Bishwajit Acharya and Soumya Narain
On Saturday 28 September Israel confirmed that it had bombed the central headquarters of Hezbollah in Beirut and has claimed that the attack killed Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Ever since the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) led by Yassir Arafat had to withdraw from its erstwhile headquarters in Beirut in the 1980s, coupled with the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, Hezbollah has been a formidable foe for Israel. On September 16, the Israeli security cabinet approved the return of its northern population. Yet, for Israel, the real threat is the deteriorating security condition in the region with various militant groups operating under the Iranian umbrella. Of these threats, most prominent is the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah. Although Iran presides over these groups, there has not yet been a credible response from Tehran after its unsuccessful attempt at bombing Israel in April 2024 via ballistic missiles and drone strikes. This is all the more surprising when considering the international humiliation it faced after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil.
The Hezbollah leadership has seemed to not want to escalate this cross-border aerial bombardment into a full-blown war with Israel and at the same time, it cannot cease to obey the demands of the “Axis of Resistance” for that would isolate the group significantly reducing its support and training from Iran. Thus, Hezbollah’s bombing of Israel would not terminate until there is a ceasefire agreement in Gaza. The goals set out by the Axis of Resistance are three-fold: to prevent Israel from launching a ground offensive against Hezbollah, to dislodge the US from its presence in Syria and in the long-term, to draw up a plan to fight Israel in a protracted regional conflict.
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