Just before the sun dipped below the horizon of the Mediterranean Sea on September 27, Israel delivered an inglorious death to one of the region’s most evil men. Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, died in Israeli airstrikes. He was 64.

His death comes as Israel gears up to invade Hezbollah following the group’s yearslong bombardment campaign against Israel’s north. With Hezbollah launching over 9,000 rockets into Israel since October, forcing some 60,000 Israelis south as refugees in their own country, Israel has made it a priority to neutralize Hezbollah and secure its north. Most of Hezbollah’s leadership had already been killed. Nasrallah was one of the last big fish to catch. And he was by far the biggest.

The Israel Defense Forces (idf) already started small intelligence-gathering raids into Lebanon as preparation for a wider invasion. It is unclear at the time of writing if the idf will neutralize Hezbollah in southern Lebanon only or uproot the group from the whole country. If the idf chose the latter option, there isn’t much left to stand in its way anymore.

Israel assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in July. Since Nasrallah’s assassination, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has reportedly gone into hiding.

“I have a message to the tyrants of Tehran,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech at the United Nations that same day. “If you strike us, we will strike you. There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach. And that’s true of the entire Middle East.”

Who Was Hassan Nasrallah?

Hassan Nasrallah was born in 1960 in Beirut, Lebanon. He was a Shiite cleric and claimed descent from Mohammed. After Lebanon’s civil war started in 1975, he joined an Iran-backed Shiite militia called Amal. He switched to the new organization Hezbollah in 1982. When Hezbollah’s leader Abbas al-Musawi died in an Israeli airstrike in 1992, Nasrallah took over as secretary general.

Nasrallah took Hezbollah to new heights (or depths). Hezbollah’s powerful military and influence in Lebanon’s civilian government made him the de facto leader of the Republic of Lebanon. He kicked the idf out of Lebanon twice—in 2000 and in 2006 after a brief war. Under him, Hezbollah committed the 1994 Buenos Aires bombing that killed 85 and injured over 300. He was responsible for the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. He was responsible for the 2020 Beirut blast that killed over 200. He practically turned Venezuela into a proxy state, with Hezbollah fighters training in South America and sponsoring the Latin American drug trade. His forces turned Syria’s cities to rubble in support of Bashar Assad. Nasrallah had the blood of thousands on his hands.

He was one of the Middle East’s most, if not the most, powerful terrorists. His death makes Hezbollah’s cavernous leadership vacuum even bigger.

Where to Now?

Hezbollah was Iran’s largest proxy. Khamenei has vowed revenge—but at the hands of Hezbollah, not Iran. Remarkably, it looks like Iran wants to sit this fight out.

According to Iranian officials speaking with the New York Times, “Ayatollah Khamenei had been deeply shaken by his friend’s death and was in mourning but had assumed a calm and pragmatic posture.” His announcement that Hezbollah would retaliate rather than Iran itself “was a striking sign, some analysts said, that Ayatollah Khamenei may have no way to respond effectively at the moment to Israel’s onslaught on his proxies. Faced with a choice between all-out war with Israel or lying low in the interest of self-preservation, he appears to be choosing the latter.”

“This was an incredibly heavy blow, and realistically speaking, we have no clear path for recovering from this loss,” former Iranian Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi said on Iranian media. “We will not go to war, that’s off the table. But Iran will also not reverse course in supporting the militant groups in the region, nor in defusing tensions with the West. All of these things can be pursued at the same time.”

The days are early. Iran has already started sending assistance to Hezbollah. But the implication is that, at least at the time of writing, Iran is not going to start World War iii to save Hezbollah.

Hezbollah is leaderless. The pagers episode destroyed its communication lines. Iran has announced it is not going to directly join the fight. Israel is poised to invade Lebanon and finish the job. Hezbollah is facing the perfect storm to cause its undoing.

Psalm 83 is a prophecy of a group of Middle Eastern nations allying themselves with Germany and the European Union. Verse 6 mentions the Hagarenes, the ancestral people of modern Syria. Verse 7 mentions Gebal and Tyre, cities that still exist in Lebanon today. Our Trends article on the subject explains this in detail.

Daniel 11:40 shows a German-led Europe, under the prophetic name “the king of the north,” going to war with Iran and its allies (“the king of the south”). We have a Trends article explaining this prophecy as well.

“[Psalm 83] shows that Hezbollah will forfeit much of its power and that Iran will lose its grip over Lebanon,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in our October 2020 issue. “[T]he nation will instead ally with Saudi Arabia and other moderate Arab states, along with German-led Europe.”

Putting these prophecies together, we expect Lebanon to leave Iran’s orbit. The most likely route is for Hezbollah, Tehran’s lapdog, to be forced out of power. Hezbollah has never been more vulnerable than right now.

Whether it’s the Israelis, Europeans, Lebanese opposition or somebody else to fire the opening shots, one thing is clear: the days of Iran controlling Lebanon are numbered.

To learn more, read Mr. Flurry’s article “Why We Told You to Watch Lebanon.”