On November 23, 2025, Israel succeeded in assassinating Hezbollah’s chief military commander, Haitham Ali Tabatabai, in its latest violation of the ceasefire negotiated in November 2024. Five people were killed and 25 others injured in the attack, which targeted an apartment building in a residential neighborhood in a southern suburb of the Lebanese capital Beirut. Tabatabai is an important figure in Hezbollah’s remaining leadership, and his loss is sure to impact the party’s readiness should open and active hostilities resume with Israel. Israeli attacks on Hezbollah’s positions and personnel since last November’s ceasefire have elicited no response from the party despite its leaders’ continued rejection of disarmament and their opposition to Lebanese President Joseph Aoun’s recent announcement that Lebanon is ready to negotiate with Israel.
According to Israeli officials, killing Tabatabai impedes Hezbollah’s reorganization and rearmament. Indeed, his assassination presents the party’s leaders with serious questions: Can the party ensure the security of its leaders and operations in the face of what is clearly successful intelligence gathering by Israel? Will Hezbollah’s weakened position help the Lebanese state to disarm the party and impose its writ over Lebanese territory? Is Hezbollah militarily prepared for continued Israeli aggression or the possibility of another invasion of Lebanon? The answers to these questions may not be readily available, especially given Israel’s disregard for the ceasefire and its plan to dominate the Lebanese-Israeli border zone.
Arab Center Washington DC (ACW) asked some of its experts to provide short commentaries on the assassination and its repercussions on regional stability. Their responses are below.
Hezbollah’s Military Insecurity
Imad K. Harb, Director of Research and Analysis
Tabatabai’s killing at the hands of Israel comes in a long string of assassinations since Hezbollah declared war in support of Hamas on October 7, 2023. Hezbollah leaders killed include former Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, his successor Hashem Safieddine, former military commanders Ibrahim Akil, Ali Karaki, and Mohammed Srour, among others from the party’s political and military personnel. In September 2024—when Nasrallah and six others were killed—Israel was able to neutralize thousands of Hezbollah personnel by simultaneously detonating pagers and walkie-talkies. Israel has also targeted and killed scores of party personnel since the November 2024 ceasefire declaration, in a clear violation of the truce.
In all these deadly operations, Israeli forces have clearly shown dominance over Hezbollah, assured by two essential military conditions: successful intelligence gathering and unchallenged air power. While Hezbollah has long prided itself on the discipline in its ranks and the cohesion of its forces, Israel was nevertheless able to conduct operations against its leaders—a sign that the party had been penetrated by spies and outside agents. Reports have detailed how Israel recruited people and developed techniques to track Hezbollah leaders’ movements. Israel also developed advanced technology to uncover and destroy Hezbollah bunkers, hideouts, and weapons stores, especially those containing the party’s much-dreaded missile systems and arsenal.
Hezbollah could not escape Israeli airpower, including state-of-the-art fixed-wing aircraft and technologically advanced drones capable of around-the-clock surveillance and carrying precision weapons payloads. While the party’s fighters prevented Israeli forces from gaining more than small pockets of territory in southern Lebanon, they could not defend against lethal air power. Nor could the party protect its leaders from US-made munitions able to penetrate the fortified underground bunkers where Nasrallah and other leaders were killed.
Tabatabai’s killing highlights the continued vulnerability of Hezbollah’s leadership to Israel’s war machine, which is supported by the arsenal and advanced technology of the United States. Hezbollah, the Lebanese government, and the Lebanese Armed Forces are all powerless against Israel’s continued violations of Lebanon’s airspace.
How Tabatabai’s Killing Shapes the Path to Hezbollah’s Disarmament
Patricia Karam, Non-resident Fellow
The killing of Haitham Ali Tabatabai, Hezbollah’s de facto chief of staff, has injected new uncertainty into Lebanon’s already volatile security landscape. While no doubt disrupting Hezbollah’s efforts to reconstitute itself following a series of attacks on its personnel, the attack also lays bare domestic political tensions in Lebanon over the prospect of disarming the party—an explicit goal of the Lebanese government and its international partners.
