The killing of Nasrallah reveals the depth of Israel's involvement in Hezbollah By Reuters

(Corrects the information in paragraph 2 in the page break; and the location of Hezbollah's establishment in Lebanon, not Tehran, in paragraph 21)

By Samia Nakhoul, Parisa Hafezi and Maayan Lubell

(Reuters) – After the assassination of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah faces a major challenge in closing down the infiltration into its ranks that allowed its arch-enemy Israel to destroy weapons sites, stun and kill the former leader. it was a closely guarded secret for years.

Nasrallah's killing at HQ on Friday came a week after thousands of booby-trapped Hezbollah pagers and hundreds of radios were blown up – an attack widely suspected in Israel but not yet reported. His killing was the culmination of a series of swift strikes that eliminated part of Hezbollah's leadership council and destroyed its top military commander.

In the days before and hours after Nasrallah's assassination, Reuters spoke to more than a dozen sources in Lebanon, Israel, Iran and Syria who provided details of the damage Israel has inflicted on the powerful Shi'ite group, including its supply lines and assets. command structure. They all asked not to be identified to discuss sensitive issues.

One source familiar with Israeli thinking told Reuters, less than 24 hours before the strike, that Israel had spent 20 years focusing intelligence efforts on Hezbollah and could strike Nasrallah at will, including at headquarters.

Someone called intelligence “intelligence,” without giving details.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ministers close to him authorized the attack on Wednesday, two Israeli officials told Reuters. This attack happened when Netanyahu was in New York to address the UN General Assembly.

Nasrallah had avoided public appearances since the previous war in 2006. He had been on high alert for a long time, his movements were restricted and the circle of people he saw was very small, according to a source familiar with Nasrallah's security arrangements. The killing revealed that his group had been infiltrated by Israeli informers, the source said.

The Hezbollah leader has been more vigilant than usual since the pagers went off on September 17, out of concern that Israel will try to kill him, a security source familiar with the group's thinking told Reuters last week, commenting on his absence from the administration's funeral. and his pre-recording of the speech that was broadcast a few days earlier.

Hezbollah's press office did not respond to a request for comment on the matter. US President Joe Biden on Saturday called the killing of Nasrallah “some measure of justice” for his many victims, and said that the United States fully supports Israel's right to defend itself against groups supported by Iran.

Israel says it attacked Nasrallah by dropping bombs on a headquarters building south of Beirut.

“This is a huge blow and an intellectual failure for Hezbollah,” said Magnus Ranstorp, a Hezbollah veteran at Sweden's Defense University. “They know he meets. He meets other managers. They just want him.”

Including Nasrallah, the Israeli military says it has killed nine out of nine Hezbollah commanders this year, most notably in the past week. These commanders lead units ranging from the rocket division to the elite Radwan army.

About 1,500 Hezbollah fighters were disabled by explosive pagers and walkie talkies on September 17 and September 18.

On Saturday, Israeli army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told reporters at a briefing that the army had “real-time” information that Nasrallah and other leaders were meeting. Shoshani did not go public about how they knew, he said the leaders met to plan an attack on Israel.

Brigadier General Amichai Levin, the commander of Israel's Hatzerim Airbase, told the media that dozens of missiles hit the target within seconds.

“The operation was complex and planned for a long time,” said Levin.

IT'S DONE

Hezbollah has shown the ability to change commanders quickly, and Nasrallah's cousin Hashem Safieddine, who is also a cleric who wears a black turban that says he is descended from the Islamic Prophet Mohammed, has long been said to replace him.

“You kill one, they get a new one,” a European diplomat said of the group's approach.

The group, whose name means the Group of God, will fight this: according to the US and Israel it is estimated that it had about 40,000 soldiers before the current increase, as well as a large number of large weapons and a large network of tunnels near the border of Israel.

Founded in Lebanon in 1982, the Shi'ite military outfit is a formidable member of the so-called Axis of Resistance of Anti-Israel allied forces, and an important regional player in its own right.

But it has been weakened physically and mentally in the last 10 days.

Thanks to decades of support from Iran, before the current conflict Hezbollah was among the most well-armed militias in the world, with an arsenal of 150,000 rockets, missiles and drones, according to US estimates.

That is ten times the size of the weapons cache the group had in 2006, during its last war with Israel, according to Israeli estimates.

In the past year, many weapons have entered Lebanon from Iran, as well as large amounts of financial aid, said a source familiar with Hezbollah's thinking.

There have been few detailed public tests of how badly the weapon was damaged by last week's Israeli airstrike, which hit Hezbollah strongholds in the Bekaa Valley, far from Lebanon's border with Israel.

One Western Middle East official told Reuters before Friday's attack that Hezbollah had lost 20%-25% of its missile capabilities in the ongoing conflict, including hundreds of Israeli strikes this week. The embassy did not provide evidence or details of their investigation.

An Israeli security official said a “very respectable portion” of Hezbollah's missiles had been destroyed, without giving further details.

In recent days, Israel has attacked more than 1,000 Hezbollah targets. A security official, when asked about the military's extensive range, said Israel has matched Hezbollah's twelve-year-old preparations to prevent it from launching its rockets in the first place – along with the Iron Dome air defense system that often shoots down ballistic missiles. in the Jewish state.

Israeli officials say the fact that Hezbollah was able to launch several hundred rockets a day last week is proof that its power has waned.

IRAN Connection

Before the Nasrallah strike, three Iranian sources told Reuters that Iran was planning to send more missiles to Hezbollah in preparation for a long war.

The weapons to be supplied included short- to medium-range ballistic missiles including Iranian Zelzals and a more accurate version known as the Fateh 110, the first Iranian source said.

Reuters could not reach sources after Nasrallah's assassination.

Although Iran is willing to support the military, the two Iranian sources said it does not want to get directly involved in the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. The rapid escalation of conflict this past week follows a year of conflict related to the war in Gaza.

The deputy commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Abbas Nilforoushan, was killed in Israeli strikes in Beirut on Friday, Iranian media reported on Saturday, citing state TV.

Hezbollah may need some warheads and missiles as well as drones and missile components to replace those destroyed by Israeli strikes across Lebanon last week, a senior Syrian military intelligence source said.

Iranian supplies have in the past reached Hezbollah by air and sea. On Saturday, Lebanon's Ministry of Transport told an Iranian plane not to enter its airspace after Israel warned air traffic control at Beirut airport that it would use “force” if the plane landed, a source in the ministry told Reuters.

The source said it was unclear what was on the plane.

Land corridors are currently the best route for missiles, parts and drones, through Iraq and Syria, with the help of allied armed groups in those countries, an Iranian security official told Reuters this week.

A Syrian military source, however, said Israeli drone surveillance and strikes targeting trucks disrupted that route. This year, Israel has stepped up attacks on weapons depots and weapons supply routes in Syria to weaken Hezbollah before any war, Reuters reported in June.

As recently as August, an Israeli warplane hit weapons hidden in trailers in Syria, the source said. This week, the Israeli military said its warplanes bombed an unspecified infrastructure used to transfer weapons to Hezbollah on the Syria-Lebanon border.

Joseph Votel, a former army general who led US forces in the Middle East, said Israel and its allies would be able to intercept any missiles fired by Iran into the country from Hezbollah now.

“That would be a risk they're willing to take, frankly,” he said.