Senior Hezbollah commander killed in Lebanon

The prospect of regional escalation in the Middle East is looming large after a senior Hezbollah military commander was killed in an apparent Israeli air strike in southern Lebanon. 

Wissam Hassan al Tawil was reportedly driving in an area six kilometres from the border when his car was targeted, swerved off the road and burst into flames. Israel is yet to claim responsibility for the drone attack. 

While some 130 Hezbollah fighters have already been killed in the three months of low-intensity fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border that began on 8 October, this is a significant development. Tawil, who played a key role in leading the elite Radwan forces in Southern Lebanon, is the most senior Hezbollah figure yet to be declared dead. 

His death comes less than a week after the assassination of Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas leader, who was killed on Tuesday in a suspected Israeli attack in the Dahiye neighbourhood in Beirut, a Hezbollah-stronghold.

Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s chief, had already vowed to retaliate to Arouri’s assassination, with the group firing rockets into Israel on Saturday as a “preliminary response”.

Hezbollah, named the “party of God”, bills itself as a Shia Muslim resistance movement. Much like Hamas, it is backed by Iran and views weakening Israel as its primary reason d’etre. Both groups are designated as terrorist organisations by the UK government. But there are some key differences between the two. 

While Hamas benefits enormously from Iranian funding, arms and military training, it is not in Iran’s pocket to quite the same extent as Hezbollah, which takes direct orders from the Islamic Republic.

The degree of autonomy that Hamas keeps from Tehran is partly down to it being a Sunni organisation, meaning it doesn’t share the Shia religious link to Iran that Hezbollah does. 

Around 100,000 Hezbollah fighters, boasting a sophisticated military arsenal equipped with precision rockets and drones, are thought to be based in Lebanon. 

However, as Reaction’s Editorial Board wrote previously, although Tehran has licensed its most cherished proxy group to increase attacks along the border in recent months, Hezbollah fighters are massed in southern Lebanon for a special purpose. 

They are being held in reserve to deter Israel from launching raids against Iranian nuclear facilities, in the hope that the threat of 100,000 well-armed fighters flooding across the border would inhibit the IDF from eliminating the ayatollahs’ prized doomsday project.

This special purpose means that the Hezbollah leadership is reluctant to resort to all-out war with Israel at this moment in time. 

But that doesn’t mean it won’t, should Israel test it to the limit. 

In two televised addresses last week, Nasrallah warned Netanyahu not to launch a full-scale war with Lebanon. If he chose not to listen, the Hezbollah chief added that there would be “no ceilings” and “no rules” to his group’s fighting. 

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