Hezbollah Weighs Risks of Backlash at Home in War With Israel

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Hezbollah Weighs Risks of Backlash at Home in War With *******

A day after the ************** of a senior commander of the Lebanese militant faction Hezbollah, the group vowed to retaliate against *******. More than two weeks later, however, the response has not come as Hezbollah strikes a delicate balance between the vengeance it seeks and the risks of a backlash at home.

Lebanon is already deep in turmoil from a yearslong political and economic crisis, and its citizens are tired of strife. The country has careened from one crisis to the next since a 15-year civil war broke out in 1975. And if Hezbollah ends up in another punishing war with ******* now, the nation could well turn against it.

The Lebanese state is made up of a multitude of factions and sects and it has been controlled for years by an ineffectual caretaker government. Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Shiite ******* group, is both part of that coalition government and considered the real power underpinning Lebanon.

As the dominant political and military force in the entire country, Hezbollah has everything to lose and knows it must tread carefully.

The group has cemented its position over the last three decades after outmaneuvering its domestic foes in a political system that divides power by sect. The group has amassed a large and potent arsenal and is more powerful than the national military. It controls or has oversight of the country’s most important infrastructure. And it has lifted up its constituents in the process, empowering, enriching and providing services to Shiites in Lebanon, a historically marginalized sect.

Many of Lebanon’s Shiites now benefit from a plethora of services run by Hezbollah, including quality health care, free education and even a boy scouts program. Meanwhile, a broken and broke Lebanese state struggles to provide even the most basic services, such as electricity, for all its citizens. And no other political party has the funds or organization to provide for their own sect as well as Hezbollah.

Hezbollah must balance its allegiances to Iran and the ************ cause with the tolerance, if not support, of the Lebanese people. If the group miscalculates in its retaliation, ******* has vowed a response that could devastate Lebanon again.

“Hezbollah is stuck,” said Alain Aoun, a ********** member of Lebanon’s parliament who is allied with Hezbollah. “They have to avenge the ************** of their commander, but the taste of 2006 is still in their mouths. And they know the Lebanese people cannot take it anymore.”

In 2006, Hezbollah and ******* fought a *******, monthlong war that destroyed large swaths of southern Lebanon. *******’s harsh response saw many Lebanese factions rally around Hezbollah. But the risk now is that many in the country may blame the militants for any further destruction rather than close ranks behind them.

Hezbollah has already been engaged in a low-level war with ******* for the last 10 months in support of ******, the armed ************ group that attacked on ******* on Oct. 7, setting off the war in Gaza. ******, like Hezbollah, is an Iranian ally.

Analysts say ******* and Hezbollah have carefully calibrated their attacks on each other so as not to provoke an all-out war. But there has been an ever-present danger that a single mistake or miscalculation could push one side or the other over the brink.

Those risks grew late last month when a rocket from Lebanon hit a soccer field in Majdal Shams, a Druse village in the ********-controlled Golan Heights, and ******* 12 teenagers and children. Hezbollah denied that the rocket was its own, while U.S. and ******** assessments concluded that it belonged to the group.

******* retaliated in Beirut by assassinating the Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr — a strike on the Lebanese capital seen as a potentially dangerous escalation.

That ************** came a day before a senior ****** political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was ******* in Tehran, the Iranian capital. Iran and ****** blamed *******, which has not publicly taken responsibility for Mr. Haniyeh’s ********.

Western and Middle Eastern governments have been waiting anxiously to see how and when Hezbollah and Iran might retaliate while U.S. and ***** mediators redoubled efforts this week to reach an *******-****** cease-***** in hopes that it would cool regional tensions.

The ***** is that whatever comes next could snowball into a more intense, intractable and widespread regional war.

What matters most is not when Hezbollah will retaliate but how. Analysts say that the militants believe any ******* on ******* needs to be strong enough to force ******* to rethink striking Beirut again, but not so spectacular that it provokes a devastating response against Lebanon.

