Israeli report: Two years after Nasrallah's death, Hezbollah still trying to rebuild
Two years after Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the group he shaped for decades is “still struggling to rebuild its command structure, military capabilities, and strategic standing following a campaign that systematically dismantled the network around him,” an Israeli media report said.
“On September 27, 2024, Nasrallah made one final choice. According to people intimately familiar with his routine and the security arrangements around him, he had safer places he could have gone that day. Nevertheless, he descended into an underground compound in Beirut's Dahiyeh neighborhood, beneath a multi-story residential building,” Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post reported.
“Two years later, the organization is still trying to fill the vacuum he left behind … But to understand why Hezbollah is still struggling to regain its footing two years after Nasrallah's assassination, it is necessary to return not only to the bunker where his life ended, but also to the months during which Israel dismantled, almost layer by layer, the system on which he relied,” the daily added.
In an extensive investigation published by the Saudi Asharq al-Awsat, Lebanese sources and Shiite clerics described how Israeli assassinations began isolating Nasrallah long before Israel reached him personally.
One cleric put it in simple terms: Every time Israel assassinated a field commander, Nasrallah "lost an eye that helped him see clearly."
“Sami Taleb Abdullah, Ibrahim Aqil, Wissam al-Tawil, and other commanders were more than names on an organizational chart. Each held an entire world of knowledge: weapons depots, connections on the ground, methods of operation, movement routes, operational plans, and personal relationships built over years,” The Jerusalem Post said.
The compartmentalization that had been one of Hezbollah's primary defensive mechanisms became a weakness during the war. According to the Lebanese sources who spoke to Asharq al-Awsat, when a commander was assassinated, his replacement did not necessarily receive all the information the commander had possessed. Sometimes, the network he had built disappeared along with him.
At one point, one cleric said, Israeli drones circling above Hezbollah units knew more about those units than the newly appointed commanders responsible for leading them.
The cumulative losses also penetrated Hezbollah's operations rooms. Lebanese sources described chaos, improvised decision-making, and a sense that the organization was operating out of panic and suspicion rather than through an orderly chain of command.
“Nasrallah nevertheless continued to believe in the old rules of the game,” The Jerusalem Post said.
Lebanese journalist Ali al-Amin told Asharq al-Awsat that the Hezbollah leader remained convinced that the organization possessed enough deterrent power to prevent Israel from launching a broad war. Even when field commanders urged him to move to all-out war after watching Israel hunt their colleagues one by one, Nasrallah refused.
He chose defense. But that defensive perimeter was steadily closing in around him.
According to the accounts, Nasrallah first began to suspect that Israeli penetration was far deeper than he had believed in January 2024, following the assassination of Saleh al-Arouri and, later, Tawil. He had not expected either assassination. Afterward, Lebanese sources said, Nasrallah fell silent.
Hezbollah began examining its communications networks and searching for the breach. As the assassinations continued, suspicion grew, and the organization increasingly turned inward, The Jerusalem Post said.
An Israeli colonel told the daily that Israeli intelligence agencies "followed Nasrallah for a very long time."
"We knew his apartments, his wife's home, his emergency locations, and the places where he hid."
According to the officer, there were periods when Nasrallah did not live underground at all. At times, he stayed in a penthouse on the eighth floor of a residential building in Dahiyeh, where a special elevator let him quickly reach a protected space.
For those planning his assassination, the officer said, that did not make much difference.
"In every bunker he entered, we would have killed him. We had relevant attack plans for every building and every bunker."
On the day he was killed, the officer said, Nasrallah had more heavily protected options available to him. Nevertheless, he chose to go to the compound where he was assassinated, the officer added.
As for Nasrallah’s succession, the Jerusalem Post quoted Israeli defense as saying that "Nasrallah's shoes are several sizes too big for (current leader Sheikh) Naim Qassem's feet." According to them, he has been unable to restore Hezbollah to the strength it possessed on the eve of the 2024 war.
Hezbollah lost almost all of its senior security and political leadership during the war. Among the prominent figures were Fouad Shukur and Haytham Ali Tabatabaei.
“The organization's command-and-control systems were damaged from the highest leadership levels down to the tactical ranks, and Israeli assessments hold that between one-third and one-half of Hezbollah's operational manpower was hit and put out of action,” The Jerusalem Post said.
“Qassem remains a senior target in his own right, but he now leads an organization forced to rebuild far more than its chain of command,” it added.
“The damage Hezbollah faces is no longer only military. The organization is also going through a period when the political framework around it is weakening,” the newspaper said.
It added that Hezbollah “finds itself militarily weaker, more exposed to intelligence penetration, under greater political pressure, and less certain of the Iranian backing it had taken almost for granted for years.”
That is also why Israeli officials assess that Hezbollah currently has no interest in risking an all-out war.
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