Hezbollah is believed to be the most heavily armed non-state group in the world. Backed by Iran and based in the eastern Mediterranean country of Lebanon, the Shiite Islamist group has been engaged in confrontations with Israeli forces on Lebanon’s southern border since October 8.

Hezbollah first fired at Israel to protest the war in Gaza, demanding a ceasefire there as a condition to end its attacks. Cross-border hostilities have since escalated, culminating in the death of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in an Israeli strike on the Lebanese capital Beirut.

The cross-border conflict and recent developments have raised the specter of a regional conflagration and amplified intense diplomatic efforts to de-escalate tensions. Though no match for Israel’s military might, Hezbollah’s increasingly sophisticated arsenal has the potential to inflict significant damage on Israel.

Israel would also have to contend with Hezbollah’s strategic depth. The group is part of an Iran-led axis of militants spanning Yemen, Syria, Gaza and Iraq. Some of these groups have increased coordination significantly since October, when Israel launched a war in Gaza after Hamas-led militants attacked the country. This axis is known in Israel as the “ring of fire.”

For nearly a year, Hezbollah’s partners in the region have been engaged in a simmering conflict with Israel and its allies. Yemen’s Houthis have sporadically fired at vessels in the Red Sea, an artery of global trade, as well as on Israel. Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of hardline Shiite factions, has also launched attacks on US positions in that country. The axis has conditioned the cessation of those hostilities on a ceasefire in Gaza, rebranding themselves as a “supportive front” for Palestinians in Gaza, as described by a senior Hezbollah leader.

In September, Israel stepped up its direct confrontation with Hezbollah. In back-to-back attacks, hundreds of Hezbollah’s pagers and walkie-talkies exploded, killing at least 37 people and injuring thousands, before an Israeli airstrike on Beirut killed a senior Hezbollah commander. In response, Hezbollah has vowed “a battle without limits.”

Following the twin communications attacks, Hezbollah launched what it said was a ballistic missile at Israel, targeting the headquarters of Israel’s intelligence service Mossad. It is believed to be the first ballistic missile to be launched by militant group toward Israel. The strike, which was intercepted, reached near the bustling city of Tel Aviv.

Hezbollah’s fighting force emerged from the rubble of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Beirut. At the time, it was a rag-tag group of Islamist fighters supported by Iran’s fledgling Islamic Republic. This was followed by a meteoric rise in the group’s military and political might. In 2000, its guerrilla fighters forced Israeli forces to withdraw from south Lebanon, ending a more-than-20-year occupation. In 2006, it survived a 34-day war with Israel that wreaked havoc on Lebanon.

During Syria’s uprising-turned-civil war in the 2010s, it fought on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as he brutally quashed armed opposition forces and inflicted a huge civilian death toll. As it fought in the trenches of that nearly decade-long war, Hezbollah became seasoned in urban warfare and solidified its alliances with other Iran-backed groups fighting in Syria. It also cleared a vital supply route for weapons between Iran and Lebanon, via its partners in Iraq and Syria, further bolstering its arsenal.

Hezbollah’s military capabilities have notably grown since its last war with Israel in 2006. Military analysts estimate Hezbollah to have between 30,000 and 50,000 troops, but earlier this year its leader Nasrallah claimed it has more than 100,000 fighters and reservists. The group is also believed to possess between 120,000 and 200,000 rockets and missiles.

Experts say the group’s biggest military asset is the long-range ballistic missile, of which it is estimated to have thousands, including 1,500 precision missiles with ranges of 250–300 kilometers (155–186 miles).

Throughout its decades-long conflict with Israel, Hezbollah has been engaged in asymmetric warfare. It has sought to grow its political and military might, while seeking to establish deterrence despite Israel’s military superiority.

But Hezbollah threads the needle carefully. Provoking Israel’s full firepower could significantly degrade the group’s capabilities, setting it back years – if not decades – and destroying large parts of Lebanon, which has buckled under the weight of its years-long financial crisis.

As the confrontations at the border continue, Hezbollah has sought, with some success, to undermine Israel’s vaunted missile defense system known as the Iron Dome. It has tried to do so by attacking its platforms and overwhelming it with swarms of drones and short-range missiles in order to open a path for other projectiles to reach deeper into Israeli territory.

The full extent of Hezbollah’s arsenal is not clear. In response to Israel’s twin wireless device attacks, Hezbollah fired a barrage of missiles across the border into northern Israel, and said it hit an air base with Fadi 1 and Fadi 2 missiles – a longer-range weapon not known to have been used so far in nearly a year of conflict.

Hezbollah’s chances of survival in an all-out war with Israel is hinged on whether or not it can outsmart these systems which have in recent months intercepted thousands of airborne weapons from Iran, Gaza and Lebanon.

