Shachar Kleiman
Israel Hayom, Aug. 1, 2025
“A year later, Hezbollah faces a historic crisis.”
This marked the beginning of the avalanche. Nearly a year has passed since Hassan Nasrallah’s right-hand man was eliminated in Dahiyeh, Beirut. The strike against Fu’ad Shukr was an almost surreal event at the time. The IDF was responding to the disaster of the rocket strike on Majdal Shams, where 12 children were murdered in the Druze community. However, this was the harbinger of a sequence of events that turned the northern front upside down.
It’s almost possible to forget, but the thought of bombing Hezbollah’s stronghold in those days raised grave concerns about precision missile launches into the heart of Tel Aviv. Israel periodically published catastrophic scenarios, each more terrifying than the last. Hezbollah indeed tried to respond to the elimination with hundreds of Katyushas and drones, but failed the results test. After several preventive attacks and IDF disruptions, Nasrallah began losing his balance. More importantly, the web of fear he had woven through years of psychological warfare and countless speeches gradually unraveled until it was finally removed.
Both Lebanese and Israelis were exposed step by step to an extraordinary intelligence effort that lasted approximately 20 years and penetrated the very heart of the Shiite terror movement. Nasrallah was horrified to discover day by day that his organization was exposed in the open. Every meeting of commanders subordinate to him, every bunker, every missile launcher, every communication device, were like clay in the potter’s hands for the security establishment. About a month and a half after Shukr’s elimination, Lebanon trembled. Thousands of pagers exploded on the bodies of Hezbollah terrorists, killing hundreds of them and leaving many disabled – a humiliation unprecedented in the history of the modern Middle East. Senior Hezbollah officials admitted that Nasrallah had collapsed mentally. “It was the end of the world for him,” said Wafiq Safa, head of the Liaison Unit. Not much time passed before the symbol of the Iranian axis was eliminated itself. …SOURCE