On August 25, in the wee hours of the morning, the IDF carried out a wave of airstrikes on Hizballah positions, preventing the massive rocket and drone attack the Iran-backed terrorist group had planned. Aviram Bellaishe argues that the attack wasn’t only intended to avenge the killing of the Hizballah commander Fuad Shukr, but also that of the Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh on the same day. Iran had ostentatiously vowed revenge for the second, but Bellaishe believes it is happy to outsource the job:

Tehran shifted the responsibility for revenge against Israel to Hizballah. This could also be inferred from statements by the Iranian chief of staff indicating that the Iranian revenge attack might be carried out either by Iran itself or the resistance axis, [i.e., Iranian proxies]. It is clear that the regime was preparing for victory celebrations, and aimed for a symbolic achievement.

But since the attack was foiled, will Hizballah try again? Unlikely, argues Bellaishe. Hizballah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech in the evening after the thwarted attacked and simply lied about what happened, claiming that Israel was “concealing the damage” done by his rockets and that “Israel had failed to hit its rocket launchers because they had been successfully evacuated.” As for the pro-Iran press:

This failure clearly prompted rapid and uncoordinated reactions by Iranian propagandists in an attempt to cover for the failed attack. [Iran’s] Kayhan newspaper featured on its front page Hizballah’s claim that the Israeli preemptive strike was fake news, while the Jam-e Jam newspaper, published by the state broadcasting authority, reported that the Israeli preemptive strike had “failed” to prevent Hizballah’s retaliation. . . . The image of victory for Hizballah’s operation was sorely needed, and since it did not materialize, it had to be fabricated.

Iranian efforts to attribute a military achievement and victory to Hizballah’s attack on Israel were clearly unsuccessful. Instead, these efforts were greeted with mockery from the Lebanese and the Iranian public.

Below, today’s newsletter will return to some other reflections on the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the current war, but first something must be said of its recent progress. Israel has kept up its aerial and ground assault on Hizballah, and may have already killed the successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader it eliminated less than two weeks ago. Matthew Levitt assesses the current state of the Lebanon-based terrorist group, which, in his view, is now “a shadow of its former self.” Indeed, he adds,

it is no exaggeration to say that the Hizballah of two weeks ago no longer exists. And since Hizballah was the backbone of Iran’s network of militant proxies, its so-called axis of resistance, Iran’s strategy of arming and deploying proxy groups throughout the region is suddenly at risk as well.

Hizballah’s attacks put increasing pressure on Israel, as intended, only that pressure did not lead Israelis to stop targeting Hamas so much as it chipped away at Israel’s fears about the cost of military action to address the military threats posed by Hizballah.

At the same time, Levitt explains, Hizballah still poses a serious threat, as it demonstrated last night when its missiles struck Haifa and Tiberias, injuring at least two people:

Hizballah still maintains an arsenal of rockets and a cadre of several thousand fighters. It will continue to pose potent military threats for Israel, Lebanon, and the wider region.

How will the group seek to avenge Nasrallah’s death amid these military setbacks? Hizballah is likely to resort to acts of international terrorism, which are overseen by one of the few elements of the group that has not yet lost key leaders.

But the true measure of whether the group will be able to reconstitute itself, even over many years, is whether Iran can restock Hizballah’s sophisticated arsenal. Tehran’s network of proxy groups—from Hizballah to Hamas to the Houthis—is only as dangerous as it is today because of Iran’s provision of weapons and money. Whatever Hizballah does next, Western governments must prioritize cutting off Tehran’s ability to arm and fund its proxies.