Tabatabai played a critical role in helping establish Hezbollah’s elite special operations unit, the Radwan Force, in overseeing Hezbollah’s external operations, including in Syria and Yemen, and in rebuilding the group’s capabilities after the 2023 conflict with Israel. His killing in the heart of Beirut’s southern suburbs (despite a ceasefire) underscores the inherent limitations of a security arrangement in which the Lebanese state is held accountable for dynamics it does not fully control.
The immediate impact of the killing is the disruption of Hezbollah’s efforts to regroup and rearm—and Israel has made clear it will strike preemptively at any perceived threat. But Hezbollah understands that any retaliatory action would almost certainly prompt a significant Israeli response, further degrading its forces and draining its remaining arsenal. The party is therefore likely to opt for rhetorical escalation over military action. In much the same way, the party has been warning the Lebanese government to slow down the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF)-led disarmament, even threatening civil war, but stopping short of open confrontation.
More importantly, the successful targeting of a senior Hezbollah commander in a dense urban area refocuses attention on Lebanon’s fragile sovereignty. The current rules of the game put Lebanon at risk of becoming an arena for external power contests, but the situation is not sustainable. For many Lebanese citizens, no matter their communal background, the cumulative economic, social, and displacement pressures linked to recurring cycles of confrontation are increasingly difficult to absorb.
The current moment demands a concerted push—by domestic actors and international partners alike—to accelerate and reinforce the ongoing LAF–led disarmament process. Tabatabai’s killing should be a reminder that unless the state is strengthened and its armed forces empowered, Lebanon will remain hostage to decisions made far beyond its borders.
Yet Another Assassination
Nabeel A. Khoury, Non-resident Fellow
Haitham Ali Tabatabai is not the first—and likely will not be the last—Hezbollah leader to be assassinated by Israel. The two-year war, Israel’s coordinated pager attack in July 2024, and the airstrikes that killed Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and his presumed successor Hashem Safieddine have inflicted a heavy toll from which the Lebanese militant group has yet to recover. Using technological and air superiority, Israel has repeatedly targeted Iranian, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Yemeni leaders who, over the years, constructed an ‘axis of resistance’ against it. Conceivably, Israel’s strategy is to incrementally degrade the military capabilities of its enemies without incurring the risks and costs associated with a full-scale war or the occupation of new territory. However, such a strategy does not preclude the option of expansion beyond its 1967 borders, as Israel’s recent deeper incursions into Syria and its continued hold on five new strategic points in southern Lebanon indicate.
Since November 2024, if not before, Hezbollah has refrained from retaliating in response to Israeli ceasefire violations and daily attacks on targets in south Lebanon and across the country. This latest assassination does not necessarily constitute the crossing of a red line that causes Hezbollah to retaliate in force, potentially falling into a trap that could precipitate a much wider war for which it may not be fully prepared.
Hezbollah now has three options:
- End its policy of restraint and launch a full-scale attack on Israeli forces in Lebanon and targets in northern Israel. This decision could result in the gradual decimation of its leadership, infrastructure, and forces in a war of attrition. While most analysts agree the party retains enough firepower to cause significant damage in Israel, an all-out war would devastate Lebanon.
- Hezbollah’s Secretary General Naim Qassem could decide that the time has come to give up the fight and surrender the party’s arms as part of a negotiated agreement with the Lebanese government. This option would allow Qassem to play an important political role and have a voice in Lebanon’s overall strategy toward Israel.
- A third option—and the option that is the most likely at this point—is not to go to either extreme but rather to hold the line in maintaining a balance between avoiding confrontation with the Lebanese government and keeping military options on the table for any future confrontation with Israel. In this scenario, Hezbollah would certainly have a more credible military option: guerrilla warfare against an Israeli occupation.
The views expressed in this publication are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
Featured image credit: shutterstock/Ali Chehade Farhat
