For almost a month, the Middle East and the international community waited on edge for Hezbollah’s retaliation for Israel’s assassination of its military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut on July 31. Its promised vengeance finally materialized on the morning of August 25. Hezbollah’s attack appears to have largely been a failure, and it remains unclear if it will engage in follow-up strikes. But what the group’s rockets failed to do, its propaganda organs will fill, giving the image to Hezbollah’s base that it is capable of settling scores with the Israelis.
The delay in Hezbollah’s retaliation for Shukr wasn’t caused by its relative weakness to Israel or fear of Israel’s response alone. When the group began attacking Israel on October 8, 2023, it intended to become a full “part of the battle,” in Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s words, that erupted the day prior when Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups attacked southern Israel, dubbed “Al-Aqsa Flood.” The purpose of this “support front,” laid out clearly by Nasrallah on November 3, 2023, was to burden Israel—militarily, economically, and societally—with a two-front war to slow its campaign in the Gaza Strip and ensure that “the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, and Hamas, in particular, emerge victorious.”
Committed as Hezbollah is to saving its Gaza-based allies, the group does not currently want a full war with Israel. The conditions for Hezbollah and its broader allies in the Iranian-led Resistance Axis are simply not optimal. On October 8, 2023, as now, the group was burdened with navigating Lebanese domestic woes: an economy and currency that collapsed almost five years ago, Gulf and Western foreign backers cutting aid, a presidential vacuum, and the resulting political stagnation. Compounding Lebanon’s problems with provoking a war with Israel for the sake of Palestine—important as the cause may be for the average Lebanese—risked a backlash that Hezbollah would prefer to avoid.
