Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group that once projected power across the Middle East, lost virtually its entire senior leadership in a devastating series of Israeli strikes between July and November 2024. Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, his expected successor Hashem Safieddine, top military commander Fuad Shukr, operations chief Ibrahim Aqil, and at least seven other senior commanders were all killed within a matter of months. Now, the patron state that built Hezbollah into a regional force — Iran — is itself under sustained bombardment from a joint US-Israeli military campaign that began on February 28, 2026, a campaign that has already killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and over 1,255 Iranian citizens as of March 10. The speed of this collapse is difficult to overstate.
A year ago, Hezbollah was considered the most powerful non-state military force in the world, with a missile arsenal that threatened every city in Israel and a command structure that had survived decades of conflict. Today, the organization is led by Naim Qassem, a relative unknown elevated to Secretary-General in October 2024, and its founding generation of leaders is gone. The group that once served as Iran’s most reliable proxy now watches as its lifeline state absorbs daily airstrikes across multiple cities, including Tehran itself. This article examines how Israel systematically dismantled Hezbollah’s leadership, what the ongoing US-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran means for the group’s future, the broader regional fallout including retaliatory strikes on Gulf states, and why analysts believe Hezbollah is “weak but not yet defeated.”.
Table of Contents
- How Did Hezbollah Lose Most of Its Leadership in 2024?
- What Does the US-Israeli Bombing of Iran Mean for Hezbollah’s Survival?
- Iran’s Retaliation and the Expanding Regional War
- Is Hezbollah Weak or Defeated — and Why the Distinction Matters
- The Pager Operation and What It Revealed About Intelligence Penetration
- Lebanon Caught in the Crossfire
- Where This Conflict Goes From Here
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
How Did Hezbollah Lose Most of Its Leadership in 2024?
The destruction of Hezbollah’s command structure began on July 30, 2024, when an Israeli airstrike in southern Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, the group’s top military commander and a figure who had shaped its battlefield strategy for decades. that strike alone would have been a significant blow, but it turned out to be the opening move in a far more ambitious campaign. On September 17-18, Israel executed one of the most unusual intelligence operations in modern warfare — detonating explosives hidden inside pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah operatives, killing or wounding over 1,000 members in a single coordinated attack. The operation exposed a staggering infiltration of Hezbollah’s supply chain and communications infrastructure. The killing accelerated from there. On September 20, operations commander Ibrahim Aqil was struck down in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
A week later, on September 27, Hassan Nasrallah himself — Hezbollah’s Secretary-General for over 30 years and one of the most recognizable figures in Middle Eastern politics — was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the group’s headquarters. Israel killed at least seven senior commanders in that single week in late September, effectively wiping out the organization’s founding-generation leadership in days. By comparison, it had taken Israel decades of intermittent conflict to achieve far less against Hezbollah’s leadership. The final blow to succession planning came on October 3, when Hashem Safieddine, the man widely expected to replace Nasrallah, was assassinated in another Beirut airstrike. His death was not confirmed until October 23, underscoring the chaos within Hezbollah’s remaining ranks. By late October, the group elected Naim Qassem as its new Secretary-General — a cleric who had long served as Nasrallah’s deputy but was never considered a wartime leader. In November 2025, acting chief of staff Ali Haytham Tabataba’i was also eliminated, continuing the pattern of leadership attrition well beyond the initial campaign.
What Does the US-Israeli Bombing of Iran Mean for Hezbollah’s Survival?
On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched joint airstrikes across multiple sites and cities in iran, with stated goals of regime change and the destruction of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials in the initial wave. As of Day 11 of the campaign on March 10, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described ongoing operations as “yet again, our most intense day of strikes inside Iran,” with Tehran experiencing some of the most severe bombardments of the entire war. For Hezbollah, this represents something far worse than losing commanders — it means the potential loss of the state apparatus that funded, armed, trained, and politically sustained the group for over four decades. Iran’s relationship with Hezbollah has never been merely transactional. Tehran reportedly provided the group with an estimated $700 million or more annually in funding, along with advanced missile systems, training, and strategic direction through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Without a functioning Iranian state — or at minimum, without the specific IRGC and Supreme Leader’s office infrastructure that managed the relationship — that pipeline is in jeopardy.
However, it is important not to assume the pipeline has been entirely severed. Iran’s government, while under enormous pressure, still controls territory and retains institutional capacity. If the bombing campaign ends without full regime collapse, a reconstituted Iranian government could attempt to rebuild its proxy relationships, though likely from a position of dramatically reduced capability. The limitation here is significant: bombing campaigns, even sustained ones, do not always achieve regime change. Iran is a country of over 85 million people with complex internal politics. The stated US-Israeli goal of regime change is historically one of the hardest military objectives to achieve through air power alone. If Iran’s government survives in some form, Hezbollah’s long-term funding could eventually be restored, though almost certainly at reduced levels and with less sophisticated weaponry.
