Israel's devastation of Hezbollah puts Iran in a corner

Over the past two weeks, Israel has pivoted to the north, focusing its destructive energies on Hezbollah to drive that group back from the Israeli border.

The Israeli airstrike that killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah deep in his Beirut bunker was the culmination of one of the most lethally effective, targeted military campaigns in modern history. Over a few days, and in some extraordinarily creative ways, Israel has set Hezbollah back years.

This tactical brilliance hasn’t solved Israel’s grave strategic problems. But it has restored, for the moment, the all-important aura of Israeli power and changed the terms of the struggle for the larger Middle East.

In July, Israel began systematically eliminating some of its most prominent enemies: Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s military chief of staff; Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s political wing; Mohammad Deif, the group’s military commander in Gaza. Over the past two weeks, Israel has pivoted to the north, focusing its destructive energies on Hezbollah to drive that group back from the Israeli border.

This campaign — featuring exploding pagers and precision airstrikes, facilitated by astonishing intelligence penetrations — has destroyed perhaps half of Hezbollah’s long-range rocket inventory and decimated its command structure. Far from triggering apocalyptic retaliation, these blows have left Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons struggling to respond. The remarkable degradation of the world’s most potent terror group ranks as Israel’s most impressive feat of arms since the Six Day War in 1967. It has also shifted the strategic landscape of the Middle East.

First, the psychological balance has been upended. The Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 showed an Israel that was weak and pitiful, unable to control its borders or prevent its citizens from being massacred in their homes. In the aftermath of those attacks, a strengthened, Iranian-led “Axis of Resistance”— Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Shiite proxies in Iraq and Syria — assailed Israel from many sides.

A year later, Israel remains ringed by enemies. But it has demonstrated that it can dominate each of them on the battlefield, and thereby restored the perception of power that underpins its survival strategy in a nasty region. Witness the way that Iran and Hezbollah are contorting themselves to avoid a larger conflict, because they lack good options for fighting back without courting even greater destruction.

Second, these operations underscore that Iran and its friends — not Israel and the US — should be most wary of regional escalation. Hezbollah still has many missiles and fighters; the Houthis have mounted a sustained challenge to freedom of navigation; Iran retains potent capabilities of its own. But the Axis of Resistance will get the worst of any larger, high-intensity conflict with Israel and America. So perhaps Washington should exploit that fear of escalation — by threatening, for instance, that further Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping will result in sharper, sustained retaliation against the Houthis and the Iranian military assets that aid them.

Third, Israel has changed the terrain of the coming Iranian nuclear crisis. Iran has long treated Hezbollah as its strategic insurance policy: If Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear sites, Hezbollah can rain missiles on Israel. But Hezbollah is being bludgeoned right now, and Israel has already proven it can hit Iran’s most sensitive sites. So Iran must tread very carefully right now, which gives the US and Israel greater leverage as they seek — through coercion or negotiation — to keep Tehran from reaching the bomb.

Finally, diplomatic normalization with Saudi Arabia is on hold because of the war in Gaza, but Israel has reminded the Gulf states why they want it on their side. It isn’t sympathy for the Zionist project that draws Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia toward Israel. It is an understanding that Israel is a regional superpower that can help the Saudis contain and, if necessary, confront their common foes. A strong Israel is a more attractive ally than a weak Israel, and today Israeli strength looks imposing indeed.

The danger is that surprising military breakthroughs can cause strategic intoxication, and it’s important not to exaggerate what Israel has achieved.

The country is still stuck in a grinding, quasi-occupation of Gaza, where dozens of Israeli hostages are slowly dying in dark tunnels held by Hamas. The economy is suffering from an extended, multifront conflict; Israeli society and politics remain deeply, perhaps perilously, polarized.

Hezbollah and Iran are down but not out; tens of thousands of residents of northern Israel are still displaced from their homes. And if the unfolding Israeli ground campaign in Lebanon becomes an ugly, draining slugfest — rather than a series of deep, punishing raids — Israel’s diplomatic isolation could deepen and the tide of the larger regional contest could shift again.

But right now, Israel has its enemies back on their heels, and it can address its manifold security problems from a position of greater strength. That’s good news in a region where avowedly genocidal forces of radicalism recently seemed to be surging, and in a world where the geopolitical malefactors have, too often of late, had the momentum.

Credit: Bloomberg