What will be Iran’s response to Nasrallah’s assassination?

In the past 12 months of Israel’s war on Gaza, the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the second leader of Hezbollah, has perhaps been the most severe blow that Israel has dealt to Iran.

With the Israeli army’s ground troops having entered Lebanon on Tuesday morning, signalling Gaza war spreading in the volatile region, all eyes are on Iran’s potential retaliation against Tel Aviv.

“Hezbollah, in general, and Nasrallah, in particular, are very valuable and important assets. Such an asset needs to be preserved. They lost Nasrallah. Now the Iranians will have to reevaluate their strategy and decide what to do next,” says Tal Beeri, a Middle East expert and the head of Israeli think tank Alma Center Research Department.

“At this stage, the Iranians' intentions are unclear. The Iranians apparently understand very well that their response will provoke a significant Israeli retaliation. According to our understanding, the cost-benefit equation has critical significance for them in light of current circumstances,” Beeri tells TRT World.

So far Israel has been unhinged, simultaneously striking Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Hezbollah, a key Iranian ally in Lebanon, has lost several of its top leaders and is showing signs of disarray.

Overall, Israeli brutal attacks on Gaza have killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, mostly children and women, and claimed another 1,000 lives just in the past few weeks in Lebanon.

According to Beeri, Hezbollah, which is Tehran’s “main investment in recent decades,” is breaking apart “in terms of its status and ability to pose a strategic threat to Israel.”

As a result, he adds, Iran will not drive more forces and resources into the battlefield, which would put additional pro-Iranian “capabilities under threat”.

"There is no need to send extra or volunteer forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran," said Nasser Kanani, the country’s foreign ministry spokesman, arguing that Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian groups in Gaza "have the capability and strength to defend themselves” against Israeli attacks.

“As far as I can tell, there will be a response to Nasrallah’s killing,” says Fatima Karimkhan, a Tehran-based Iranian journalist, but specifics of what, where and when this response is unclear to many in the country, she adds.

What Iranians think

There is “wildly different” Iranian public opinion on the Nasrallah assassination and growing tensions with Israel, says Karimkhan.

While political opponents of new reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian administration are “pushing” for a response to all these new developments in the region, some anti-revolutionary and pro-monarchy groups continue to “support Israel no matter what they did or what they do, or what they might do in the future”, she tells TRT World, referring to anti-clerical forces in Iran.

“But as anyone familiar with policymaking in Iran would tell you that these things are not in the hands of administrations. The supreme leadership of Iran has absolute control over what is going to be the appropriate response to all these new changes.”

Another potential indicator of Iranian response to the Nasrallah assassination might be how Tehran retaliated to the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force in Iran's Revolutionary Guard, by a US strike in 2020.

In retaliation to Soleimani’s killing, Iran launched a barrage of missiles at US bases in Iraq, reportedly “causing dozens of brain concussion injuries but no deaths” among stationed American soldiers.

As Soleimani’s killing occurred three years prior to the Gaza war, when Tehran’s proxy militias had gained significant ground in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, the current scenario has ended the shadow war, with Israel taking off the gloves and openly targeting a range of actors from Hamas to Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis under the guise of the Gaza war.

However, in terms of the respect Soleimani received from Iranians, no one, including Nasrallah, “can compete” with him, although Nasrallah was “very dear to some parts of the country.”

Hashem Safieddine, a cousin of Nasrallah, who was regarded as number 2 after the late Hezbollah leader and considered as a frontrunner to succeed him as the group’s overall head, was related to Soleimani. His son is married to Soleimani’s daughter.

According to Karimkhan, the public anger is not as strong as it was in Soleimani’s case and Tehran is not as pressured as it was back then to avenge the killing of its beloved general, Soleimani.

Iran has not also retaliated to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political bureau chief, in Tehran despite the fact that Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei said that by killing their “dear guest in our house” Israel “prepared the ground for a harsh punishment for itself.”

Can Iran face Israel directly?

Across Iran, experts and those who follow the situation closely are “concerned about the escalation of conflict,” questioning who could stop bloodshed and what would happen to countries like Lebanon neighbouring Israel, according to Karimkhan.

Backed by the West, Israel’s brazen violence against its rivals ranging from Hamas leaders to Hezbollah commanders has increased fears of wider war gripping the Middle East. The hardliner Netanyahu government has already targeted tens of thousands of civilians across the region, destroying much of Gaza, bombing Lebanese public infrastructure as well as ports and power plants in Yemen.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has recently suggested that “the balance of power in the region for years to come” will change, referring mainly to Israeli actions against its enemies called the Axis of Resistance, pro-Iranian forces including Hezbollah, Houthis, Iraqi Shia militias and others.

Through the Axis of Resistance forces, Iran has aimed to impose its will across the Middle East. But recent developments have added a new dimension – does Iran have a political and military will to strike back Israel?

“This is the million dollar question,” says Karimkhan. While experts have long argued about “Shia Crescent”, a region, across which Iran has aimed to spread its influence through its proxies from Lebanon to Syria, Iraq and Iran, it is not clear to many what else Tehran might do now in the case of a direct confrontation with Israel, Karimkan says.

With global powers failing to establish red lines for Israel, peace remains elusive.

“It is easy to win when the whole West is supporting Israel, knowing that no one can stop it from carrying out a genocide”.