Because of Hezbollah’s growing power, a possible all-out war between Israel and Lebanon would thrust the Middle East into uncharted waters. The diplomatic effort to prevent it is likely to continue at a breathless pace.

Killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was a step toward changing “the balance of power in the region for years to come,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Saturday.

Israel’s leader sees an opportunity opening up for a fundamental reconfiguration of power in Middle East and he may assume that Hezbollah are mortally wounded. Total victory, however, is elusive, and those who get what they wish for often live to regret it.

Since Sept 17, Israel has dealt the Iran-backed militant group one body blow after another in Lebanon — first the pager and walkie talkie blasts, then a massive air strike on southern Beirut which killed senior commander Ibrahim Aqil (along with at least two dozen civilians), followed three days later by the start of a brutal bombing campaign. By Friday evening – when Nasrallah was killed in a bombing that flattened multiple buildings – Hizballah’s senior leadership had been almost totally eliminated.

Yet recent history offers only bitter lessons for Israeli leaders — and others — who entertain grand ambitions for tectonic changes in Lebanon, and in the Middle East in general.

In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon with the goal of crushing the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Beyond that, it hoped to establish a malleable Christian-dominated government in Beirut and to drive Syrian forces out of the country.

It failed at all three. Yes, Palestinian armed groups in Lebanon were compelled to leave the country under an American-brokered deal that sent them into exile in Tunisia, Yemen and elsewhere. But the goal of quashing Palestinian national aspirations along with the PLO failed. Five years later, the First Palestinian Intifada, or uprising,broke out in Gaza and spread to the West Bank. Today the Palestinians are as adamant and restive as they’ve ever been in their rejection of Israeli occupation.

Israel’s main ally in Lebanon at the time of the invasion was Bashir Al-Gemayel, a Maronite Christian militia leader who was elected by parliament, but before he took office was assassinated in a massive blast in east Beirut. His brother, Amin, replaced him, and under his leadership and with active American involvement and encouragement in May 1983 Lebanon and Israel signed an agreement for the establishment of normal bilateral relations. In the face of intense opposition, the government fell the following February and soon the agreement was abrogated.

The US, which had deployed troops to Beirut after the September 1982 Sabra-Shatila massacres, pulled out after its embassy was twice bombed, along with the US marines and French army barracks in October 1983.

The Lebanese civil war re-erupted and raged on more than six years.

Syrian forces, which had entered Lebanon in 1976 as a “deterrence force” under an Arab League mandate, didn’t leave until 2005 after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Al-Hariri.

Perhaps the most significant outcome of the 1982 Israeli invasion was the birth of Hezbollah, which went on to wage a relentless guerrilla war that compelled Israel to unilaterally withdraw from south Lebanon – significantly the first and only time an Arab military force successfully pushed Israel to retreat from Arab land. This new group, with Iran’s help, proved to be far more lethal and effective than the Palestinian militants Israel had successfully driven out.

Hezbollah went on to fight Israel to a standstill in the 2006 war, and in the following years grew only stronger, with significant Iranian help.

Today Hezbollah is crippled and in disarray, and clearly infiltrated by Israeli intelligence – but still, it would be premature to write its epitaph.

Beyond Lebanon and Israel, there is the example of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, a lesson in the wages of unfettered hubris. As the Iraqi army crumbled and US troops raced to Baghdad, the George W. Bush administration entertained fantasies that the fall of Saddam Hussein would lead to the toppling of regimes in Tehran and Damascus, and ignite a flowering of liberal democracies across the region.

Instead the US occupation of Iraq descended into a blood bath of sectarian violence, in which the US paid dearly in blood and treasure, the people of Iraq even more. The killing of Saddam Hussain allowed Iran to spread its influence to the very heart of the political establishment in Baghdad. Al-Qaeda, shattered by the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, was reborn in Iraq’s Sunni triangle, and eventually morphed into the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

As I write this, I see smoke rising from across Beirut’s battered southern suburbs and recall the words of then-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who, during the 2006 Israel-Hizballah war, said all the bloodshed and destruction we were witnessing then were “the birth pangs of the new Middle East.”

Beware of those who promise a new dawn, the birth of a new Middle East, a new balance of power in the region. Lebanon is a microcosm of all that can go wrong. It’s the land of unintended consequences.

An eerie calm fell over the Lebanese capital in the hours after Israeli warplanes pummelled its southern suburbs, Hezbollah’s seat of power where hundreds of thousands of civilians live.

The Iran-backed group’s long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed on Friday in a massive bombardment that was the first of the nearly 48 hours of incessant airstrikes. Scores of top commanders and officials were killed alongside him as well as in the attacks that followed. Many civilians are also believed to have been killed.

More than 24 hours after Nasrallah’s body was recovered from the deep pit left behind by the heavy bombs that killed him, a funeral for the militant leader is yet to be scheduled – highly unusual in Islamic tradition where the dead receive a quick burial.

