The death of Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon will come as a devastating blow to Hezbollah after thirty years under his leadership, prompting urgent reactions from allies and potentially threatening Western interests in the Middle East, experts warn.

Israel‘s military announced that Hezbollah’s secretary-general had been killed this morning, hours after pounding Beirut with heavy strikes through Friday afternoon.

Hezbollah confirmed the reports this afternoon, and the region will be pressed to move quickly; officials briefed by Tehran told Reuters that Iran‘s supreme leader had already been moved to a secure location, while Israel went on high alert anticipating a response. Israel’s allies and adversaries will now be looking very closely at what happens next. Much of Hezbollah’s central leadership has been ‘decapitated’ by Israeli attacks in recent days, experts told MailOnline, but Israel will feel urged to continue its incursion.

Still, Hezbollah remains backed by Iran, which has vowed to stand up for its proxy groups in the Middle East as perceived Israeli aggression continues unabated. Iran will be ’embarrassed’ by Israel’s operations in Lebanon and ‘try to show the region that they are still strong’, risking future attacks and greater destabilisation.

And with a power vacuum emerging in Lebanon, analysts warn Hezbollah could fall back on the radical militarisation of decades gone by if the country is unable to reconstitute and reform. Here, domestic and foreign actors find greater room to manouevre – and Israel’s allies in Britain and the United States may too be swept up in a widening conflict. Hezbollah has been dubbed a ‘state within a state in Lebanon’, with the group long entrenched in civil affairs, filling in for a government blighted by corruption and dire economic woes.

Hassan Nasrallah oversaw the transformation of the organisation from a militant group forged in the Lebanese Civil War and the 1982 Israeli invasion into a significant political and military player in the region.  The reported ‘beheading’ of the Hezbollah will be marked down as a major victory for Israel, which has stepped up its attacks into Lebanon in recent days after nearly a year of missile exchanges across the border.

But the killing of a figure with such strategic and ‘immense symbolic value’ could plunge the region into further trouble, with Hezbollah and its backers likely pressed to deliver an urgent response.

Philip Ingram MBE, a former British military intelligence, counterintelligence, and security officer, told MailOnline that Iran will be ‘further embarrassed’ by Israel’s reported successes against Hezbollah.

‘The Iranian response would be one that we have to watch very closely,’ he said.

‘They will want to come out and try and show to the region that they are still strong and therefore I suspect we will see an increased number of attacks focused not just on Israeli interests and the possibility of an attack from Iran against Israel itself… but then attacks against US, UK and allied interests across the Middle East and potentially across the world.’

Col. Ingram said this could materialise as ‘terrorist attacks against US bases in Syria, Jordan and Iraq’ or the ‘further encouragement of attacks by the Houthis against commercial shipping in the Red Sea’.

Britain and the United States continue to operate from bases across the Middle East, and maintain small presences in countries stretching from Turkey to Oman.

Col. Ingram said that ‘these aren’t going to be formal military attacks. They may fire rockets into Israel’, but this would likely be a limited strike as ‘they won’t want Israel directly attacking Iran’.

‘But we are very quickly running up a lot of escalation – and that’s a very dangerous thing to do.’ 

Dr Andreas Krieg, Assistant Professor of Defence Studies at King’s College London, told MailOnline: ‘What’s likely going to happen here is that Iran will have to do something because the red line was crossed. 

‘They might give permission to use more ballistic missiles, more to attack more strategic targets in Israel, knowing that then the IDF will likely move into Lebanon.

‘Obviously Hezbollah will have to respond. Iran will have to respond and, if they do, I think they will have to respond in kind, which means they will have to hit strategic targets.

‘They need to get out of their modus operandi that they have been in for the last 12 months, which was below the threshold of war. This all out war is happening. This is all out war for Lebanon.’

‘A big concern across the region is that this tit-for-tat has got out of control and all thresholds have been crossed. All lines have been crossed and so we are in this all out war situation now, and that’s going to be very difficult to rein in.’

Such a ‘seismic event’ for regional politics is likely to have a ‘major impact’ on the ‘Axis of Resistance beyond Hezbollah’, forcing escalation with Israel, while trying to avoid overspilling into the Gulf.

Dr Burcu Ozcelik, Senior Research Fellow for Middle East Security at the Royal United Services Institute defence and security think tank (RUSI), added: ‘Hezbollah was Iran’s most strategically significant asset and main deterrent against Israel. 

‘This has been severely degraded now and how Iran chooses to respond will be highly consequential as the conflict evolves.’

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei called on Muslims on Saturday to ‘stand by the people of Lebanon and the proud Hezbollah with whatever means they have and assist them in confronting the … wicked regime (of Israel)’.

He said in a statement: ‘The fate of this region will be determined by the forces of resistance, with Hezbollah at the forefront’, state media reported.

Foreign Minister Nasser Kanani added on Twitter/X: ‘The glorious path of the leader of the resistance, Hassan Nasrallah, will continue and his sacred goal will be realised in the liberation of Quds (Jerusalem), God willing.’ 

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