Hezbollah leader Nasrallah killed by Israel in major escalation

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed on Friday in a series of blasts that destroyed an underground command center in southern Beirut, Israel and Hezbollah said on Saturday.

“The Israel Defense Forces confirm that Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Hezbollah terrorist organization and one of its founders, was eliminated yesterday,” the Israeli government said in a statement posted online. Hezbollah confirmed his death.

Nasrallah was one of the most prominent figures in the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance.” The Lebanese cleric had headed the militant group since 1992, after his predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi, was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

Nasrallah’s death could send a seismic shock across the Middle East and runs the risk of triggering a wider regional war that Israel’s Western allies have been scrambling to avert.

It will also test Israel’s theory that by escalating a long-simmering fight with Hezbollah it can get the group to back down. If Hezbollah and its Iranian supporters decide to keep up their fight — and the militant group vowed on Saturday to “continue the holy war against the enemy and in support of Palestine” — it could lead to a broader regional conflict.

Nasrallah was a tactical leader of the militia as well as a symbolic figure heralded by generations of Hezbollah members for his ability to bolster the group’s stockpiles with increasingly sophisticated weapons. He also is credited by his supporters for having ended the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. 

His death could stoke a severe response from the militant group — if it is not in total disarray from the barrage of Israeli strikes on other Hezbollah commanders and weapons caches.

“The whole structure of Hezbollah’s military system is basically now gone,” said Hanin Ghaddar of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank. “If they want to escalate, they have a problem because there’s no one clear leader on the ground anymore to direct the battles.”

Headquarters bombed

The IDF said several bunker buster bombs crumpled the headquarters facility built beneath residential buildings in Beirut in a series of explosions that could be heard across the Lebanese capital. The IDF said other senior commanders also were killed in the attack.

Israeli officials said the assault was a targeted attempt on Nasrallah’s life, ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be launched shortly after he gave a speech at the United Nations in which he vowed to continue the military campaign.

“The strike was carried out while the top brass of Hezbollah were at their headquarters and engaged in coordinating terror activities against the citizens of the State of Israel,” the IDF said.

At least eight people were killed and more than a hundred wounded in the overnight strikes, according to Lebanese authorities, but the IDF puts the death toll higher. Israeli media reported that Nasrallah’s daughter, Zainab, also was killed in the attack, though there was no confirmation of that.

An estimated 700 people have been killed in attacks across the south of Lebanon and its capital in recent days, with around 90,000 forced to flee their homes. 

A week of extraordinary Israeli military operations has seen the elimination of the Iranian-backed militia’s top commanders and, according to some Israeli estimates, nearly half of its huge arsenal of missiles and rockets.

Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said earlier this week that the Israeli military was preparing for a possible occupation of territory in Lebanon, warning “military boots will enter enemy territory.” The IDF has sent two brigades to northern Israel to train for a possible ground invasion.

‘Hezbollah lives’

In the early hours of Saturday, posters appeared on Tehran’s highways depicting Nasrallah and proclaiming “Hezbollah lives” — seemingly in preparation for official Iranian mourning with the emphasis placed on how the group will live on. 

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a statement on Saturday insisting that “all the Resistance forces in the region support and stand alongside Hezbollah” and called on the Lebanese people to “confront and usurp” Israel.

“Israel clearly infiltrated Hezbollah at highly sensitive and consequential levels, killing senior command networks with airstrikes, paralysing its communication and coordination capacity, and grinding the organization down,” said Burcu Ozcelik, a Middle East expert at the Royal United Services Institute. “As the region faces the gravest threat yet to regional security in nearly a year of conflict, there are several unknowns, including how Hezbollah may respond.”

Nasrallah joined Hezbollah in 1982, the year it was formed by Iranian Revolutionary Guard members. During his 32-year leadership, he is credited with turning Hezbollah into a regional power in its own right.

“Hassan Nasrallah will no longer be able to terrorize the world,” the IDF said in another statement posted on X.

Israel maintained a heavy series of airstrikes against Hezbollah Saturday morning. Israeli leaders say their escalating airstrikes are being carried out to preempt escalation into a full-blown war, but observers fear it could have quite the opposite effect and is putting the region on course for a wider conflict.

As Hezbollah and Iran consider their next steps and whether and how to retaliate, the IDF’s Halevi warned that Nasrallah’s death showed that Israel can and will reach anyone who threatens it.

‘Tools in the toolbox’

“The is not the end of the tools in the toolbox. The message is simple, to anyone who threatens the citizens of the State of Israel, we will know how to get to them,” Halevi said.

“After a long period of preparing many capabilities for Lebanon, we have begun implementing them. This strike had also been prepared for a long time and executed at the right time, precisely,” he continued.

“We are now moving forward with sharp preparation for the next steps. Ultimately, I emphasize again that we are maintaining maximum readiness across all of our sectors,” Halevi said.

Israel has warned that unless Hezbollah withdraws all its forces north of the Litani River, 18 kilometers from the Israel-Lebanon border, Israel will launch a ground assault.

Netanyahu is coming under intense domestic political pressure to force Hezbollah to cease rocket attacks on Israeli communities near the border in northern Israel. The rocket attacks were launched by Hezbollah immediately following last October’s Hamas attack on southern Israel and have forced the evacuation of more than 80,000 Israelis from their homes. 

The Biden administration has been scrambling this week to try to forestall a full-scale Israel-Hezbollah war, as the violence in Lebanon escalated. On the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, the White House worked with France and Arab powers to draft a 21-day cease-fire proposal, only to see that effort swiftly shot down by Israeli’s Netanyahu. 

The cease-fire proposal was aimed at setting the stage for a longer-lasting peace deal that would have Hezbollah withdraw its forces away from the Israel-Lebanon border. Nasrallah’s killing could derail those efforts entirely.

Erin Banco, Robbie Gramer and Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.