What's next for Hezbollah and the 'Axis of Resistance'?

"It's the end of an era," says Rita, a 34-year-old producer based in Beirut, about the death of Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, late last week. "Even if they say that Nasrallah can be replaced, this has shaken their [Hezbollah's] followers because they think Iran has let them down. Now everything seems doubtful."

Ahmad, a 37-year-old shopkeeper in the Lebanese capital, doesn't feel the same. "Hezbollah suffered many setbacks but they will continue. Iran won't abandon them and they have a large base among the people. Their fighters believe in martyrdom," he told DW, "which means they will go on until the last soldier."

"They [Hezbollah] are bigger than one person," added another Beirut local, Nadim, a 31-year-old film director. "They're an ideology. Israel can't kill that." Still, Nadim told DW, a chapter has closed in Lebanon.

In order to speak freely, neither Ahmad, Nadim nor Rita wanted to give their full names because of the sensitivity of the subject in Lebanon right now.

On Monday morning, three days after the death of Nasrallah, the group's deputy leader tried to reassure supporters. In a televised speech, Naim Kassem said that Hezbollah had not been defeated even as he acknowledged recent attacks by Israel were serious setbacks. He said the process to choose Nasrallah's replacement would start soon and that, if Israeli troops entered Lebanon, Hezbollah would fight them. 

What next for Hezbollah militarily?

"There is no doubt that Israel has had what you could call a pretty impressive string of tactical victories over Hezbollah," Hugh Lovatt, a senior fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told DW. "There is no doubt it dealt some very painful blows to the movement."

But, he adds, "as impressive as they are, these are tactical victories, not strategic victories." By this, he means Israel's recent military achievements against Hezbollah may not be effective in the longer term because an overall strategy to attain recently stated goals, like allowing displaced Israeli citizens to return to their homes in the north, remains uncertain. 

"Even based on those metrics, Israel is still falling short and will continue to fall short," Lovatt told DW. "Because no matter how much damage is done to it, Hezbollah will continue to have the ability to strike northern Israel and thus to keep Israeli communities away." 

Military analysts say that despite losing some of its most senior leaders, Hezbollah isn't a "top heavy" organization. It was set up with the idea that leaders will be killed and would need to be replaced quickly, they explain.

Members are "delegated with overlapping roles and tasks, ensuring that any void left by a fallen leader is quickly filled," Amal Saad, a lecturer in politics at Cardiff University in the UK and a longtime observer of Hezbollah, explained in a post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter).

Other analysts have said it is much too early to know how much the group had been impacted. "Hezbollah appears to be suffering from temporary organizational paralysis," the conservative- leaning US organization, Institute for the Study of War, noted over the weekend. But over the past few days, Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets into Israel. On Tuesday, Israeli media reported air raid warnings all over the country, including, at one stage, Tel Aviv.

What next for Hezbollah, in Lebanese society?

Discussing the state of Hezbollah, observers also point out that it's more than an armed group.

"It's an identity project that brings together Islam and resistance, both of which are intertwined with broader community thinking and [Shia community] narratives," Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy director for research at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, told Al Jazeera this week. "These sorts of [resistance] organizations don't die when their leaders go away."

Hezbollah is an important political and social force in Lebanon, often described as a "state within a state," with a social welfare network and military to rival actual Lebanese state institutions.

Lebanon's political system is what is known as "confessional" — that is, despite elections, political power is usually distributed between the many different demographic groups that call Lebanon home. This is why Hezbollah, which appeals mostly to Shiite Muslim locals, is so popular in the south and east of Lebanon, where most of the country's Shiite population lives. It is also why it is not necessarily as well liked elsewhere.

According to surveys by Arab Barometer, a US-based organization that regularly polls locals in the Middle East, in 2022, around 85% of Shiite Muslims in Lebanon said they trusted Hezbollah. But that went down to low single digits in other Lebanese groups like Sunni Muslims, Druze and Christians. Overall, only 30% of Lebanese said they trust Hezbollah.

"Hezbollah consulted none of its Lebanese partners in initiating a war in defense of its ally Hamas in Gaza," Michael Young, a senior editor at the Carnegie Middle East Center, wrote this week.

It did this as part of a group of pro-Iranian militias called the "Axis of Resistance," which oppose Israel and the US, from their bases in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. And if ordinary Lebanese come to the conclusion that Hezbollah is to blame for the country's destruction, the group may find itself even more constrained domestically, Young argued. 

What next for the "Axis of Resistance"?

Hezbollah is considered the most powerful actor within the "Axis of Resistance," with the most weapons and fighters. But Hezbollah's reputation as the most formidable member of the pro-Iran groups has been damaged and experts say this could have a serious impact, particularly because — at least until Tuesday night — Iran appeared to have decided not to come to Hezbollah's aid. 

Within this group of militias, Nasrallah played a larger-than-life role, Hassan Hassan and Kareem Shaheen, senior editors at Newlines magazine, wrote in an op-ed over the weekend.

"His demise means not just the loss of a skilled tactician but the degradation of an entire narrative of resistance that has animated the region for over three decades," they argued. "His death strikes at the heart of an entire axis of regional power, creating ripple effects that will not easily be contained."

With additional reporting by Alaa Fadel in Lebanon. 

Edited by: Andreas Illmer