Balance of power changing quickly in the Middle East

Have you heard? Planet Earth’s most roaring job market is currently “high-ranking Hezbollah official”: You get to work as part of an on-the-go, “cause-centered” organization dedicated to making change in the world, the pay is great, the hours are flexible, there’s lots of career mobility — and as it turns out, new positions are opening up all the time!

But you’ll probably think twice before responding to that job listing (especially electronically), because right now Hamas, Hezbollah, and various and sundry other associated terrorist allies of Iran are exploding at an alarming rate all across the Levant, as the IDF kicked into overdrive beginning on Friday with a series of stunning hammer-blow air strikes that decapitated the leadership of Hezbollah and crippled Hamas even further. Hassan Nasrallah, the shadowy and elusive leader of Hezbollah, is dead along with the vast majority of the terror organization’s high command after a massive yet precision-targeted strike on a meeting outside Beirut. Several Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine leaders have been struck in pinpoint rocket attacks on Saturday and Sunday. Even the Houthis down in Yemen — on the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula — got a rocket up their socket for their troubles in assisting Hezbollah and Hamas during the current war.

Yes, it seems like, with the successful Friday military strike on Nasrallah, the floodgates have opened: Israel is finally settling all “family business,” and it is impossible to know whether this is meant as prelude to a ground invasion to root out the rest of Hezbollah (particularly in southern Lebanon) or as a conclusion. Perhaps both, in a way — the elimination of the group’s leadership likely makes any potential Israeli incursion into Lebanon that much briefer and logistically easier to execute with a minimum of civilian casualties.

But all that is speculation, and I’m no expert in any event. Let’s talk for a moment instead about what a coup this was and how, in retrospect, you can see the steps unfold beautifully: First, Israel leaked to the media that it had irrevocably compromised all of Hezbollah’s internet/high-tech communications. (It didn’t say how it had done so, only that it had done so, and made it seem like news that was being reported against the IDF’s will. It’s so easy to play games with the terrorist mind-set.) This sent Hezbollah scurrying to purchase low-tech communications equipment — pagers, shortwave radios, and walkie-talkies — and to quickly install these as their primary means of communication and control.

We all remember what happened next — first the pagers all exploded, then the shortwave radios and walkie-talkies — but what we didn’t appreciate at the time was the long game underlying it. Having taken out all reliably safe means of long-distance communication, Israel forced Hezbollah leadership to gather for an in-person meeting where most of them could safely (or so they thought) travel: the suburbs of Beirut. Israel engineered this meeting, tracked their whereabouts, and then hit them so hard it took them out in their underground bunkers.

As we near the anniversary of the October 7 attacks next week, it is shocking to see Israel swoop down with such precision, forethought, and success to so suddenly destroy so many of their worst and most formidable enemies. The balance of power in the Middle East seems to have shifted, in a matter of days, against Iran.