A lot happens every day. Alliances shift, leaders change, and conflicts erupt. With In Brief, we’ll help you make sense of it all. Each week, experts will dig deep on a single issue happening in the world to help you better understand it. ***In recent weeks, Israel has stepped up its campaign against Hizballah in Lebanon, culminating in the killing of Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah last weekend and the beginning of a ground offensive into southern Lebanon on Monday. We asked five experts to tell us more about the conflict: What are the coming days and weeks likely to look like, what is Israel’s goal here, and how likely are they to achieve it?Read more below.Faysal Itani Senior Director New Lines Institute for Strategy and PolicySecretary General Hassan Nasrallah’s assassination immediately raises fundamental questions about the future of Hizballah, Lebanon, and Iran. His death is a major blow to Iranian and Hizballah confidence and political clout. Yet this is less important than the broader strategic reality in which Israel has for months escalated and counter-escalated against Hizballah and Iran with impunity. This is a new dynamic, and their total inability to respond to and decrease this pressure bodes very badly for them. Israel appears to have the option of applying indefinite pressure on the movement’s members and supply lines. This would eliminate it as a strategic threat and plunge Lebanon, until now dominated by Hizballah, into uncertainty. Such a course may prove too tempting for Israel to agree to any U.S.-backed ceasefire since even with Nasrallah’s death, letting up this pressure would allow the party to rearm, regroup, and experiment with new strategies against Israel. Similarly, a large-scale Israeli ground invasion might also offer opportunities for Hizballah to rally and inflict casualties. The point is that Nasrallah’s death does not rule out Hizballah’s recovery. That will be decided by Israel’s long-term
Members-Only Content
This article is reserved for War on the Rocks members. Join our community to unlock exclusive insights and analysis.
A lot happens every day. Alliances shift, leaders change, and conflicts erupt. With In Brief, we’ll help you make sense of it all. Each week, experts will dig deep on a single issue happening in the world to help you better understand it. ***In recent weeks, Israel has stepped up its campaign against Hizballah in Lebanon, culminating in the killing of Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah last weekend and the beginning of a ground offensive into southern Lebanon on Monday. We asked five experts to tell us more about the conflict: What are the coming days and weeks likely to look like, what is Israel’s goal here, and how likely are they