A year after Nasrallah's death, Hezbollah struggles to avoid irrelevance
Israel has decapitated the Party of God, which is struggling with loss of support, a fractured base, and pressure to disarm.
BeirutAt 6:21 p.m. on September 27, 2024, Beirut shook. It wasn't just a tremor; the shock was felt underground in every corner of the city. Within minutes, Israeli fighter jets dropped at least a dozen bunker-busting bombs weighing 900 kilograms each in a surgically precise operation. Israel had staked everything on a single card. to eliminate Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, who was hiding with other members of the organization's military leadership in the place considered the most impregnable, a shelter 30 meters underground. With this attack, Israel fulfilled the prophecy its leaders had been repeating for years: to tear the leader from the snake.
A year later, the success of that intelligence operation, planned for months and executed in seconds, is beginning to show its consequences. Nasrallah's death was not only the physical disappearance of a leader. It marked a political, military, and symbolic turning point.
Nasrallah was an emblematic and audacious leader. In 2000, he managed to get Israel to withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon. In 2006, he led a summer war that Israel did not win. And in October 2023, he opened a new front to the north, in support of Hamas, dragging Lebanon into a spiral of war that ended up costing it a very high price. Nasrallah wasn't simply a religious and political figure. He was the only figure capable of balancing Tehran's orders with the needs of Lebanese society and keeping his followers united despite successive crises.
his successor, Naim Qassem, the last religious leader to survive the assassination campaign that decapitated Hezbollah's leadership, has failed to fill the role. For many, both inside and outside the movement, he lacks the charisma and authority that made Nasrallah a nearly irreplaceable leader. Israel dealt a mortal blow, and the Party of God has not recovered.
In the post-Nasrallah era, internal and external pressure to double down on the so-called Islamic resistance has transformed Hezbollah into an outdated pro-Iranian organization. It is increasingly disconnected from its original narrative of liberating the land of Lebanon occupied by Israel or presenting itself as the only movement capable of challenging Tel Aviv. Today, that epic is no longer a priority in a country reeling from financial, political, and social crises.
Objective: disarm Hezbollah
The new regional order aims toward normalization and the pursuit of peace with its neighbors. For Lebanon to move forward and regain the position it lost years ago, it must do so without Hezbollah. As a political party, the group has lost the support of other sects with which Nasrallah had forged coalitions for decades. For the first time, even the Lebanese army is confronting it with an explicit mission: to disarm the pro-Iranian militia.
This desperation is reflected in the commemorations marking the first anniversary of Nasrallah's death, which have also included the memory of Hashem Safieddine, his interim successor, killed in another Israeli airstrike just days later. Hezbollah needed a massive outpouring of support to bolster the morale of its fighters. In other words, it sought to recall past achievements to mask a present filled with uncertainty.
The staging has ultimately backfired. Hezbollah has defied the governor of Beirut by projecting images of Nasrallah and Safieddine onto the iconic Raoucheh rocks. This Thursday, the first day of a commemoration that will last more than two weeks, the formations were illuminated with the profiles of both men and the silhouette of the raised index finger, the leader's signature gesture. The projected message was clear: resist at all costs. What was supposed to be an act of national unity turned into an episode of civil disobedience. The controversy dominated the headlines and led to arrest warrants against the organizers.
On Beirut's waterfront, the enthusiasm of his supporters, many of whom had been bussed in to swell the crowd, spilled over into insults directed at Prime Minister Nawaf Salam. They called him a collaborator, a Zionist, and a slave to the Americans. A scene that displayed more anger than much politics.
A community without a leader
Behind the commemorations is a community that feels orphaned. Not only in Lebanon, but also in the Shia diaspora, Nasrallah's death left a void. The mausoleum where his remains finally rest—since the funeral was delayed almost four months and held in secret—is a place of pilgrimage. Shia attend, seeking solace and redemption in the memory of those they consider their spiritual leader.
For many, Nasrallah was a state within a state. Without him, Hezbollah faces the disintegration of its bases and the impossibility of sustaining such a costly military and social structure. The lack of funding makes it impossible to cover the debt from the last war with Israel, with a toll of 5,500 dead, nearly 20,000 injured, 60,000 homes destroyed, $14 billion in losses, and 100,000 refugees.
Today, Hezbollah oscillates between nostalgia for a glorious past and the uncertain search for a new reason for being. In the absence of real fighting to reaffirm its identity as a resistance, it is trying to invent a symbolic battle. The anniversary of Nasrallah's death has not only highlighted the diminishing power of its convening. The Party of God, orphaned of its most charismatic leader, seems condemned to withdraw into itself, caught between the memory of one man and the weight of a country demanding a different future.