Middle East Braces for Iran’s Next Move After Israel’s Killing of Hezbollah Leadership

Since its involvement in Syria in 2012 to defend Bashar al-Assad’s regime alongside other Iran-backed militias, Hezbollah has built bases and an elaborate network of tunnels in areas in Syria close to the Lebanese border. Many Hezbollah field commanders have also been fleeing to Syria from Lebanon with their families, according to a person familiar with the situation.

“Iran doesn’t fight for its proxies, its proxies fight for it,” said Jonathan Lord, a former Pentagon official and director of the Middle East Security program at the Center for a New American Security. “The regime is most interested in self-preservation and won’t knowingly put itself at risk.”

Israel’s massive strike on southern Beirut to take out Nasrallah also killed a commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. That raised the tally of assassinations of senior IRGC officers and personnel and top-ranking members of proxy groups to at least a dozen since last year’s Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.

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