Nov 2, 2017

On Oct. 25, Israel unmasked the identity of the Hezbollah commander in charge of the southern Syria front, and the Iranian-backed Lebanese movement reacted a day later by releasing photos taken inside an Israeli settlement. While these acts might be interpreted as psychological warfare, they inherently reflect how both sides are striving to set limits on their rules of engagement in Syria. They also highlight the critical role Russia has increasingly played in preventing clashes between Israel and Hezbollah on the Golan Heights.

Three phases have defined the confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah in the past decade: The July 2006 war set new rules of engagement by restricting the scope of the conflict to Lebanese territory under Israeli occupation (mainly Shebaa Farms); between 2011 and 2015, the Syrian conflict expanded the battlefield and challenged the tactics of a covert war; since 2015, the Russian intervention in Syria has made Moscow the de facto power broker, containing potentially serious fallout from their enmity.

In fact, the parameters of the Syrian war altered the conflict dynamics between the two adversaries. Hezbollah has acquired freedom of navigation inside Syria, and rockets fired from Syria occasionally hit the Israeli-occupied side of the Golan Heights. The Syrian regime is no longer seen by Israel as a stabilizing force able to guarantee stability on the Golan or contain Hezbollah in Lebanon.

As a result, the two archenemies have had to reassess their postures, tactics and priorities. Hezbollah’s military cabal, the Jihad Council, overcame a number of upheavals, including the mysterious assassination in May 2016 of its leader Mustafa Badreddine, who had replaced Imad Mughniyeh after he was killed in 2008. In the early years of the Syrian war, Hezbollah primarily focused on opening a new battlefield against Israel from inside Syria. Israel responded by assassinating those charged with carrying out that mission, mainly Samir Kuntar (killed in December 2015) and Jihad Mughniyeh (killed in January 2015).

Hezbollah’s reaction to these two killings was surprisingly measured, most likely at Tehran’s request, as a representative of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sits on the powerful Jihad Council. The retaliation came at Shebaa Farms, indicating that the Iranian-backed Lebanese group had opted not to change the rules of the game by targeting Israel in Syria. Hezbollah’s message was that it would avoid escalation if Israel refrained from further targeting its commanders.