Strategically Wise

Hezbollah's measured approach serves a higher political and military purpose

As an Israeli ground invasion looms, it will shortly get clearer how letting Israel be the perceived driver of its own downfall was Nasrallah's best course of action in a complex geopolitical landscape

[Read the second part of this analysis here]

I have listened carefully to Hassan Nassralla’s speech yesterday, the one he made in response to Israel’s indiscriminate Pager Massacre. What I’ve heard in this speech is a leader who seeks to ground his position in morality, solidarity, and humility (which you can believe or not, I’m just saying what I saw). I could hear no vanity, no belligerence, and very little anger.

Israeli analysts were quick to pronounce Nassrallah broken and defeated, showing, as usual, none of the humility and restraint of their enemy.

While we will know the true meaning of Nassralla’s speech only in retrospect, I do remember one thing said to me by a beloved Jewish-Arab uncle. It was during a previous round of violence on Israel’s northern border (probably 2006).

Speaking about Nasrallah, my (oud-playing, Arab-speaking, Abdel Wahab-admiring) uncle said ‘We have to treat him with respect. He’s a bereaved father‘. To my surprise, my uncle used a term specifically reserved for parents of fallen IDF soldiers (‘shakhul‘), creating a human and philosophical sense of equality that was brave and unusual.

Nassrallah lost his eldest son, Muhammad Hadi, who was 18 at the time, in a battle with IDF soldiers on September 12, 1997, alongside 3 other Hezbollah fighters.

So no disrespect to Nassrallah from me. He knows the price of war.

What I also felt after watching his speech from yesterday was that Nassrallah may be bluffing a bit, namely a little exaggerating the pain and damage Hezbollah undoubtedly suffered as a tactic to deceive Israel into thinking the organization was close to a breaking point. ‘‘What Nassrallah fears most is a ground invasion’, wrote Ron Ben Ishai, one of Israel’s leading military analysts after watching that same speech.

I think just the opposite: an Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon is Nassralla’s biggest dream, as it will allow the organization to unleash its guerilla warfare tactics to full effect, and exact a heavy price in casualties, equipment, and morale. It will also allow Hezbollah to strike deep into Israel and still be seen as a defending force. This is a crucial point, and it brings me to the main reasons why I think Hezbollah decided to not start a war with Israel (but rather let Israel lead to it) and why, despite its cost, this has been a strategically sound decision.

Keep Israel the bully and aggressor in public opinion

We need to remember that, for Arab and Muslim forces, fighting with Israel is done under a severe PR disadvantage: in the parts of the world where consciousness is informed by colonial media, killing Muslims and Arabs is always presented as a casual lovely pastime. It is extremely hard for West Asian people battling white European imperialism to have their case reported fairly.

As political struggle is an integral component of every war, and as Israel has an unnatural advantage in this respect, careful narrative control is essential for its rivals. While suffering some serious damage operationally, Hezbollah now has Israel as the aggressor and bully at the center of continued and renewed international attention.

And let’s keep in mind that Gaza is a geopolitical no man’s land (having almost no one to speak for it but its people), Lebanon is a different case entirely. It is not only a sovereign country, it is located right on Europe’s doorstep, and has deep ties to multiple strong communities around the world, consisting of both Lebanese migrants and foreigners who have longstanding ties to the place.

While tiny in size, Lebanon has great cultural significance for Arabs, and it is one of the most Westernized countries in the Arab world, with a multilingual and religiously and ethnically diverse population.

If Israel attempts to do to Lebanon what it did to Gaza, the international backlash will be ten times stronger, and Nassrallah knows it. Israel, on the other hand, blind from arrogance and American support, does not recognize this hurdle.

This has serious diplomatic meaning

PR is not the only Hezbollah game in the narrative control Olympics. Diplomacy is a major discipline in it as well. In this regard, a year of showing relative restraint against Israel brought Hezbollah serious achievements: a series of international institutions voiced their decidedly negative opinion about Israel, cementing its image as a rogue, deranged state. The ICJ’s genocide case, the ICC’s cases involving the illegality of the occupation, and potential arrest warrants against Israel’s leadership, and even the UN assembly voting overwhelmingly to end Israel’s occupation of Palestine are all part of the long process of isolating Israel. And all those painfully slow and marginally effective processes, which are nonetheless essential, are better left to materialize when Israel is the clear bully, occupier, and aggressor.

Had Hezbollah decided to start a war early on in the genocide, it is doubtful any of those developments would have taken place, as Israel would have been able to present itself as a victim of a well-coordinated multidirectional attack. By staying mostly out of it, Hezbollah let Israel cook in its own actions and their ramifications. It also helped set the stage for more serious international action against Israel, as all those processes slowly ripen and further destroy Israel’s perception.

