Front Burner - Death of Hezbollah’s Nasrallah weakens the 'Axis of Resistance'

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

Last Friday, Lebanon-based militant group, Hezbollah, confirmed that their secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut. As a significant political and cultural leader in the region, the death of Nasrallah poses a number of questions. Where does this leave the “Axis of Resistance”, the Iran-led coalition of militias united against Israel, of which Hezbollah is a crucial part? Does this open the door for an Israeli ground invasion in Lebanon? And what does it all mean for the fate of the Palestinians as the war in Gaza rages on?Kareem Shaheen, the Middle East editor of New Lines Magazine, joins us to unpack the significance of Nasrallah’s death its potential ripple effects throughout the region. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcriptsTranscripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. In the wake of the killing of Hezbollah's longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in a massive airstrike in Beirut on Friday, experts immediately talked about how his death was a watershed moment that could reshape the Middle East. My guest today, Kareem Shaheen, the former Middle East correspondent for The Guardian and of Lebanon, and the current Middle East editor for New Lines magazine, has written

that his death is more significant than both Osama bin Laden and Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. We're going to talk about why he thinks that is and put it in the wider context of a series of fatal blows to Israel's enemies. Where does this leave the axis of resistance, which is the Iran-backed political and military coalition across the region working in opposition to Israel? And of course, we are going to speak about the fate of the Palestinians. Kareem, thank you so much for coming on to the show. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

It's great to have you. So let's start with the death of Hassan Nasrallah. Can you tell me a bit more about Nasrallah's significance as a political and cultural figure in Hezbollah and Lebanon? as a political and cultural figure in Hezbollah and Lebanon? Sure, yeah. As we said in the piece that you mentioned, Hassan Nasrallah is probably the most significant militia leader in the region. He's probably the most significant Arab leader to take up the fight against Israel. He obviously became Secretary General of Hezbollah in 1992.

He was Hezbollah's longest-serving Secretary General, taking over at the age of 32 when his predecessor, Abbas al-Moussaoui, was killed by Israeli missiles in 1992. And he really was the soul of Hezbollah. He created the machinery of the party as it currently exists. He was the linchpin of Iran's power projection in the region. He led the most powerful militia that was allied with it. They had such a presence throughout Lebanon and beyond that as Iran sought to expand Hezbollah's experience and power and influence across the border. They were instrumental in keeping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power when they intervened in the war there in 2013.

The resistance can't stand with its arms folded while its back's broken. If Syria falls in the hands of the US, the Israelis and the Takfiris, then the resistance will be besieged. They also trained and taught some of their tactics and strategies to other Iranian-affiliated militias in the region, including in Iraq and in Yemen. So they really spread their influence far and wide. But Nasrallah himself was a very significant figure culturally and historically in the region as well. You know, we compared him in our essay to Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian former president. Yeah, I thought that was really interesting.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he's, you know, and it's true that Nasser lost every single war he entered into. It's true that Nasser lost every single war he entered into, and Nasrallah caused great suffering and misery in Lebanon. Even before involvement in the war in Syria, Nasrallah failed to convince many in the Sunni Muslim Arab world that his movement was not behind the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister, Rafiq al-Hariri, in 2005. Lebanon's former prime minister, Rafiq al-Hariri, in 2005. His critics say his political muscle came from the group's weapons, which were used against domestic opponents in 2008. And as recently as a couple of years ago, you know, they besieged Syrian civilians, they starved them to death in parts of Syria in the campaign. And yet, you know, back in 2006, when Nasrallah fought against Israel during the war between them and Israel at the time, he was the most popular Arab leader. And the reason is

because he traded or he claimed to trade in this currency of dignity, where he was standing up to Israel, the only Arab force to actually stand up to Israel. And they banked on that as a key element of their popularity and as a key element of their legitimacy. And this continued outside of Lebanon. He was seen as this figure who was fighting against Israeli aggression. And up until he entered the war in Syria alongside Bashar al-Assad. And that's really when, across the region, the perception of him began to turn from this hero of resistance against Israel to essentially just another militia gang leader who was fighting against aggrieved Sunnis all over the Middle East.

Nasrallah's supporters saw him as a defender of the rights of Shias, but his critics said he was Iran's man who never shied away from showing allegiance to Tehran and its religious authority. What about since October 7th? Yeah, so we make this point in the essay that, you know, over the past year, it was kind of a return to the party's roots, you know, as a party that was primarily created to fight against Israel's occupation of Lebanon and in solidarity with Gaza. You know, he was able to, you know, wage essentially the longest war that any Arab forces waged against Israel for almost 12 months. You know, after the Hamas terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians in October 7th, Hezbollah said that they would open a northern front against Israel, partly out of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, but also as a way to pin down some Israeli forces in the north that would not be diverted to the war in Gaza.

