Could Israel’s elimination of Hezbollah’s leaders reshape the landscape of power in the Middle East? Matthew Levitt, Director of the Washington Institute's Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, answers that pressing question, discusses the impact of Israel's recent offensive against Hezbollah, following the death of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and analyzes the ongoing military operations on the Israel-Lebanon border. The conversation also delves into Iran's strategic calculations, the potential consequences for Lebanon’s sovereignty, and the broader regional stability in light of Hezbollah’s diminished military capabilities.

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Transcript of Interview with Matthew Levitt:

Manya Brachear Pashman:  

Since October 8, Iran's terror proxy Hezbollah has escalated its attacks on Israel, launching rockets, drones, mortar shells toward Israeli civilians on a near daily basis, more than 10,000 to date, pushing 1000s of residents from their homes in Israel's North more than 11 months later, on September 27 Israel Defense Forces launched a massive retaliatory airstrike targeting Hezbollah's headquarters in Lebanon, killing the group's founder and leader, Hassan Nasrallah and other senior officials.

Here to talk about how significant this development might be for Israel and its neighbors, is Dr. Matthew Levitt, director of the Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute. 

Matt, welcome to People of the Pod. I'm going to launch right into questions. 

Has Hezbollah been significantly disabled by Israel's attack, or is Nasrallah’s death just a setback for the terrorist group?

Matthew Levitt:  

This is extremely consequential, and it's not just this one attack. So we're talking about two weeks of activities that come straight out of Hollywood. Hollywood would have rejected the script for being too fanciful. First the pagers exploding 24 hours, then walkie talkies exploding. This, already coming on the heels of almost 500 Hezbollah operatives, some of them quite senior, being eliminated. So you already had the beginning of the kind of hierarchy of Hezbollah leadership being taken out, and now what you have is Fuad Shukr. 

Ibrahim Akil, members of the jihad Council, the Ohio Military Council for Hezbollah, being taken and then, of course, on Friday, taking out the Hezbollah Operational Command Center, which itself is extremely important. And in that operation, killing both Hassan Nasrallah and another member of the jihad council, Ali Karaki and a senior Quds Force General. 

It's so it's not one thing, it's the totality of all these things. And they haven't stopped. Seen over the weekend into Monday, more Israeli air strikes, where they are clearly taking out as much of the Hezbollah medium and long range rocket systems as possible, those are the systems that present the greatest threat to Israel. 

And there are even reports coming out today that Israeli special forces units have been sneaking across the border to take out tunnels and other things, all of which is to say, the Hezbollah that existed just a few days ago no longer exists. Hezbollah is there, but it will take a very long time and a whole lot of support for it to reconstitute itself. And when this part of the war is done and it's not done yet, clearly the next phase is going to be preventing Iran from resupplying them. So already, an Iranian plane tried to land in Beirut. 

The Israelis told the Lebanese Government, it lands. We shoot it. It didn't land. The Israelis targeted some type of smuggling operation all the way out on this Syrian Iraqi border over the weekend. Clearly the Hezbollah that exists today is nowhere near as capable of fighting a prolonged, full scale war as Hezbollah was, say, 10 days ago.

Manya Brachear Pashman:  

And what does that mean for Iran in the region?

Matthew Levitt:  

Look, Hezbollah was first among equals within Iran's proxy network, what it likes to call its access of resistance. And so it's not just effectively having lost Hamas as a fighting force in Gaza, and it's not even just losing another proxy. It's the pearl in Iran's proxy network. You know, we just published a new version of my book on Hezbollah with a new chapter that focuses on Hezbollah's role helping other Shia militant groups in the region make themselves more capable. 

On behalf of this Iranian proxy network, Hezbollah is no longer available to do that, and it really picked up the pace of that activity on behalf of other Shia militia groups in the region after the death of Qasem Soleimani. So this is something more than just another militant group, and Iran for itself, you might think, because Hezbollah is so important, then the Iranians would attack Israel.

The Iranians are being very, very careful. They kind of got the message, right. If you attack Israel, Israel's going to hit back really, really hard. They understand that, unlike in April, where they shot some 300 projectiles at Israel, basically all of which missed, and then Israel had this very, very specific, limited attack back, shooting a small number of projectiles, all of which hit and took out air defense systems near Natanz, the one of the key nuclear facilities. 

The Iranians understand that this time around, the Israeli response to be very, very different. And no one can say after the April response, well, maybe they can't go the distance. Maybe they can't get past the air defense systems. And if anybody had any questions, even just over this weekend, the Israelis responded to Houthi attacks from Yemen with a very, very long range attack just about the same distance, or near the same distance they'd have to go to hit some things in eastern Iraq and in Iran.

Manya Brachear Pashman:  

And speaking of Iran nuclear negotiations, where do those stand now, if there are any still underway, and how does, how does this affect that?

Matthew Levitt:  

It's very connected, even though the nuclear negotiations are effectively nowhere. Now there's a new Iranian president who is very focused on trying to roll back. Sanctions. He is, in fact, a moderate when it comes to some domestic policy. He is not a moderate when it comes to, does he support Hezbollah, etc. He's part of the system, and the system is very much one of what they would call resistance. And so while he came to the UN General Assembly last week, and had a much more kind of calm, moderate, sort of pragmatic message about diplomacy as he was saying those words, Iran was doing all kinds of other things in the region to support Hezbollah. 

And more significantly for this issue, the nuclear issue, Iran has significantly ratcheted up its nuclear program activity over the past 11 months, authorities are concerned that we're maybe potentially weeks away from breakouts, should Iran make that decision, which it has not yet done, but that's a right on the cusp. And so this really does affect the calculations with Hezbollah, even before the Israeli actions to degrade Hezbollah's military capabilities, but certainly now, as Iran is trying to decide if it should conduct a retaliation of its own, because for Iran t