Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah, has left a contradictory legacy on recent history. From resisting the Israeli occupation to internal crises and regional wars, his life ended amid the flames of a recent war that saw the use of underground bunker bombs. In this article, we review the most important milestones of his life and their impact on Lebanon and the region.
Hassan Nasrallah: Hezbollah's Leader and his Journey from Resistance to Controversy
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah, ended on the night of September 27 and fell on the lines of fire left over from his last war. The man left behind contradictory feelings as much as he himself was contradictory in his life and career. The man knowingly lost most of the popularity he created in his wars with Israel, but his death was also a sad event that brought Israel a decisive moral victory in which Israel used about 85 underground bunker bombs in the buildings of the southern suburb of Beirut, Hezbollah's stronghold and largest human reservoir.
Nasrallah began his life under arms and devoted this life in large part to resisting the Israeli occupation of his country, but his crisis was that it was more pro-Iranian resistance than loyalty to Lebanon.
From a simple Shiite family, Nasrallah went out to study Shiism in Iraq and Qom, Iran, and from there formed his ideological foundation, his friendship with Abbas Mousavi, and his network of loyalties to Iranian jurists. And here his first contradiction began to form. Nasrallah rose to the forefront after the assassination of his predecessor and friend Abbas Mousavi and his election in 1992 as secretary-general of Hezbollah.
Nasrallah proved to be completely faithful to his convictions when he introduced his eldest son Hadi to the resistance, who fell in 1997 during a confrontation with Israel in the southern Lebanese province of Tuffah. This is where the legend of Hassan Nasrallah began to take shape. But she was waiting for a big event to be completed.
The major event came in 2000 with a unilateral and unnegotiable Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, ending nearly two decades of military occupation. Hassan Nasrallah and his party invested in the event and the party became the big figure in the Lebanese equation until the first big fall.
Be careful... Weapons are heading inward.
February 14 marked the dramatic beginning of the shift of the party's weapons under Nasr into Lebanon. The equivalent of 1,000 kilograms of TNT exploded in Rafik Hariri's convoy, killing him and his escorts. Lebanon then witnessed a series of bombings and coordinated assassinations targeting figures opposed to the Syrian presence. Investigators investigating the assassination were also targeted. Investigations proved the involvement of Hezbollah operatives in the crime. The spotless dress of resistance is contaminated with the blood of political opponents. Another moment of glow was needed to restore the party's image.
The 2006 War: A Pivotal Moment
The moment of glow came in the 2006 war, when the war broke out between Hezbollah and Israel, and the party's military strength and ability to withstand the most powerful armies in the region were shown in the most armed and destructive capacity. Not only did he hold, but he was able to create a deterrence equation that prevented Israel from invading Lebanon for a long time after Hezbollah raised the slogans of "depth by depth" and "cities for cities." For the first time, Hezbollah rockets reached deep inside Israel and Tel Aviv. This created a balance of terror between the parties, and Israel refrained from escalating because it was convinced that any action would be met with a reaction for which it may not want to pay.
But the force again tempted Nasrallah to use it and he invaded Beirut in 2008 when Nasrallah accused the government of waging war on his party over its attempt to block the party's internal communications network. Clashes ensued between Hezbollah and its opponents that lasted for four days, during which Hezbollah forces managed to take control of half of Beirut. The party continued to insult the state. Power is corrupting!
Hezbollah after the Syrian War: Losing Popularity and Exacerbating Crises
The Great Sin
Beginning in 2012, the party participated in the Syrian conflict and reportedly committed war crimes. The party shot himself in the foot with that participation. Participation in Syria has eroded Hezbollah's Arab image as a resistance party, increased its opponents, and weakened its political and military position in Lebanon itself.
The party's popularity deteriorated after it turned into a machine of internal repression of the Lebanese after the Beirut port bombing, in which the party was blamed for negligence and poor storage of explosive materials. The party obstructed the investigation and a senior official sent a warning to the investigative judge, Tarek al-Bitar, stating that the group would "uproot him." Demonstrations called for by Hezbollah turned violent. Once again, Lebanese blood flowed.
The party and its president, Hassan Nasrallah, completed the journey of shooting themselves in the foot, not realizing or not caring that they were losing popular incubators after members of the party suppressed the 2019-2021 protest activities in protest against the poor economic conditions and sectarian governments. Hezbollah supporters assaulted the demonstrators and the party continued its suffering with the crisis of power vanity that clothed it based on its military power that began against Israel but lost its way. The party's opponents increased, making it easier to target.
Nasrallah's last war. Variable scene misreading
Hezbollah entered the war between Israel and Gaza as a support front, but soon turned to the main front. The party's crisis showed that it entered the war with memories of its political victory in 2006 without knowing that too much water had flowed into the river. The party stopped at the moment of 2006 and Israel and its allies were in a more advanced moment.
Technologies have developed and Israel has made two qualitative breakthroughs at the technological level.
First breakthrough
The first was to develop cyber warfare after the party's basic communication equipment was blown up and several of its members were killed and wounded over two days on September 18 and 19, damaging the party's communications network and morale at a sensitive time.
Second breakthrough
The second breakthrough is BLU 109 bunker bomb technology, which the United States supplied to Israel for use in targeting underground command and control room fortifications. These bombs were used to assassinate Hezbollah leaders, including Nasrallah himself.
This time the party was fighting in a completely disloyal and completely unfriendly environment after antagonizing a large part of it, which facilitated the task of infiltrating it by intelligence, including the movements of its leader Hassan Nasrallah, which enjoyed a high degree of secrecy, surprising the party's leaders themselves. This created a favorable situation for further targeting. Israel, which started the war in the north with the aim of separating Hezbollah from Gaza, smelled blood, encouraging it to invest in its unexpected successes.
Hassan Nasrallah: An epic end but!!
Hassan Nasrallah ended his long war with Israel and died in his operations room after a security breach monitored his movements. The man left contradictory feelings just like his own. The man started his life under arms and ended his life not yet cleansed of Syrian blood and has not yet been cleansed of turning his party into an internal repression machine and a sectarian killing machine in Syria.
But in the end, he believed in what he lived for and also died for. A death that would have been very honorable, very epic, and very heroic had it not been for the blood of Syria, the oppression of Lebanon, and the full loyalty of the Iranian jurist, Hassan. But perhaps the order of fate was to be purified a bit by death while under arms, just as you started.
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