And, you know, they succeeded for quite some time. You know, they caused a massive displacement of Israeli citizens who were living in the north and who moved out due to the, you know, relentless Hezbollah rockets. The enemy knows that there will be no a single place inside Israel away from our missiles. It will not be sporadic missiles. It will be targeted missiles that will drop. But they also brought retribution on their own civilians and their own constituents who are living in those areas because Israel returned,

you know, fire with fire. But the thing that they were banking on was that this game that they had been playing with the Israelis since 2006 of controlled escalations, controlled kind of cross-border attacks would not spiral out of control and that they would, you know, get a chance to dial it down once a ceasefire deal was reached in Gaza. Except what Israel did was change the rules of the game and they went all out. So it was a miscalculation. Absolutely. Yes, it was definitely on Hezbollah's part, on Israel's part.

What does this mean for Hezbollah now? Well, yeah, that's the big question now. I mean, Israel's operation, you know, setting aside the brutality of the bombing so far in Lebanon, it's really important to point out that a million civilians have been displaced by the ongoing bombardment of South Lebanon and of South Beirut and other parts of Beirut as well. Also the number of people who've died so far. In Lebanon, health authorities reported dozens of civilian deaths as Israeli warplanes struck what it said were Hezbollah targets in the south, bringing the death toll from the past two weeks to over 1,000 killed. Which rivals the number of people who were killed in the 2006 war, which took a whole month. But as for Hezbollah, Israel has learned that violence actually works. They've assassinated the top echelons of Hezbollah's leadership. The Israeli military says it's killed a commander of Hezbollah in Lebanon in an airstrike. Mohamed Neman Nasser is one of the most senior Hezbollah figures to have been killed in nearly nine months of cross-border clashes. The Pager attack targeted

thousands of the party's cadres and maimed and wounded many of them, in addition to the civilians who were wounded in the attacks. They've compromised Hezbollah's communications networks. They clearly have spies on the ground that are able to give them accurate information to the point where they're able to pinpoint Hassan Nasrallah's exact location, you know, and able to assassinate him. It's unclear at the moment how much of Hezbollah's leadership actually remains. Hezbollah's leadership actually remains. But what is certain is that whoever replaces Nasrallah is not going to have the same power over the populace, or frankly has his force of personality. So whoever replaces him is going to be an unpredictable figure. And no one has been named yet. Is that right?

one has been named yet. Is that right? So the expectation at the moment is that his cousin, Hashim Safiuddin, who was a senior leader of Hezbollah, is going to take over in his stead. And he's believed to be a more violent figure, a figure who's more likely to, you know, escalate rocket bombardment of Israel. But what's clear at the moment is that the party needs a breather, essentially, in order to regroup and sort of reestablish its communications lines, reestablish its command structure. They've genuinely been decapitated. And so this is a huge intelligence coup for Israel. But, you know, and people are fond of often saying that these movements, you know, they don't disappear purely because you killed a leader.

But I think the leader in question here is truly an irreplaceable figure in the party structure. truly an irreplaceable figure in the party structure. What is clear to me, though, is that, you know, further escalation of all this is just going to give another raison d'être for the next version of the party. I think it's going to depend on what Israel deems to be its measure of success here. You know, if they decide that a ground incursion is necessary to establish this line, you know, are they going to remain in South Lebanon? That's definitely going to trigger an opposition movement, a resistance movement to the occupation.

Are they going to keep bombing Hezbollah depots and weapons facilities and things like that? Is Hezbollah going to withdraw its forces from Syria and bring them back home to Lebanon to launch some sort of counterattack? They're definitely going to want to seek some sort of retribution for the assassination of their leadership. So it's all really up in the air right now. I'll see you next time. through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix.

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laid out, is very weakened right now. But they do, they are heavily armed, right? They do have quite a bit of capacity to strike back here, you know, at some point. Is that fair for me to say? Yeah, that's absolutely correct. I mean, they had the largest rocket arsenal of any of Iran's militias. They've been obviously training

for operations against Israel for years, you know, for the next conflict that was, you know, going to be an inevitability, really. And so they definitely have the weapons. I mean, Israel has been pursuing a campaign of bombing a lot of their facilities. And it's not entirely clear how much of it has been destroyed, but it's clear that some portion of it has been destroyed. So, you know, and obviously Hezbollah has also used a significant portion of its arsenal, you know, throughout the past year, you know, in their bombing campaign against northern Israel. So it's not entirely clear how much of their arsenal remains, but the challenge obviously is, you know, for them, is that there doesn't seem to be an existing command structure to direct, you know, the flow of these such that they're capable of preventing, you know,