Iran’s Retaliation and the Expanding Regional War
Iran has not absorbed these strikes passively. Since February 28, Iranian forces have fired over 500 ballistic and naval missiles and nearly 2,000 drones in retaliation, with approximately 40 percent aimed at israel and 60 percent directed at US targets in the region, according to figures reported by Iran’s Fars News Agency on March 5. On March 2 alone, Iranian retaliatory strikes hit Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, and Beersheba — a dramatic expansion of the conflict into Gulf states that had largely remained on the sidelines of previous Middle Eastern wars. The human cost is mounting across multiple countries. As of approximately March 10, at least 1,255 people have been killed in Iran, 13 in Israel, 8 US soldiers, and 14 in Gulf states.
The strikes on the Gulf are particularly consequential because they threaten the economic infrastructure of states like the UAE and Qatar, which serve as global financial and logistics hubs. Iran has also threatened to block oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz until the attacks end — a move that, if executed, could send global energy prices into a severe spike given that roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil passes through that chokepoint. For Hezbollah specifically, the March 2 exchange was telling. The group launched strikes on Israel in response to the killing of Khamenei, demonstrating that it retains some operational capacity. Israel responded with strikes on Beirut, showing that the dynamic of escalation and retaliation now encompasses Lebanon, Iran, Israel, and the Gulf states simultaneously. This is no longer a conflict that can be analyzed in bilateral terms.
Is Hezbollah Weak or Defeated — and Why the Distinction Matters
Analysts at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) assessed in early March 2026 that Hezbollah is “weak but not yet defeated.” This distinction matters enormously for Lebanon’s future and for anyone trying to understand whether the group could reconstitute itself. Hezbollah lost its most experienced military commanders, much of its arsenal, and now faces the potential collapse of its primary state sponsor. By any conventional military measure, the organization has been devastated. However, Hezbollah is not merely a military organization. It functions as a political party with seats in Lebanon’s parliament, operates social services including hospitals and schools in Shia communities, and maintains deep roots in Lebanese society that cannot be eliminated through airstrikes.
The comparison to consider is the Taliban in Afghanistan — a group that lost its government, its territory, and many of its leaders after 2001, yet retained enough social infrastructure and popular support to eventually return to power two decades later. Hezbollah’s political and social apparatus remains largely intact even as its military wing has been gutted. The tradeoff for Israel and the United States is clear: military strikes can destroy hardware and kill leaders, but they cannot eliminate an organization that is woven into the fabric of a country’s political life. If the goal is permanent degradation of Hezbollah’s military capability, the destruction of Iranian supply lines may prove more consequential than any individual assassination. If the goal is the elimination of Hezbollah as a political and social force, military action alone is almost certainly insufficient.
The Pager Operation and What It Revealed About Intelligence Penetration
The September 2024 pager and walkie-talkie operation deserves particular scrutiny because of what it revealed about the depth of Israeli intelligence penetration into Hezbollah’s operations. Detonating explosives hidden inside communications devices used by over 1,000 operatives required either compromising the supply chain at the manufacturing or distribution level, or physically intercepting and modifying the devices before they reached Hezbollah members. Either scenario represents years of intelligence preparation and a level of infiltration that should concern any organization relying on off-the-shelf technology for secure communications. The warning here extends beyond Hezbollah.
Any militant group, government agency, or organization that relies on commercial communications hardware is potentially vulnerable to similar supply-chain attacks. The operation demonstrated that even groups that deliberately avoid smartphones and internet-connected devices — Hezbollah had switched to pagers precisely because they believed them to be more secure — can be compromised if an adversary has sufficient resources and patience. This was not a hack or a cyberattack in the conventional sense; it was a physical infiltration of hardware that turned everyday devices into weapons. The long-term effect on Hezbollah’s operational security has been devastating. The group now faces a fundamental trust problem: how do you communicate and coordinate when your adversary has demonstrated the ability to compromise your most basic equipment? This challenge compounds the leadership losses, because rebuilding a command structure requires exactly the kind of secure internal communication that Israel has proven it can compromise.
Lebanon Caught in the Crossfire
Lebanon, already in the grip of an economic crisis that began in 2019 and was compounded by the catastrophic Beirut port explosion of 2020, now faces renewed Israeli strikes on its capital. The March 2 Israeli strikes on Beirut in response to Hezbollah’s retaliatory attack on Israel brought the war back to Lebanese soil at a moment when the country can least afford it. Lebanese civilians who are not Hezbollah members or supporters bear the consequences of a conflict they did not choose, in a country whose government has little capacity to protect them or provide reconstruction assistance.
