Israel Decapitates Hezbollah. Far From Escalation, This May Stop a War.

It was widely reported over the course of September 27 that Israel had killed the leader of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah with a massive air strike on several buildings south of Beirut in Lebanon. By September 28, those reports were confirmed and Israel announced that it had indeed killed the leader of the group that directs terror with support from Iran and has killed thousands of Israelis along the Israel-Lebanon border and in northern Israel around the Sea of Galilee.

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this development. Nasrallah was not just another run of the mill terror leader. He had been the head of Hezbollah for thirty years and was instrumental in building its strength and its arsenal of over 10,000 missiles capable of being launched at Israel from thousands of hidden locations.

Nasrallah was one of several senior Hezbollah commanders and political leadership figures killed in the raid. Senior figures in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were also killed along with top intelligence operatives. This decapitation of terrorist leadership comes on top of recent raids that have killed the political head of Hamas (operating south of Israel in Gaza) and the military head of Hamas. And this all traces back to the elimination of the head of the IRGC Qasem Soleimani in 2020 on orders from President Donald Trump.

While some of these raids were conducted with aerial assaults (drones and bombs) others involved devices implanted in supposedly safe houses including one in the heart of Tehran. And these leadership assassinations are in addition to the thousands of exploding pagers and walkie-talkies that were detonated by Israel two weeks ago killing and wounding lower level terrorists.

The question is where does the war go from here?

One view is that leaders are quickly and easily replaced and these attacks are best understood as an escalation in what will become a wider war. That’s possible.

The better view might be that these attacks are extraordinarily targeted and show Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran that there is no safe harbor for any of their leaders no matter how well protected.

The attacks also show that Israel has penetrated all of the terrorist’s secure communications channels. The drones and bombers would not know where to strike without precise information about the whereabouts of the terrorists leaders.

Israel also has assets on the ground who can assist in identifying targets and planting explosive devices as needed. That might be enough to cause the Iranians and their proxies in Hamas and Hezbollah to rethink their multi-decade efforts to eliminate the State of Israel and kill Jews.

Let’s hope this is a turning point in a seemingly never-ending war. Still, let’s not be naive about the fact that another round of escalation may be in store.

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