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End of an Era: What Hassan Nasrallah’s Assassination Spells for the Middle East

Undeniably charismatic, the cleric provided the ideological and practical template for militias and Islamist groups that stretched far beyond Hezbollah

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End of an Era: What Hassan Nasrallah’s Assassination Spells for the Middle East
Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah giving a speech in 2016. (Patrick Baz/AFP via Getty Images)

The killing of Hassan Nasrallah in Israeli strikes on Friday surpasses in significance those of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January 2020 and other towering figures who have shaped the region’s violent modern history. With Nasrallah’s demise, we are witnessing the fall of a figure whose influence extends well beyond Hezbollah, Iran and the “Axis of Resistance.”

For both foes and followers, Nasrallah was larger than life, occupying a place in the Arab world that rivals the mythic aura of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser’s legacy was one of pan-Arab nationalism. He was a unifying figure across the region. Nasrallah, by contrast, operated from within a Shiite-Islamist framework, one tied tightly to Iran, though his influence often crossed sectarian lines. His death strikes at the heart of an entire axis of regional power, creating ripple effects that will not easily be contained.

Those who view such figures as mere operators or strategists would probably compare Nasrallah to recent figures such as Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2020. They might even conclude that Soleimani’s killing was a worse blow for the Iranian axis than the loss of Nasrallah. But this would be to overlook the visceral hold that Nasrallah had in the region, unlike the shadowy figure of Soleimani. The comparison is nonetheless useful because it illustrates why Nasrallah’s demise will be damaging to Hezbollah and the Iranian axis writ large.

Soleimani was a towering figure, to be sure, orchestrating Iran’s foreign military interventions and shaping the region’s balance of power. He was instrumental in managing a vast network of state and nonstate actors, especially militias with deep ties to Iran. His ability to leverage Shiite Islamists who had risen to power during and after the Iran-Iraq war gave Iran unprecedented ground-level influence in Iraq, Syria and beyond. Soleimani was the ultimate fixer, a shrewd operator — but always within a structure built by others.

Nasrallah, however, was more than just an operator. He was the model, the blueprint. The Hezbollah leader’s charisma and his ability to fuse the roles of military commander, political leader and cultural icon placed him in a different league. He did not merely work within a system; he helped to create it. Hezbollah was a grassroots movement, nurtured by Iran but built on the ground in Lebanon, and Nasrallah shaped it into a formidable force capable of challenging Israel and shaping the course of conflicts across the region. He provided the ideological and operational template for militias and Islamist groups that stretched far beyond Hezbollah. Even extremist groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State group have borrowed from his playbook, imitating Hezbollah’s ability to merge military action with political legitimacy and mass mobilization, and even emulating his style and persona.

Nasrallah was, for better or worse, without equal. In 2000, when Israel withdrew from most of south Lebanon, the official Emirati newspaper Al-Ittihad published a cartoon that compared Nasrallah’s victory to the mythical halo of the October 1973 war (the Yom Kippur War in Israel) – a sign labeled 1973 was trailed down the road by a smaller sign that said 2000. Many still remember crowding around the television in 2006 to watch Nasrallah’s “divine victory” speech, and when he called on viewers in Lebanon to look outside their windows as an Israeli warship was struck by a missile.

His charisma and guile, as well as his skill in deception, were unparalleled. His words were both glorified and memefied — his declaration in the 1990s that Israel’s strength was less than that of a “spider’s web” has given succor to two generations of militia members who fought against Israel, and was even quoted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in announcing the strike that took his life. His mispronounced Rs and raised eyebrows and his followers’ declarations of fealty were incorporated into countless WhatsApp custom stickers. Place this alongside the fact that in 2005 Nasrallah was among the first mourners to console Saad Hariri, who would go on to become Lebanon’s prime minister, after the death of his larger-than-life father Rafiq in an enormous truck bomb explosion in downtown Beirut. A special international tribunal would later indict five members of Hezbollah for the crime, including the group’s top military commander Mustafa Badreddine.

In this sense, Nasrallah’s death is far more consequential than that of Soleimani. Soleimani was effective because of the machinery of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps behind him. Nasrallah was the machinery, the face and the soul of Hezbollah. His demise means not just the loss of a skilled tactician but the degradation of an entire narrative of resistance that has animated the region for over three decades.

It is impossible to discuss Nasrallah without acknowledging the polarizing figure he became in the Arab world. His story is one of two halves. In the first, Nasrallah was the hero of Arab public opinion, particularly after Hezbollah’s 2006 war with Israel. In the second, he was a sectarian thug who died trying to reclaim his old reputation.

He stood as the last Arab leader capable of standing up to Israeli aggression, a symbol of dignity for millions who had felt betrayed by their governments’ inability to confront Israel. He was only felled in Arab hearts and minds by the party’s hubristic aspirations of conquest in Syria and defense of the indefensible.

The Arab Spring and the Syrian conflict transformed Nasrallah from a regional hero into a divisive, even despised, figure. His decision to throw Hezbollah’s weight behind Assad in Syria’s bloody civil war, and his involvement in the sectarian conflicts in Iraq and Yemen, forever stained his legacy. Once the icon of Arab unity, he became the face of sectarian warfare, his actions fueling deep resentment among Sunni Arabs, particularly in Syria and across the Gulf.

Yet, even as his popularity waned, his influence remained. His decision to enter the Syrian conflict in support of Assad was not just a tactical move — it was existential. For Nasrallah, protecting the Assad regime was essential for maintaining the Axis of Resistance against Israel. That axis, which linked Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and allied militias, has been the backbone of anti-Israeli efforts in the region for decades. Without Assad, the axis crumbles. Without Nasrallah, it may collapse entirely.

