First for the immoral – or amoral – aspect of the thing…
To get the hide of the leader of Hezbollah, their worst enemy, the Israeli armed forces judged once again that they could kill dozens, even hundreds of innocent people, women, children and non-combatants, and sow terror in Beirut. All this, at the cost of a minimum of international condemnation.
This aspect, or this factor, which until recently still seemed to act (sometimes) as a brake on certain plans of attack – with the development, in Israel, of algorithms supposed to calculate when to strike or not to strike, depending on the number of surrounding civilians and the importance of the military target —, went up in smoke.
The warm corpse of Hassan Nasrallah was worth all the innocent deaths, without limits.
The simultaneous superposition, on the one hand, of new images of war and destruction in Lebanon, and on the other hand, of the annual palaver of the UN General Assembly – where Benjamin Netanyahu went, on Friday, to speak just before to give the order to attack — underlines better than ever the impotence into which the ideal of peace, negotiation and multilateral consultation that this organization wanted to embody has sunk.
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That said, the slaps for immorality must be handed out. During his thirty years of reign, Hassan Nasrallah made Hezbollah the de facto master of Lebanon internally and a formidable politico-military actor, or presumed to be such, throughout the Middle East: the bridgehead of the so-called “axis”. of resistance” remotely controlled by Tehran, with antennas in Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Yemen.
It was initially, initially, a movement of affirmation of the Shiite minority, long flouted in this country. An organization, as is often the case with Islamist groups, where a community and charitable vocation coexisted, on the sidelines of the political and paramilitary fight against the “Zionist enemy”.
Becoming sprawling over time, Hezbollah ended up replacing the Lebanese “failed state” and imposing real hegemony on the political, economic, social… but also military scene, because the Hezbollah militia exceeded its power. the official army of Lebanon.
The other side of the coin, or the dark side, of Hezbollah is enormous. Massively financed by Iran, he became a “foreign agent” who put the interests of Tehran before those of his country.
In the Lebanese economy, Hezbollah is a veritable sprawling mafia, controlling banks, the transport sector, port activities, in addition to downright illicit businesses (arms and drug trafficking, as far as Latin America).
His paramilitary “feats of arms” are numerous: assassinations of politicians (former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri) and journalists (Samir Kassir) who were opposed to him, with investigations (national and international) which never came to fruition, his intimidation against the justice system was so effective.
Ditto for the investigation into the Beirut port explosion in 2020, where the responsibility of Hezbollah and its organizations seems overwhelming, but has never been officially established.
Abroad, Hezbollah was a key player in saving the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. While Russian fighters bombed hospitals, its militiamen fired on the ground against the Syrian opponents.
For the record: the massacre of 600 to 700 civilians, from August 20 to 26, 2012 in Daraya (a town south of Damascus, then held by non-Islamists), is largely attributed to him.
All this explains that in addition to the (authentic) scenes of mourning caused, in certain areas of Beirut and the Bekaa, by the announcement of the death of this “demigod” (for part of the Shiite population), the disappearance of Nasrallah, on the other hand, led to scenes of jubilation in many other places, punctuated by distributions of cakes and sweets…
With explosions of joy in certain areas of Beirut and the north of the country, but also in Syria (Idlib region, held by the opposition). This is because, for many Lebanese and Syrians, Nasrallah was not a demigod… but a monster, and Hezbollah a curse.
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What future for the Islamist organization?
Israel’s repeated attacks over the past two weeks have hurt it, very badly. It apparently finds itself – after the paralysis of its communications, the demolition of its shock brigade, the 2000 targets reached (launch bases) and now the assassination of its great leader – in a state worse than anything we would have could, until recently, believe possible.
This militia party reputed to be all-powerful… perhaps wasn’t that much.
By repeatedly breaking down the supposed “red lines” of its enemies, Israel is pushing its advantage with astonishing audacity and arrogance. Faced with enemies he knew were in “restraint and low profile” mode, the warmonger Netanyahu mounted a full-throttle charge… and this tactic seemed to be working.
Hezbollah is on the ropes, its capacity to respond and its “myth” partly demolished… but what can we say about Iran?
Tehran has indicated that the response to this new affront “belongs to Hezbollah”. Words which, once again, suggest that no, Iran does not want – or cannot – respond directly to Israel.
For the Iranian mullahs, the physical preservation, the simple survival of the Islamic Republic, comes well before the efforts – stopped, even overthrown – of its “axis of resistance”, today wounded in the heart.
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