One of the factors that complicate any solution to the violence currently plaguing the Middle East is the need for one side or the other to convincingly be able to declare victory. To tell its supporters that all the pain, all the sacrifice, all the death was worth it. To end the war without being able to declare you’ve won is tantamount to accepting you’ve lost, and few things are as painful to accept as defeat in a conflict.
After the 2006 Lebanon War the perception was that Hezbollah had won by enduring the Israeli assault and securing the prisoner swap it craved (and for which it had begun the conflict). Israel’s military superiority had been unable to deal with a much smaller foe, and thus was perceived as a humiliation. A lot of debate has occurred since as to whether this perception was accurate, but the truth (whatever that maybe) was beside the point. Hezbollah had won because it was believed to have won. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert suffered a blow to his prestige that he never recovered from, whilst Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was able to further entrench his group as a ‘state within a state’ within Lebanon and became a hero in much of the Arab world (though his image would take a battering given his support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during the Syrian Civil War).
Nearly twenty years later, on October 8th 2023, Hezbollah and Israel came to blows again when Hezbollah began firing rockets at northern Israeli cities and villages in solidarity with the Palestinian Hamas, which had just perpetrated the October 7th atrocity. Hezbollah’s attacks were calibrated, designed to display solidarity with the Palestinians whilst hopefully not being enough to provoke Israel into a full-on war against Lebanon that Hezbollah did not want. And it seemed to be very successful at first, displacing the residents of northern Israel and creating pressure ont the Israeli government to find a solution that would allow these inhabitants to return to their homes.
But it has at last culminated in today’s ceasefire deal, and unlike in 2006 Hezbollah has come out the poorer for the contest.
To understand why, we need to take note of the broader picture in the Middle East, which is dominated by the geo-political contest between Iran and the United States for influence. The United States has a vested interest in the Middle East due to its location and its hydrocarbon resources. The Americans would love nothing more than for the region to be peaceful, stable and productive of the resources America wishes to consume. How that peace and stability is achieved varies depending on the fashion of the time but this is normally achieved through a compliant strongman. These are usually alliances of mutual self-interest (and normally remarkably stable as a result). I would argue the only state the US shares a genuine bond with is Israel.
Iran in contrast is a revolutionary regime that seeks to eject the United States from the region (although this is almost certainly so that it can replace that influence with its own). It has aspirations of regional hegemony but it is also a vastly smaller, vastly poorer and vastly less militarily powerful country when compared to the United States. Unable to compete with America directly, Iran has adopted an attritional strategy, hoping to outlast the United States and destroy what it regards as the ultimate American proxy, Israel. To this end, Iran has created its Axis of Resistance, an informal alliance of Iranian client states and non-state actors designed to encircle Israel and slowly choke it.
Israel has, for decades, tolerated this encirclement as the price of dislodging it or gravely weakening it would be a bloody regional war. When Hamas triggered that war anyway it did so with an attack of such scale that the informal rules as previously understood were voided. Israel would now move to dismantle as much of the Axis as possible. Which is where I cycle back to Hezbollah not fundamentally understanding how the rules had changed.
Hezbollah’s victory condition in 2023/2024 was that Israel would stop its assault on Gaza and in exchange Hezbollah would stop firing on Israel. This outcome would allow Hezbollah to declare victory, buttress its image of being the sole Arab force able and willing to contend with Israel as a peer but also avoid the worst of the fighting. Hezbollah anticipated that Israel might invade Lebanon, as it had done in the 2006 war, and it planned to use its home-field advantage to lure Israeli forces in, ambush them and use attritional warfare to grind them down as had happened in 2006. Again, the end result would be Hezbollah being able to declare a win. But it did not work out like that (and reminds us of the old adage that being prepared to fight the last war is a classic mistake).
An appropriate metaphor for what has happened might be of two rival chess players returning to the board for yet another match, the latest in a long line of bitter matches. Yet when one sat down prepared to play the same game they had done so many times before, they were instead shocked when their opponent knocked the board aside and punched them in the face.
Israel has done immense damage to Hezbollah. Opening with the pager attack, following up with the assassination of long-term leader and movement icon Hassan Nasrallah (compounded by them eliminating effectively the entire Hezbollah leadership and the upper echelons of its command structures) and invading Lebanon while the group was off-kilter, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that Israel learned the lessons of 2006. That may merely be perception of course, but perception matters. That’s the point.
And that perception is reinforced by today’s ceasefire deal between the two parties. The BBC summarises what the deal is expected to contain…
The details of the proposed agreement are unclear, but it is understood to be based on the terms of UN Security Council resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
The resolution requires, among other things, Hezbollah to remove its fighters and weapons from the area between the Blue Line – the unofficial border between Lebanon and Israel – and the Litani river, about 30km (20 miles) to the north. Israel says that was never implemented, while Lebanon says Israel’s violations included military flights over its territory.
