How October 7 changed Lebanon and Hezbollah’s political reality

A day after the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel and the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Hezbollah made the decision to join the war, in what it said was support of the Palestinian people. It is a decision that analysts say has forever shaped Lebanese politics.

Experts said the group had underestimated the depth of Israel’s intelligence penetration in the run-up to the war, which later manifested in the bloody September 2024 pager attack and the assassination of much of Hezbollah’s leadership, including Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.
“Hezbollah got sucked into a vortex which culminated in the decapitation of their leadership and the invasion of south Lebanon,” Nicholas Blanford, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of a book about Hezbollah, told Al Jazeera. “That dealt Hezbollah a major blow to their popular standing and galvanised the election of Joseph Aoun as president and the formation of a new government that took a much stronger line against [the group].”

Hezbollah’s decisions have left the group politically weakened. And while analysts say the group has not been defeated, despite claims to the contrary from some critics, it is no longer the political or military hegemon in Lebanon it once was.