Nasrallah R.I.P – What really happened and why!

The general secretary of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, is gone. Decades of his reign over Hezbollah, his personal connection to the spiritual leader Khamenei, and his everlasting equations – all gone. He may be mourned by his followers, maybe even by Hezbollah experts, who have studied Nasrallah for years, but many are celebrating. Many more than you could imagine. The reason for it is much more complex, much more delicate and sensitive, and far more dangerous than meets the eye. This is unexpected, and mind-blowing but makes a lot of sense. Where did the intel come from? Who played along? Why would anyone double-cross the undisputed leader and “guardian of Lebanon” and the best friend of the Iranian homeland? To understand it fully, you have to know the basic facts.

Hezbollah is not just another proxy of Iran; it has been a partner for many years. Iran is heavily invested in Hezbollah and fairly in charge of any strategic decision-making, and to the Iranians for a very good reason. The Iranian leadership, and especially the MOIS and the intelligence service of the IRGC, believe that Hezbollah is merely the Shiite version of low-life Arabs. They never took them seriously and never accepted their insights about the capabilities of their common enemies. When it came to helping out in Syria, Iran had Hezbollah volunteer long before they sent some of their own consultants, far away from the fighting front. Iran pays for their weapons, pays for their food and ammunition, pays for their education and training, and even organized for them to be represented in parliament, making Hezbollah a tool to take over Lebanon legitimately, at least seemingly.

This investment of Iran in Hezbollah intended to provide Iran with an on-site intervention capability. Iran has long understood, that their main nemesis is Israel, the only country that cannot be directly influenced by oil and gas, meaning by money. The logic behind it is simple: The Jews don’t have anywhere else to go, so they will not compromise on their land. With that in mind, Iran had to take into account, that in the end, when Iran will enter the final stage of regaining her status of old, a regional empire, it will have to deal with Israel, and vice versa. Naturally, one of the main capabilities that stands in their way is the alleged nuclear capabilities of Israel, which Iran has to counter with her own nuclear program. In this stand-off, it was clear to Iran, that ultimately there will be a showdown between the two, either including or not including the US. In this scenario, Hezbollah was in charge of disrupting Israeli capabilities, engaging them on several levels. Over time, Iran even supplied Hezbollah with special technology to improve their rockets and turn them into high-accuracy missiles, in an attempt to bypass the Israeli anti-missile system, the Iron Dome.

In Iranian eyes, Hezbollah had one “Raison d’Être”, and all the rest was just to keep them busy until that day comes. Nasrallah must have misunderstood it, or maybe, which makes a lot more sense, was not in on the scheme. One thing is indisputable. The deterrence of Hezbollah was diminished within a few days and Nasrallah did not understand the strategic change. For years, actually from the 2006 war, Israel refrained from fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon. Almost all attacks were on Syrian soil, nothing to provoke Hezbollah. As the years went on, the deterrence grew into a frightening story that politicians and journalists loved to tell: Hezbollah is heavily armed, and trained special forces to conquer and occupy parts of the Galilee. This changed abruptly, as if it never existed, in a series of strikes that baffled Hezbollah’s leadership, hit their nerve center, paralyzed their communication systems and their chain of command, and then took out one-by-one, and sometimes in small and growing groups, the heads of the organization. Before you could fathom the event, Nasrallah stood almost on his own.

At this point in time, Nasrallah was convinced that he was next in line. He also thought that he had to do something about it to save Hezbollah and prevent the overthrow of “his creation”. He even said to the Iranian consultants, that a civil war might eliminate the weakened organization. He panicked, but not without a reason. Naturally, he had to consult with Khamenei, and so he left Beirut secretly and presented his attack plans to the leader in Tehran. His plans had two major flaws. First, and foremost, such an attack would make use of the special capabilities that Iran had planned to preserve for her own needs when the time comes. Not now! Secondly, Iran was just re-opening to the West, trying to renew negotiations for a nuclear agreement and lifting of the sanctions. A serious escalation in the Middle East would re-ignite the criticism against the mullahs and would fuel the Western hardliners who blame Iran for the hostilities in the region in the last decades, and righteously so. Khamenei gave him a clear-cut answer: do not use the “game changers”, hide them well, and don’t let any of your commanders go near them.

Whether Nasrallah agreed, whether he refused or just played along in order to safely return home, we do not know. What we do know for a fact, is that upon his arrival, he was supposed to meet with one of the IRGC consultants stationed in Beirut, in order to decide on the fine-tuning for the next steps. The place and time of this meeting were known only to the personal guard of the general secretary and the IRGC. There is no one else to provide the information on time for a well-organized attack. This doesn’t make sense, neither his guards nor the IRGC can be accused of a lack of patriotism, and who in his right mind would think it possible that any of them would turn against Nasrallah? But, no one else knew.

To be able to answer that, we need to take an extra look at the presidency of Iran, at the openness of the newly elected Pezeshkian. Exactly at the same time when all of this took place in Iran and Lebanon, Pezeshkian visited the UN. He met with many Western representatives, met with a group of Jews, some of them Israelis, and even shook hands with them. The group included at least one LGBTQ person. The message to the world was loud and clear: Iran wants to talk, the sooner the better. This policy is not welcomed by Iranian hardliners, especially by the IRGC. For years now, the IRGC has slowly taken over large parts of the economy, laid the foundation for a shadow economy for the remaining part, and infiltrated the presidency and the chancellery of the spiritual leader with the objective of appointing one of their own to succeed Khamenei. In order to do so, one thing is of utter importance. That is the complete isolation of Iran. In this state of affairs, Iran is absolutely dependent on the capabilities of the IRGC, especially on the Quds Force, the foreign arm of the IRGC, handling all proxies and international trade and the black market.

The new initiative of Khamenei and Pezekshian has the potential to ease and even lift the isolation, and eventually, the sanctions, rendering the economic leverage of the IRGC obsolete and thwarting their “evil plan” to take over the reigns of Iran. The IRGC has tried to stop this before, but now it has become critical and steps had to be taken. They needed a regional escalation, and nothing is better than to allow the enemy to eliminate a close friend of the leader. Once the opportunity was orchestrated, meaning the meeting with the IRGC consultant in the HQ in Beirut, Nasrallah’s destiny was concluded. With that came the real objective: The supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, had to be taken to a secret location to allegedly keep him safe from a potential attack. In doing this, the IRGC had de facto taken over the rule of Iran and is holding on to it. This is a well-known scenario and has happened in history many times over. It seems that Khamenei has foreseen the possibility and prepared for it, but the regime is now in stagnation.

The question to be raised is, how did the Quds Force transfer the relevant information of the whereabouts of Nasrallah believably, making sure it will be taken seriously? The possibility of a double agent seems plausible, but too slow. An anonymous phone call is less reliable, but it seems that open communication, like that of police forces, is covered by signal intelligence for sure and will be deemed reliable enough.
The Kingpin of Hezbollah, the ruler of the South of Lebanon, a close friend to the supreme leader, a foe to be feared and respected, Hassan Nasrallah, eventually became a pawn in the grand scheme of the IRGC to take over the rule of Iran. He was sacrificed like a lamb, to ignite a large fire in the Middle East and end the hopes for peace and openness in the region. Should this scheme succeed, all things considered, maybe we were better off before he joined his friends and the virgins, and maybe it’s a small price to pay.