Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah and Iran reassess the battlefield
On June 19, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah threatened that if Israel launched a full-scale war against Hezbollah, Hezbollah would conquer Galilee, raze the rest of Israel and attack Cyprus. On June 29, Iran threatened that if Israel allowed the situation to escalate, “a war of extermination would begin.”
These threats reflect hysteria rather than confidence. Even nine months after the war began, Tehran still believes that if Israel went into open war, it would deal a fatal blow to its main ally, Hezbollah. No less important, however, is that Iran’s attitude toward the war has changed dramatically in just a few months. To understand where Iran and Hezbollah stand today, one must go back to the beginning.
The October 7 massacre was initiated by Yahya Sinwar without coordination with Beirut and Tehran. Khamenei and Nasrallah financed, trained and armed Hamas, but that morning they were as surprised as Israel. Sinwar decided to attack without coordination because he knew they would forbid him. First, because Israel was still too strong and could eliminate Hamas and Hezbollah. Second, as long as Israel did not attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Tehran was not keen on endangering Hezbollah.
Sinwar ordered the attack nonetheless, believing that the public pledges his men received in Beirut in March 2023 would force Nasrallah to enter the conflict. Khamenei and Nasrallah were embarrassed, and the latter joined in for lack of alternatives.
Tehran praised Nasrallah’s middle path: supporting Hamas by attacking Israeli forces and driving Israeli civilians from their homes in the Upper Galilee, but without engaging in open war. While Nasrallah has promised in his speeches to take part in attacks on Israel as long as the war in Gaza continues, Hezbollah’s reticence has drawn criticism of Iran and Hezbollah in the Muslim world and made the whole event extremely embarrassing.
For this reason, Tehran has repeatedly made desperate appeals to the world to put pressure on the United States to force an end to the war.
Nasrallah longs for ceasefire
In recent months, Tehran has stopped demanding this. Instead, Iran proudly points to the contribution of Hezbollah and the Houthis to weakening Israel, and I understand that they want the war to continue. They believe that Israel is losing Western support, that the Israeli armed forces are exhausted, that Israeli society is disintegrating, that the port of Eilat is paralyzed and that the economy is collapsing.
For Nasrallah, however, every additional day of fighting is an enormous burden. He longs for a ceasefire agreement in Gaza, even if Israel alone declares the end of the massive war and stays in Gaza. But Iran will try to force him to continue.
If a general ceasefire is agreed, Nasrallah will abide by it. There is even a possibility that he may agree to a 15-kilometer withdrawal, possibly as far as the Litani River, to avoid war.
This could only succeed, however, if a joint Israeli-American position is reached. Israel would declare that it would start a full-scale war if Hezbollah did not withdraw, and the United States would commit to supporting it with weapons, intelligence, and support in the Security Council. Israel would have to concentrate very large forces in the north to convince Nasrallah of the seriousness of his intentions.
If Nasrallah and Tehran are convinced, he will likely withdraw, assuming that his people can return as soon as possible, as they did in 2006. Therefore, Israel and the United States must soon reach an agreement that allows Israel to implement Security Council Resolution 1701.
Displaced Israeli civilians will be allowed to return to the north, but this time with a large number of Israeli soldiers permanently stationed on the border. But every Israeli prime minister will be personally and legally responsible for preventing Hezbollah from returning to the border, even if it leads to war. This is the only way to restore a sense of security in the north.
The author of the article, Amatzia Baram, is professor emeritus at the University of Haifa.
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