During the current US-led talks, according to a Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity, it has been made clear to the Lebanese authorities that the post-2006 situation, in which Hezbollah was allowed to build extensive infrastructure along the border, will not be repeated.
So one of the key points seems to be the implementation of the deal. The US will lead a five-country monitoring committee, while the UN peacekeeping force in the south of Lebanon (Unifil) will be reinforced.
During the 60-day ceasefire, the Lebanese Army is expected to deploy 5,000 troops to the south, although questions remained about their role in enforcing any agreement, and whether they would confront Hezbollah if needed, which has the potential to exacerbate tensions in a country where sectarian divisions run deep.
The army has also said it does not have the resources – money, manpower and equipment – to fulfil its obligations under the deal, which will probably be alleviated by contributions from some of Lebanon’s international allies.
But there had been an acceptance by Lebanese authorities that things had to change, the diplomat added, and there was the political will to do so.
Media reports suggest the US will issue a letter supporting Israel’s right to act in Lebanon if Hezbollah is perceived as being in violation of the deal.
This Israeli demand has been rejected by Lebanon, where it is seen as a violation of the country’s sovereignty. It has not been included in the proposal deal, and will probably be made public later.
The deal is not universally popular in Israel with an editorial in the Jerusalem Post laying out some concerns (whilst ultimately backing the move). It does quote extremist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir who called the deal…
“a grave mistake” and accused the government of halting military operations prematurely. “Hezbollah is battered and eager for a ceasefire; we must not stop,” he said.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was more blunt, stating, “No agreement. If signed, it will be worth the paper it’s written on.”
In contrast Press TV, a propaganda arm of the Islamic Republic of Iran (and I strongly urge anyone reading anything on that website to not trust it, the value of their articles is not in what they are reporting but in how they are reporting it), describes the ceasefire in its article on the news as a ‘victory’ for the resistance. Again, we return to the ‘optics of victory’ and Iran’s need to portray this as a great win. But the outlines of the ceasefire as well as the results on the ground reveal the reality.
Israel has won this round with Hezbollah.
The Hezbollah leadership has been decimated. Commanders with years of experience slain. Thousands of fighters killed or maimed. Stockpiles of weapons that took years to build up destroyed. The organisation is to be ousted from southern Lebanon, and an effective buffer zone created between it and Israel. The movement’s opponents in Lebanon have been strengthened by Hezbollah’s decline and maybe more eager to challenge it. Social tensions in Lebanon between the various sects has been enflamed by the crisis and will likely prove to be a challenge in the years ahead.
And most importantly, Hezbollah has agreed to a ceasefire without securing one in Gaza. That was the entire point of Hezbollah starting to attack Israel to begin with.
Given the state of Hezbollah’s leadership structure right now, it has become increasingly reliant on Iranian support and direction (some even argue the deaths of so many leaders in such a short period has meant the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are effectively running the show right now in lieu of any other effective alternatives). The likely conclusion, in spite of what Press TV are reporting, is that Iran has accepted that Hamas will be sacrificed to preserve what is left of Hezbollah.
Which means Iran and its ‘Axis of Resistance’ have not only lost this round with Israel but the very concept of the Axis itself has been damaged. What is the point of a ligature designed to slowly strangle if it can be snapped? (As an aside, this may lead Iran further down the path to a nuclear deterrent, but that is a discussion for another time).
Now the ceasefire may or may not hold. Israel has promised to use lethal force in response to what it sees as violation and it could easily be upended. But the shape of the deal at this time reveals who has the upper hand and who does not, and the unhappiness among Israelis critical of the deal is not that of those who feel they have failed, but of those who feel they should be allowed to achieve a greater and deeper success than they have already.
All eyes turn to Gaza now where Hamas has declared it is ready for a truce but I think that is unlikely given the makeup of Israel’s current government (some of whom are angry about the ceasefire in Lebanon, but would likely collapse the government if there was a ceasefire in Gaza). Hamas now stands alone, the potshots from the Houthis and Iraq-based military groups are for the sake of solidarity alone than meaningfully impacting the course of the war and all it can expect from Hezbollah and Iran in the near future are thoughts and prayers.
Hamas’ victory condition were to remain intact, secure a prisoner release and have Israel withdraw from Gaza. Whilst to many outsiders such a victory would seem immensely hollow as they partied amidst the rubble, it is increasingly clear Israel is not minded to grant them even the optics of victory. The hell that is Gaza is likely to continue (and I pray I am wrong on that).
I’m a firm believer in Irish unity and I live in the border regions of Tyrone.
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