which eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two others kidnapped, triggering a massive Israeli response.
Israeli warplanes bombed Hezbollah strongholds in the south and in Beirut’s southern suburbs, while Hezbollah fired about 4,000 rockets at Israel. More than 1,125 Lebanese, most of them civilians, died during the 34-day conflict, as well as 119 Israeli soldiers and 45 civilians.
Nasrallah’s home and offices were targeted by Israel warplanes, but he survived unscathed.
In 2009, Nasrallah issued a new political manifesto that sought to highlight Hezbollah’s “political vision”. It dropped the reference to an Islamic republic found in the 1985 document, but maintained a tough line against Israel and the US and reiterated that Hezbollah needed to keep its weapons despite a UN resolution banning them in southern Lebanon.
“People evolve. The whole world changed over the past 24 years. Lebanon changed. The world order changed,” Nasrallah said.
Four years later, Nasrallah declared that Hezbollah was entering “a completely new phase” of its existence by sending fighters into Syria to help its Iran-backed ally, President Bashar al-Assad, put down a rebellion. “It is our battle, and we are up to it,” he said.
Lebanese Sunni leaders accused Hezbollah of dragging the country into Syria’s war and sectarian tensions worsened dramatically.
In 2019, a deep economic crisis in Lebanon triggered mass protests against a political elite long accused of corruption, waste, mismanagement and negligence. Nasrallah initially expressed sympathy with the calls for reforms, but his attitude changed as the protesters began demanding for a complete overhaul of the political system.
On 8 October 2023 – the day after the unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen that triggered the war in Gaza – previously sporadic fighting between Hezbollah and Israel escalated.
Hezbollah fired at Israeli positions, in solidarity with the Palestinians.
In a speech in November, Nasrallah said the Hamas attack had been “100% Palestinian in terms of both decision and execution” but that the firing between his group and Israel was “very important and significant”.
The group launched more than 8,000 rockets at northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. It also fired anti-tank missiles at armoured vehicles and attacked military targets with explosive drones.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) retaliated with air strikes and tank and artillery fire against Hezbollah positions in Lebanon.
In his most recent speech, Nasrallah blamed Israel for detonating thousands of pagers and radio handsets used by Hezbollah members, which killed 39 people and wounded thousands more, and said it had “crossed all red lines”. He acknowledged the group had suffered an “unprecedented blow”.
Shortly afterwards Israel dramatically escalated attacks on Hezbollah, launching waves of bombing that killed nearly 800 people.
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