Israel’s rivals know that they have to make inroads into the hearts of Western populations, and for this, they have to be seen as victims rather than aggressors in a very clear and decisive way. A year into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its image in the West is virtually eternally ruined (except among bought and paid-for establishment elites). In the long run, this would prove more beneficial to the Axis of Resistance than destroyed Israeli cities.

Let Israel bleed and get weaker

As usual, Israel is currently overplaying its air superiority card, pretending it can win wars and destroy rivals, but also pretending the rest of its military has the same level of effectiveness or readiness. The truth of the matter is none of these assertions is true. Israel has used its air power against Gaza for a year, and Hamas is still operational and still kills IDF soldiers routinely. We have no reason to assume it’s going to be different with Hezbollah (a far more capable, organized, and equipped military that cannot be cut off from its supply lines).

Additionally, the IDF and the Israeli public are fatigued and overwhelmed by a year of fighting with nothing to show for it: close to zero captives rescued alive, Hamas still operative, a severely shaken economy, tens of thousands of damaged soldiers (well over 600 hundred dead and many thousands more disabled for life). And if that’s not enough, we’re witnessing the formation of a wave of international hatred and legal-cultural action and sentiment against Israel that we have never seen before in our lifetime.

had Hezbollah acted rashly, this may have not come to pass.

Reserve soldiers, IDF’s main HR pool, are tired and resentful from a year of being called into service by a government many of them despise and demonstrate against. The heavy losses expected in the first days of invading Lebanon are not going to be great for morale as well, to say the least.

Israel is about to invade Lebanon when it’s battered diplomatically, strained politically and financially, and damaged militarily. For Hezbollah, this is a much preferable scenario.

Improving military capabilities

In this year of relatively low-intensity violence Hezbollah had a chance to not only study Israel’s methods, means, and tactics, it was also provided a chance for its many fresh recruits, who had never seen battle, to gain combat experience and get to know their enemy in a real, unsimulated environment.

Hezbollah lost fighters and commanders during this year, including in the last week (and including today, with news of the assassination of Ibrahim Aqil just coming out ), but thousands of its intelligence officers and fighters are much better at what they do now than a year ago.

IDF soldiers, on the other hand, acquired almost no relevant military experience, as Hamas rarely engaged in direct confrontation with them. Hezbollah’s way of doing things is bound to be vastly different, due to its far superior firepower, manpower, and coordination capabilities.

Finally, by not using its more sophisticated and deadly arsenal, Hezbollah was much less likely to provide Israel with counterintelligence and strike opportunities. Israel must assume, going into this, that it has a great many blind spots as regards Hezbollah, and it will have to do something no standing military likes to do, which is improvise under fire.

Just like Hamas, Hezbollah exploits Israel’s weaknesses

When looking at the existential battle between Israel and its neighbors we must understand that for them it is either the unknown of an open conflict or the certainty of subjugation, humiliation, and death. There is no middle ground: Israel is (and was not) not going to let anyone in its neighborhood live in peace and dignity.

On October 7 Hamas fast-forwarded the inevitable process of Gaza’s destruction by Israel to get the world’s attention and potentially mobilize other Muslin and Arab forces to take on Israel diplomatically and/or militarily. In doing so, it relied on its understanding of Israel’s megalomania and a self-destabilizing sense of innate supremacy. Hamas knew Israel was incapable of fighting a fair and reasonable war: it knew Israel’s need to reassert its supremacy, and its deeply flawed understanding of humanity would make it look like the monster that it enthusiastically showed itself to be.

Their calculation proved right. Israel will never again be seen as a sane and legitimate country, and humanity will not let it keep Palestine. It won’t happen: arrest warrants, sanctions, bans, and new military alliances are coming. Gaza’s population has paid a terrible, inconceivable price, but the Palestinian issue will never be forgotten again: millions have been exposed to it and incorporated it as part of their political identity. Gaza lost an astronomical number of lives to Israel’s insanity but it has won the political war.

Similarly, Hezbollah seeks to take advantage of Israel’s megalomania and its need to assert its dominance, or omnipotence, on Lebanese soil.

Israel will pummel Lebanon from the air but it will do nothing to stop Hezbollah, while severely destroying its international image further and providing grounds for more legal and international actions against it, further cementing its isolation.

Meanwhile, mounting IDF casualty numbers and bombarded cities will put enormous pressure on an already fatigued population and strained security apparatus - and that’s before dragging Iran into this, which is bound to happen, in my estimation, by mid-2025.

Because of its stupidity, inhumanity, and megalomania, Israel will never know a day of peace again, till it breaks. It is already only held in place by Netanyahu’s ceaser-like image and America’s support. Once one of these two, or both, prove insufficient, it’s game over. No governance, no international relations, no functioning academia or economy, and not even fake normallcy.

We need to not be fooled by Israel’s occasional lucky strikes. Its situation is continuously getting worse, and the villainy and incompetence of its leadership, augmented by unmatched civilian obedience and conformity, guarantee everything will only get worse and worse, in a near linear way, will the end.