Pinpoint assassinations: Israel’s message to Hezbollah, Lebanon, Hamas, and Iran - analysis

The question Saturday night after the Majdal Shams massacre was not whether Israel would respond but rather how and against whom.

 Would the target be Hezbollah, which fired the rocket that killed 12 children and youths; would it be Lebanon, which houses Hezbollah and allows it to fire on Israel whenever it wants; or would it be Iran, which is Hezbollah’s patron, sponsor, and paymaster?

The answer came late Tuesday evening and early Wednesday morning in the form of two pinpoint assassinations. The first hit was on Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s chief of staff, in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Then, a few hours later, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed when a missile crashed into the apartment where he was sleeping in Tehran.

While Israel took responsibility for the killing of Shukr, it officially stayed mum regarding the killing of Haniyeh, though Iran blamed Israel and vowed revenge.

In other words, in two blows, Israel—if indeed it was responsible for the assassination of Haniyeh—struck at Hezbollah, Lebanon, Iran, and, as an added bonus, Hamas.

It struck at Hezbollah by killing Shukr, one of the organization’s most dominant figures. By killing him in Beirut, Israel signaled to Lebanon that nothing is out of bounds, and as easily as it can hit an apartment in the city’s southern suburbs, it can strike at Lebanon’s infrastructure.

By striking Haniyeh in Tehran, Israel signaled that it has no compunctions about hitting at the proverbial head of the “resistance camp” octopus and not only its tentacles (proxies). And by killing Haniyeh, Israel struck yet another blow against Hamas.

By doing this all together, in two precision blows just hours apart, Israel also took large strides toward restoring public faith—as well as the enemy’s understanding—of its capabilities, both operational and intelligence.

A new meaning to the word deterrence

BEFORE OCTOBER 7, this might have been called deterrence, and the twin attacks witnessed in some seven hours might have been seen as an effort to restore deterrence. October 7, however, gave a new meaning to the word deterrence.

Hamas’s brazen and barbaric attack showed that it was not deterred by Israel’s might, even though it was well aware of that might and equally well aware that Israel would hammer it in return—which it is doing. But that was not a disincentive, rather an incentive.

Hamas expected to get pounded but believed that this would further its long-term strategic goals: it would trigger a wider regional war, which to a certain degree it has, and as a result of civilian casualties and suffering in Gaza, which it invited, would weaken Israel by turning world opinion against it.

Hamas was not deterred by Israel’s might, not because it did not appreciate that might or because it did not understand that Israel would deploy it, but rather because its calculation of what constitutes victory and its cost-benefit evaluation is different from ours. As a violent non-state actor, it is far more willing than rational state actors to accept high levels of sacrifice.

When an organization disregards the safety of its civilians and the destruction of its territory, traditional deterrence based on overwhelming military power becomes ineffective.

This is similar to al-Qaeda’s calculation when attacking the US on 9/11. Did al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden not know that the US would respond with overwhelming force? Of course they knew, but that is what they wanted, in the hopes it would lead to a wider war between Islam and the West. American superior power was not a deterrence because al-Qaeda’s calculations were different from what Westerners expected.

IT IS DIFFICULT to say, therefore, whether the attacks in Beirut and Tehran helped restore Israel’s deterrence because the ideological extremists in control of Hamas and Hezbollah, and also Iran—even though it is a state actor and state actors generally take into consideration potential damage to infrastructure, economy, and the civilian population—may be immune to deterrence in the traditional sense.

Iranian leader Ali Khamenei and the ayatollahs ruling Iran, like the heads of Hamas and Hezbollah, may be so blinded by an ideological and theological hatred of Israel as to be willing to bring destruction upon themselves – as long as Israel suffers in the process.

What the attacks in Beirut and Tehran did restore, however, is appreciation of Israel’s capabilities.

On October 7, Israel was let down tremendously by its intelligence apparatus, raising questions about its vaunted intelligence agencies and whether it was not over-reliant on technological wizardry.

Since October 7, the intelligence has proven itself on numerous occasions, such as pinpoint assassinations carried out in Beirut in January when Israel killed Hamas’s Saleh al-Arouri and in Damascus in April when it killed Mohammed Reza Zahedi, a top commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The back-to-back pinpoint operations in Beirut and Tehran this week —knowing exactly where the targets were and hitting them without causing massive collateral damage—are exceptional. It has to be sobering for Israel’s enemies.

Hezbollah has, over the last few months, tried to wow Israel with its intelligence capabilities by posting videos of Haifa’s port and the Ramat David Air Base. But hitting Shukr’s apartment—knowing exactly when and where he would be there and sending a precision-guided missile to that site—bespeaks of intelligence brought up to another level.

The twin hits—against faraway targets in enemy lands— also reflect tremendous operational capabilities. These capabilities were also on display two weeks ago when Israel struck the Hodeida Port in Yemen in retaliation for a Houthi drone attack on Tel Aviv.