The group is also yet to appoint a new secretary general, defying long-held expectations that the group would rapidly unfurl a succession plan after Nasrallah’s death.

This has added to a pervading sense that Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militant group which for decades dominated the country’s politics, had swiftly become a ghost organization. In one fell swoop, Israel seemed to remove not just the group’s leadership, but perhaps also all its contingency plans, further evidence of the profound scope of Israel’s infiltration of the group’s ranks.

“It’s fabricated. There’s no proof that he’s dead,” said Hassan, a Hezbollah supporter leaning on a parked moped, his eyes glassy with tears. “He’s going to appear soon and he’s going to surprise us.”

Abu Mohamad, a middle-aged Shia man displaced from southern Lebanon to a sidewalk in central Beirut, said, “It doesn’t matter if he’s alive or dead, because a leader like Nasrallah lives in us always,” he said. “We will continue on the path he set, and we will return to our homes.”

Nasrallah inspired strong feelings in the Lebanese – revered and reviled in equal measure. But Lebanese across the divide are reeling from the tectonic shifts to the country’s political landscape, and the humanitarian devastation that it has wreaked.

Lebanese authorities believe just under 1,100 people have been killed and around 1 million have been displaced by Israel’s intensified bombardment campaign since it began last Monday. A response, Israel says, to the rocket attacks from Hezbollah that began a day after Hamas attacked on October 7, and which have forced 60,000 people from their homes in northern Israel.

Lebanon’s border villages have also been emptied of around 100,000 villagers by Israeli attacks in turn. Still, Hezbollah has vowed to keep up its border rocket fire until the end of Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

Now, large parts of the densely populated southern suburbs have been devastated. The displaced have taken to the relatively affluent, and still untouched, western parts of the capital where they have camped out on sidewalks, parks, schools, churches and mosques.

Mattresses and blankets for displaced families cover the Corniche, the city’s seaside boardwalk, known for its views of the eastern Mediterranean against the backdrop of verdant green mountains.

When Israeli bombs hit the south of the capital on Friday, the streets of west Beirut filled with people throughout the night. Some of the displaced were chatting on the curb, a few lay asleep on benches. Women cradled sleeping babies and toddlers. Children wandered the streets in their pajamas, snaking aimlessly through double parked cars.

On the city’s commercial Hamra street, a crowd outside an abandoned building forced the traffic to a near stop. A man knocked down the iron gate, allowing a flood of displaced people in for shelter.

It was 3 o’clock in the morning. Nasrallah had only recently been assassinated – though not yet confirmed by his group – and many of his supporters were trying to put on a brave face.

“We’re ok! I’m sure our home is ok. There’s nothing to worry about,” one woman in her early 60s told a group of people around her.

Days later, the sense of dread is more palpable. Many of the country’s displaced have lost loved ones but can barely find the time to grieve as they scramble for shelter and food. Those not yet personally impacted by the bombardment must contend with the unknown territory into which the death of Nasrallah and his cadre of senior leaders has thrust the country.

“The assassination of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah came to open a wound in the heart of the Lebanese,” the Patriarch of the Maronite Church, Bechara Boutros al-Rahi said at Sunday Mass.

Rahi has long been one of Hezbollah’s most prominent critics. In January he implicitly criticized Hezbollah for dragging the south of Lebanon into conflict with its cross-border rocket and drone attacks on Israel. Hezbollah has repeatedly vowed not to cease fire on its southern border until the end of Israel’s ongoing offensive in Gaza.

Rahi had also condemned “the culture of death that has brought nothing but imaginary victories and shameful defeats to our country.”

Nasrallah’s main Sunni foes have also condemned the assassination. “The assassination of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has brought Lebanon and the region to a new phase of violence. It was a cowardly act that we condemn in every way,” Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Saad Hariri said in a post on X.

“We disagreed a lot with the late (Nasrallah) and with his party, and we met infrequently. However Lebanon serves as a tent for all, and in these extremely challenging times, our unity and our solidarity remains foundational,” Hariri continued.

Lebanon’s complex confessional power-sharing structure has mean that divisions frequently spark internal strife, political paralysis and even violence. But Israel, technically classified in Lebanon as an “enemy state,” has historically brought the fragmented country together, albeit temporarily.

Meanwhile, civilians wandering the streets for safety have borne the cost of this new war.
At central Martyr’s Square in central Beirut, against the backdrop of a poster that read in big letters “Beirut will not die” barefoot children were smeared in black dirt and families slept on straw mats. An elderly woman who fled her neighbourhood, leaving all possessions behind, was selling tissue boxes.

“We sleep on sidewalks because we have no choice,” said Umm Fawzi, from southern Beirut. “I swear that we fled only with the clothes on our back. There was not a living soul left in the neighborhood.”