the influx of further weaponry and arms coming from either directly from Iran or over the border. And also, you know, there's the added factor of the fact that, you know, the bombing campaign hasn't really worked. I mean, it's worked in the sense that it's driven a lot of Israelis out of northern Israel. But, you know, it hasn't succeeded in kind of limiting Israel's operation in Gaza. You know, Israel continued to bomb Gaza. Israel continued to, you know, proceed with its attempts to dismantle Hamas over there. Yes, it isn't achieving its objective, which is what they said that it was supposed to do. Exactly. So the question would be, what is the point of pursuing further bombardment that will invite Israeli reprisals and retribution on their own constituents

as well, who are being forced to flee the south and south of Beirut and seek shelter elsewhere? I want to talk to you about the regional implications here. So Hezbollah is thought of as the crown jewel in Iran's so-called axis of resistance. You know, what does this mean for Iran specifically? You know, what does this mean for Iran specifically? Yeah, I mean, it's not entirely clear that Iran is going to do anything about it, quite frankly. You know, they're not in a position, obviously, to open, you know, a war, a full-scale war against Israel. Israel has demonstrated, you know, through their bombing of the Houthis in Yemen as well, that Iranian facilities are also within reach.

And honestly, the Israeli leadership is so unstable in terms of their willingness to use violence that it wouldn't be out of the question for them to, you know, bomb Iran, like in response to any perceived attempt to, you know, open another front against Israel. And it's not entirely clear what Iran can actually do. You know, I think the challenge is that Iran has really been exposed as a paper tiger as a consequence of this operation against Hezbollah. You know, back in 2020, the Trump administration assassinated Qasem Soleimani, who was one of the top military leaders in Iran, and was, you know,

Vakil Inshpen in Iran's external operations in Syria and Iraq in particular. Last night of my direction, the United States military successfully executed a flawless precision strike that killed the number one terrorist anywhere in the world, Qasem Soleimani. Trump made a big mistake. He killed our hero. Cries drowned out by angry chants.

Soleimani, a beloved figure in Iran, seen as standing up to the West. Now his death and the way it was carried out, a game changer for Iran and the United States. And, you know, it was such a provocative operation at the time that it was an option that had been presented to American and even Israeli leaders for a long time. And they continuously turned it down until they didn't. And they did it and they killed Soleimani. You know, there was no significant fallout from it. Recently, they assassinated, you know, Israel assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, right, the political leader of Hamas, in an apartment building in Tehran.

And people predicted, you know, the potential for a regional war again, and nothing happened. Yeah, and just I'll mention for our listeners, Israel hasn't claimed responsibility for the death of Hania, but it's widely believed that they were behind it. And then in April of this year, too, Israel struck the Iranian embassy in Syria, killing several IRGC officers. And Iran did respond. Right. but it was widely thought of as pretty tepid. Do you think that this could be any different? Yeah, I mean

the key aspect here is the weight of the figure that has been assassinated. You know, I think we mentioned in our piece that when Hezbollah entered the war in Syria alongside Bashar al-Assad, they saw it as an existential question, that without Syria, this axis of resistance could crumble. Nasrallah was in many ways a central figure of this axis, the person who took it upon himself to actually engage Israel their sense of invincibility that allowed Israel to, you know, destroy them so much. After Qasem Soleimani died, even though he was, you know, working within the system that

Iran had established, you know, his loss was felt, you know, across Iran's operations in Syria and in Iraq. Nasrallah is an even more titanic figure in this dynamic and in this context. Let's come back to the U.S. for a moment. So immediately after Nasrallah's assassination, you hear people talking about how this is yet another humiliation for the United States. And just elaborate for me a little bit more on why that is.

Yeah, I mean, I think people are sort of deluding themselves into thinking that the U.S. is an honest broker in this sort of situation. This is thinking that the U.S. is an honest broker in this situation. This is my follow up question for you. So I feel like you're going straight there. Yeah. I mean, you know, the U.S. has pretended to be pushing Israel to, you know, towards a ceasefire in Gaza for the past year. We should have a ceasefire now. So let me say I have been clear. Now is the time to get a ceasefire deal and get the hostage. And obviously, you know, to no real effect or, you know, they haven't truly achieved any of those goals if those goals were in fact goals that they had been trying to pursue. Israel is so contemptuous of the U.S. and of U.S. policymakers that, to be entirely honest with you, it's really difficult to perceive the U.S. as anything

more than a bit player in the dynamics that are currently unfolding. When Nasrallah was killed, there was an initiative that was backed by the U.S. and France to put into effect a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. And in fact, the Israelis bombed an area outside of the southern suburbs on the same day that the French foreign minister know, to try and resolve the crisis. So Israel is completely contemptuous of any attempts to, you know, to kind of rein back the violence that is unfolding in the region. The U.S. keeps saying that it wants everybody to avoid the regional war when the bombs that Israel used to kill Nasrallah, you know, were 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs that were provided by the U.S. You know, they're American bombs.