Nasrallah’s death brings to mind another divisive figure in modern Arab history: Saddam Hussein. Like Nasrallah, Saddam was a symbol of both defiance and brutality. For some, he remains the last Arab leader to openly confront Israel, a man who, despite his monstrous actions, is revered in certain quarters as a defender of Arab dignity. For others, he is a war criminal, responsible for unspeakable, sadistic atrocities against his own people, including Kurds and Shiites.

The same duality will likely surround Nasrallah’s memory. For his followers, particularly in Lebanon, he was a steadfast leader, a symbol of resistance against Israeli occupation and aggression. For many Syrians, however, he will forever be linked to the horrors of the Assad regime’s brutality. His legacy is one of both resistance and repression, of both dignity and devastation.

His last act would save his pre-2011 image as a bulwark against Israel. By engaging in the longest war waged by an Arab force against Israel, Nasrallah restored his previous image over the past 12 months — but only among the many willing to forgive his role in killing and massacring Syrians. In this sense, his death came at a timely juncture for him and his followers: not at the helm of Hezbollah’s fight alongside Assad, but alongside the Palestinians of Gaza.

But in practical terms, this closing act will not change the reality of the damage his death will inflict on his group and the broader alliance led by Iran.

Amid such momentous events, it is worth pausing and taking stock of the series of game-changing developments in the past few years, and in recent months.

The killing of Soleimani, long seen as a dangerous escalation that many American decision-makers declined when presented to them, opened the door for the recent series of high-profile killings. Israel’s targeting of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran was a shocking escalation that many thought would trigger a regional war. Then came the pager and walkie-talkie attacks that shook Hezbollah to the core with their intimate and eerie effect, far more than targeting a home or a building. The attacks were followed by the elimination of almost the entirety of Hezbollah’s top echelon. Nasrallah’s killing tops all operations and immediately makes the targeting of others like Assad, the Houthi leaders and Iranian leaders by Israel appear within the realm of possibility.

Nasrallah’s death comes at a moment of deep crisis for Hezbollah and the broader Iranian axis. Hezbollah has been significantly weakened by Israel’s recent escalations, which have decimated much of the group’s leadership. The group miscalculated its ability to play the familiar game of limited skirmishes with Israel — this time, Israel changed the rules. The careful balance of terror that Nasrallah had cultivated for two decades, particularly since the 2006 war, has tipped dramatically in Israel’s favor.

Scholars often cling to the notion that organizations like Hezbollah do not die and are not severely altered by this systematic decapitation of their top echelons, simply because they survive and continue to exist. Yet this was an unquestionable victory for Israel, one which will likely present it with an opportunity to continue degrading an archenemy, independent of the circumstances that led to the recent escalations.

What is more, his death comes at a time when Iran’s regional influence is under unprecedented pressure. Hamas has been degraded in Gaza, the Assad regime is quietly seeking to reintegrate into the Arab fold, and both Iran and Lebanon are under crushing economic strain. Syria’s return to the regional fold, and to its pre-2011 status as a balancing force between Iran and Saudi Arabia, is likely to continue. In this context, Nasrallah’s demise is more than just the loss of a leader; it’s the loss of a stabilizing force at the core of Iran’s regional strategy.

Nobody knows what Hezbollah will look like a year from now, what will happen to its fighters in Syria or its command structure and whether Lebanon will be able to wrest back its state and borders. But Iran’s ability to replace Nasrallah is doubtful. Just as Soleimani’s death left a void in Iran’s operations in Iraq and Syria, Nasrallah’s demise leaves Hezbollah without the charismatic leadership that has held the group together for decades. His successors lack his gravitas, and without him Hezbollah may struggle to maintain its cohesion and influence.

In the end, Nasrallah’s death signifies the closing of a chapter in the Middle East. His legacy, like that of Saddam and Nasser, will be debated for generations. He will be remembered as both a hero of resistance and a symbol of sectarian division. But his impact on the region, and on the Iranian axis, is undeniable. The Middle East without Nasrallah is a fundamentally different place — and how Iran, Hezbollah and their adversaries respond to his absence will shape the region’s future for years to come.

These contradictions are key to understanding the fallout from the assassination and the mixed emotional reactions that the killing has triggered in Lebanon.

Individuals like Nasrallah remain unique in the region because, despite their tyranny, they claim to trade in a currency that is as dear as American dollars in the region’s failing economies. That currency is dignity. Both Nasser and Nasrallah wrought unbelievable misery upon their own populations and farther afield, but they raised Israel’s hackles. Sure, Nasser lost every war he fought against the Jewish state, and Nasrallah spent much of the past decade ordering his foot soldiers to starve Syrian civilians after assassinating much of the Lebanese opposition to Hezbollah’s stranglehold over the country. But the bombing that triggered his fall was not carried out in response to an act of self-defense or preservation. It was in response to the bombing of northern Israel in solidarity with Gaza, as impotent Arab leaders and monarchs either conspired with Tel Aviv to blockade the strip or yelled from afar, safe on the sidelines.

The manner of his death also matters. It is an ironic symbol of an unjust age that retribution for Hezbollah’s crimes against its own constituents, against Syrians and against the liberal politicians it murdered in cold blood came in the form of 2,000 pounds of bunker buster bombs that leveled entire residential blocks in one of the poorest parts of Beirut, carried out by a military that has committed countless crimes against Arab civilians, including the repeated massacres in Gaza, and that is led by a group of extremist leaders with a state ideology veering into fascism.

Nasrallah’s death feels very similar to the end of “The Godfather,” where gang-on-gang violence culminates in the simultaneous deaths of the Corleone family’s rivals. The gang that lost was a multinational criminal enterprise — but so was the one that won.

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