How Nasrallah went from Israel's favorite enemy to a dead man - analysis

No top Israeli official would have said this out loud, but from 2006 until October 8, 2023, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was in many ways Israel’s favorite enemy.

He was incredibly dangerous in that he had over 150,000 rockets and many powerful long-range precision missiles, but he was the ultimate “deterred,” predictable, and pragmatic enemy.

It was never that he was okay with Israel’s existence. If he had ever felt he had the power to wipe out the Jewish state, he would have done so many years ago.

But unlike many other Arab or Muslim despots who tried to fight Israel, he had learned from the 2006 Second Lebanon War that a major fight with Israel was simply not worth it and was too dangerous.

Escalation

This started to change in March 2023, shifted more on October 8, 2023, and developed in an even more radical way sometime between mid- and late 2024, leading to an Israeli decision to kill him instead of keeping him in place as a practical restraint on Hezbollah.

Why did top Israeli defense officials prefer Nasrallah? Why did they view him as pragmatic and deterred, at least as far as enemies go?

From 2006 to 2023, Israel had 17 years of relative quiet with Lebanon.

In some years, almost nothing went on near the border.

Tensions did increase during some periods, but Nasrallah could always be counted on to slow things down and step back from the brink if the temperature in the region got too hot. That was the most one could hope for from an enemy.

Unlike Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, who actually invaded Israel, killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages, Nasrallah talked for years about sending his Radwan Force in to do the same – but he never did.

Holding back

Even on October 7, when Nasrallah’s golden opportunity came to raid Israel while it was confused and demoralized – because such an invasion would have split Israeli efforts into defending against an invasion on two fronts – he held back.

Nasrallah’s decision to fire rockets into northern Israel on October 8 initially was seen as a midpoint, but not necessarily a radical change.

He was participating symbolically in support of Hamas’s war with Israel but was not using even 1% of his true rocket capabilities, besides not invading.

As Israel systematically took Hamas apart, Nasrallah did nothing to strategically alter the balance to try to save it, though he absolutely could have with his juggernaut rocket arsenal.

There were subtle shifts in how Israelis viewed Nasrallah in March 2023 when he sent a terrorist across the border to carry out an attack deep inside Israel near Megiddo.

Sometimes, Hezbollah also started to fire symbolic volleys of rockets into Israel when there was friction with Gaza in 2023.

Symbolic support

But these were still small measures; they only demonstrated that Nasrallah hoped to begin to get credit for the Palestinian cause on a symbolic level.

Throughout the early months of the war, Hezbollah kept its rockets strictly limited to the northern areas closest to the border, areas that Nasrallah knew were not strategic for Israel – and he never came near to attacking Safed, Acre, or bigger northern cities like Haifa.

It is not 100% clear when the IDF and the Israeli government started to view him as no longer “useful,” as no longer deterred, and potentially as more of a real threat and target.

Opposition leader Benny Gantz started to call for ramping up threats and, potentially, attacks on Hezbollah already in June. He called for the government to set September 1 as a deadline for returning 60,000 displaced northern residents back home, meaning that a potential major operation against Hezbollah would have needed to start before then.

By mid-September, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF were committed to a major operation against Hezbollah to start the process of securing the northern residents’ return to their homes.

As for Nasrallah, he was given multiple warning shots and chances to live if he was only ready to climb down from his tree and accept a ceasefire on Israel’s terms.

Hezbollah’s communications network was hit hard between September 17 and 18; Nasrallah’s number three, Ibrahim Aqil, was killed on September 21; and 1,300 targets were attacked on September 23. More top commanders and tens of thousands of rockets were hit this past week as additional warnings. However, Nasrallah remained unmoved regarding a ceasefire deal that would leave Israel’s northern residents secure.

Once almost all of the Hezbollah leader’s top advisers and significant portions of his best weapons were destroyed and he was still unwilling to back down, Netanyahu and the defense establishment had lost patience with him.

He had gone from a rational pragmatist who learned in 2006 not to mess with Israel beyond a certain point to a religious fanatic obsessed with honor, one who was unwilling to back down in such a way that the Jewish state would have found tolerable in order to end the conflict.

Sever the head

Most importantly, Jerusalem reached the conclusion that while it might need to invade Lebanon to achieve a lasting and reliable ceasefire, killing Nasrallah might prevent this, allowing for a better chance at a ceasefire now without the need for an invasion.

By Wednesday of this past week, a decision in principle was made; earlier Friday there were already hints that Nasrallah was near his end, and by late Friday, he was history.