No one wants to see escalation. No one wants to see a wider regional conflict. Right now, our main challenge is preventing a broader war, one that actually won't solve the challenge that Israel has. All-out war in the Middle East be avoided. It has to be. We really have to avoid it. We've already taken precautions. To anyone, to any objective observer,

to anyone who's kind of looking at things from the outside in, it seems entirely logical that the U.S. has in its hands the keys to, you know, halting this, which is, you know, we're just going to cut off the weapons and the guns that are being used to bomb Israel's neighbors. Yeah. I wonder if I could throw at you a bit of a counterpoint. and i don't mean this to say that the u.s wants what has been happening

in gaza the the catastrophic devastation has been happening in gaza but but is there a scenario in here in which either by accident or intention this is also what the united states uh wants United States wants, which is the weakening of their enemies to Hezbollah, Iran, the Houthi, you know. Absolutely. I mean, I don't think the U.S. is going to, you know, look sadly upon the demise of Hassan Nasrallah, you know, and the dismantling of Hezbollah's leadership. You know, I mean, Hezbollah carried out the U.S. embassy bombings back in 1983. I'll be going to Andrews Air Force Base to meet one of our Air Force planes,

bringing home 16 Americans who died this week in the terrorist attack on the United States Embassy in Beirut. A suicide bomber in a truck had breached security. On board, an estimated six tons of explosives. 220 Marines were killed that day, 18 more from the Navy, three from the Army. You know, some of the figures that have been killed in the course of Israel's campaign are figures that the U.S. has been hunting for decades. You know, and so I'm sure they're pleased with the outcome of the weakening of, you know, of a party that wasn't just, you know, threatening to American and Israeli interests,

but to the interests of America's Gulf Arab allies, you know, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates. You know, these countries were vehemently opposed to Hezbollah and to its ideology and to Iran's power projection in the region more broadly. So, you know, for them, Nasrallah's assassination is a net positive for the region. The difficulty is, you know, for someone who's an observer of the region or someone who cares about Lebanon, you know, Hezbollah has carried out a lot of crimes. You know, a lot of people in Lebanon also despise them.

But this is an opportunity right now with Hezbollah weakened for everyone to come together to try and create a, you know, post-Hezbollah Lebanon to take the opportunity to empower, you know, post-Hazbullah Lebanon, to take the opportunity to empower, you know, civil society, to empower non-corrupt, you know, political figures and to empower the Lebanese military and sovereign Lebanese security services, you know, to try and wrest back control over the country and its sovereignty. But, you know, it's very wrest back control over the country and its sovereignty. But, you know, it's very difficult for that to occur, you know, whether it's because of the fact that Hezbollah survives, whether it's because, you know, a grand invasion is likely to unite people against Western powers, against Israel and its Western backers.

you know, Western powers against Israel and its Western backers. And because, you know, violence begets violence. You know, you continue to cause this immense amount of suffering and displacement. And it's unlikely that you end up finding a political solution to a crisis like this one. Yeah. I saw the Jordanian foreign minister talking about... The amount of damage that Israeli government has done. 30 years of efforts to convince people that peace is possible. This Israeli government killed it.

The amount of dehumanization, hatred, bitterness will take generations to navigate through. So ultimately the question is... This just really stuck with me, that comment that he made of the United Nations. I just, if you don't mind, Kareem, I'll throw one more question at you before we go, which is, I think, one of the most pressing questions here

is what do you think these latest escalations mean for the Palestinians? My fear is that this outbreak of violence, you know, this immense carnage and brutality that took place in Gaza and that is unfolding now in Lebanon, is something that is going to stay with Arab publics for a very, very long time. This isn't something that just, you know, it's the latest in a series of what a lot of Arabs feel are indignities visited upon them, you know, not just by Israel,

but by the international community writ large. You know, there's a sense that Arab lives are absolutely and utterly worthless in the eyes of the international community. And this is not something that goes away. That's a feeling that persists with the society and with the community and it creates many many Hezbollahs. It creates, you know, if you're one of the people who lost family members to one of these

bombings, whether in Gaza or in Lebanon, why wouldn't you fight back? Why wouldn't you seek some sort of retribution? So I fear that the violence that's occurring right now is going to end up contributing to further paroxysms of violence across the region and to the distancing, and we're going farther and farther away, uh, from any possibility of peace, uh, for the Palestinians. And, um, uh, and that's just going to perpetuate the misery that, uh, we've been experiencing in very condensed form over the past year.

Okay. Karim, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.