“Hezbollah needs to respond in a big way to stretch *******’s red lines but without crossing the threshold that will lead to an all-out war,” said Amal Saad, a lecturer at Cardiff University and leading Hezbollah scholar.

Any ******* that ****** ******** civilians risks a potentially catastrophic counterattack on Lebanon.

Hezbollah hinted in June that it may have the intelligence and the military capabilities to penetrate deep inside *******. It released drone footage of sensitive facilities, including an air base, in and around the city of Haifa.

Unlike ****** in Gaza, Hezbollah has a much larger and more powerful arsenal at stake — tens of thousands of rockets and precision-guided missiles that can pummel towns and cities in *******.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is well aware of the risks. Shortly after Mr. Shukr’s **************, he addressed ******* and the world in careful language.

“I am not saying that the goal of this battle is to eliminate *******,” Mr. Nasrallah said, softening his usual approach of calling for the annihilation of *******, a long-term Hezbollah objective.

“The goal of this battle is to prevent ******* from winning” and from “eliminating the ************ resistance,” Mr. Nasrallah added, drawing a separation between the war in Gaza and Hezbollah’s support for ******, on the one hand, and the group’s larger, longer-running conflict with *******.

Mr. Nasrallah said Hezbollah could retaliate separately from Iran, underscoring his group’s ability to act independently from its patron. He also said that forcing ******* to wait for a response was part of the group’s psychological warfare.

The ******* that ******* Mr. Shukr last month was in Dahiyeh, a Shiite neighborhood in Beirut’s southern suburbs that was flattened during the 2006 war, the last high-intensity conflict between ******* and Hezbollah. ******* also struck important national infrastructure.

Mr. Nasrallah said in 2006 that he would not have ordered the capture of two ******** soldiers — the incident that sparked the conflict — if he had known it would lead to such a war.

In subsequent years, oil-rich Gulf nations led by Saudi Arabia spent billions of dollars to rebuild Lebanon. But if all-out war breaks out between ******* and Hezbollah now, the Gulf is unlikely to help reconstruct Lebanon on the scale it did then.

Saudi Arabia and Iran had engaged in a decades-long war of influence across the Middle East, and Lebanon was often ground zero. Iran-backed Hezbollah eventually won out against the Saudis’ Lebanese allies about a decade ago. For those reasons, robust Gulf support is unlikely this time around, even if tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran have eased lately.

By the time the latest warfare erupted around the region, Lebanon was already severely weakened from years of political paralysis and economic decline.

Its economy collapsed in 2019, with the currency losing more than 95 percent of its value, wiping out the savings of many. That crisis precipitated a political collapse, and the caretaker government put in place at the start of 2020 was too broke to provide the most basic services to the country.

For all those reasons and more, most Lebanese do not have appetite for another big war with neighboring *******.

In Dahiyeh last week, the usually packed Beirut suburb was eerily quiet. Normally bustling shops and streets were empty as many appeared to have fled the area, worried about a new conflict.

Sabah Suleiman was working as a seamstress next to the building ******* struck when it ******* Mr. Shukr. She said she was trapped in her workshop when the strike destroyed much of the block.

Ms. Suleiman urged Hezbollah to retaliate but, at the same time, said she had deep concerns.

“I worry about my family,” she said, adding that she did not know where they would seek refuge if the conflict intensified.

Fatima, 50, lives near the Lebanese-******** border and said her house had been badly damaged by ******** shelling in the past months. She recently fled for Beirut, but said she does not feel safe anywhere, fearing what a Hezbollah retaliation may bring in terms of an ******** response.

“We are terrified,” said Fatima, who asked to be identified by her first name only so she could speak freely about Hezbollah. “Lebanon is weak economically and if we open another war, how are we going to face it? We have no water and no electricity,” she added.

“I have lost count of the retaliations. We are heartbroken. But this war is ******* than us.”

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