Nasrallah's Legacy: Iran's Proxy and Lebanon's Ruin

Two years after his death, the legacy of former Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2024, is being assessed. Nasrallah is credited with building Hezbollah's military wing into the world's strongest irregular force, creating a state within a state supported by Iran. However, this achievement is also seen as the reason for widespread animosity towards him, as he is accused of holding Lebanon hostage.

Hezbollah, under Nasrallah's leadership, usurped the Lebanese state's monopoly on violence, its ability to set foreign policy, and control over peace and war decisions. This has crippled Lebanon's future planning and investment prospects, as foreign investors avoid unstable nations and international financial institutions block cooperation with Hezbollah-controlled entities. The article contends that Nasrallah implemented this under Iranian direction, turning Lebanon into a forward operating base for Iran's confrontation with Israel, serving Iranian ambitions for leadership in the Muslim world at the expense of Lebanese lives and infrastructure.

Nasrallah is portrayed as a key figure who transformed the Arab-Israeli conflict into an Iran-Israel proxy war, using Arabs as expendable assets. Unlike past state-led Arab-Israeli wars, the article argues, Nasrallah enabled others to fight against Israel using Arab proxies, reducing Arab nations from conflict actors to pawns of their masters. This strategy was also applied to Syria, where Nasrallah's intervention in the civil war at Iran's behest escalated it into a sectarian conflict, drawing in global powers and fragmenting Syria into spheres of influence for foreign interests.

While some acknowledge Nasrallah's role in Israel's 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon, the article notes the irony that 24 years later, Israel, with a stronger military and U.S. backing, returned. Nasrallah himself was killed in his bunker two years ago, reportedly while watching Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu address the UN General Assembly. Lebanon continues to suffer from Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets, which have resulted in thousands of Lebanese Shiite casualties and the deaths of many Hezbollah commanders, described as sacrifices for Iran.