The situation illustrates a recurring pattern in proxy warfare: when the patron state is attacked, the proxy’s host country absorbs collateral damage. Lebanon has no realistic means of preventing either Hezbollah from launching strikes from its territory or Israel from retaliating against those strikes. The Lebanese Armed Forces lack the capability to disarm Hezbollah, and the political system gives the group effective veto power over government decisions. For ordinary Lebanese, the calculus is grim — their country’s sovereignty is functionally compromised by a weakened but still active militia that draws fire from one of the region’s most powerful militaries.
Where This Conflict Goes From Here
The trajectory of this war depends on variables that remain deeply uncertain as of mid-March 2026. If the US-Israeli bombing campaign achieves its stated goal of regime change in Iran, Hezbollah would lose its primary sponsor permanently, and the entire network of Iranian-backed groups across Iraq, Syria, and Yemen would face similar existential threats. If the campaign stalls or ends without regime change, Iran could eventually reconstitute its proxy relationships, though from a weakened position.
The Strait of Hormuz threat adds an economic dimension that could force diplomatic intervention — sustained oil disruption would affect every major economy on earth and could generate pressure from US allies to negotiate a ceasefire. What is already clear is that the Middle East of early 2024 — where Hezbollah was a dominant military force, Iran was a rising regional power pursuing nuclear capability, and the Gulf states were largely insulated from direct conflict — no longer exists. The strategic map has been redrawn through a combination of targeted assassinations, intelligence operations, and now sustained aerial bombardment of a sovereign state. Whether this produces long-term stability or a more dangerous and unpredictable region depends on decisions that have not yet been made, by leaders in Washington, Jerusalem, Tehran, and Beirut who are themselves operating under extraordinary pressure.
Conclusion
The destruction of Hezbollah’s senior leadership in 2024 and the ongoing US-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran in 2026 represent the most significant reshaping of Middle Eastern power dynamics in decades. Hezbollah lost Nasrallah, Shukr, Aqil, Safieddine, and numerous other commanders to Israeli strikes, while over 1,000 operatives were casualties of the pager operation alone. Now, with Iran itself under sustained bombardment, Khamenei dead, and the Islamic Republic’s military infrastructure being systematically targeted, the group faces the potential loss of everything that made it powerful — funding, weapons, strategic direction, and the implicit threat of Iranian escalation that once deterred its enemies. Yet the story is not finished.
Hezbollah retains political presence in Lebanon, Iran continues to launch retaliatory missiles and drones, Gulf states are absorbing strikes they never anticipated, and the Strait of Hormuz remains a potential chokepoint for global energy markets. The human toll — over 1,255 dead in Iran, casualties across Israel, the US military, and the Gulf — continues to climb daily. What began as Israel’s campaign to neutralize Hezbollah’s leadership has expanded into a regional war whose endpoint remains unknown. For readers tracking these developments, the key question is no longer whether Hezbollah has been weakened — it clearly has — but whether the broader military campaign will produce lasting security or simply generate the conditions for the next cycle of conflict.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Hezbollah completely destroyed?
No. Analysts assess that Hezbollah is “weak but not yet defeated.” The group lost most of its senior military leadership and significant arsenal in 2024, but it retains its political structure, seats in Lebanon’s parliament, and social service networks in Shia communities. Its military capability is severely degraded, but the organization itself continues to exist.
Why is the US bombing Iran?
The United States and Israel launched joint airstrikes on Iran beginning February 28, 2026, with stated goals of regime change and destroying Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The campaign has been ongoing for at least 11 days as of March 10, 2026.
Has Iran retaliated against the US and Israeli strikes?
Yes. Iran has fired over 500 ballistic and naval missiles and nearly 2,000 drones since February 28, with approximately 40 percent aimed at Israel and 60 percent at US targets in the region. Retaliatory strikes have hit Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, and Beersheba. Iran has also threatened to block oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.
Who leads Hezbollah now?
Naim Qassem was elected Secretary-General in October 2024, following the killing of Hassan Nasrallah in September and the assassination of expected successor Hashem Safieddine in early October. Qassem had served as Nasrallah’s deputy but was not considered a wartime leader.
What was the pager attack on Hezbollah?
On September 17-18, 2024, Israel detonated explosives that had been hidden inside pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members. The coordinated operation killed or wounded over 1,000 operatives and revealed deep Israeli intelligence penetration of Hezbollah’s supply chain and communications infrastructure.