On February 23, five months after an Israeli airstrike killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, Hezbollah held a funeral for its deceased leader of more than 30 years. Simultaneously, Hezbollah held a funeral for Hashem Safieddine, Nasrallah’s successor who died in an October 2024 Israeli strike. Hundreds of thousands reportedly attended the funeral at the 55,000-seat Camille Chamoun Sports City stadium in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut. The event drew Hezbollah supporters and terrorist leaders from Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, including leaders of Iran-backed Iraqi militias and members of the Iranian and Lebanese governments. Noticeably absent from the funeral was Hezbollah’s current leader, Naim Qassem, who gave a televised address from an undisclosed location.

Ahead of the funerals, Iraqi airlines added additional flights as they reported sold-out flights to Lebanon. Attendees included high-level dignitaries from Iran such as Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, as well as leaders of Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Iraqi militias. Lebanon’s parliament speaker Nabih Berri, of Hezbollah ally Amal, also attended. Representatives of Lebanon’s president and prime minister attended but not the president and prime minister themselves. The same day as Nasrallah’s funeral, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun told an Iranian delegation that Lebanon is “tired of the wars of others on its land.” Aoun, the preferred candidate of the West, ascended to Lebanon’s presidency in January after Hezbollah had blocked the selection of a new president for two years.

While Hezbollah presented the funeral as a show of strength, Israel responded with its own statement of strength. Israeli jets flew directly over Beirut during the funeral, in what Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz called a “clear message” to whomever threatens Israel. During the funeral, Israel also publicly released footage of the airstrike that killed Nasrallah. The footage revealed that at 6:20 p.m. on September 27, 2024, F-15I aircraft from Israel’s 69th fighter squadron dropped close to 100 bombs on an underground Hezbollah bunker in Beirut, killing Nasrallah, newly appointed military chief Ali Karaki, and several other Hezbollah commanders. While Israel feared that Hezbollah might unleash its full estimated arsenal of 100,000 rockets after the strike, Hezbollah responded with only 90 rockets that day. On November 27, Lebanon and Israel declared a ceasefire, which Hezbollah said it would uphold.

Hezbollah sought to project strength by turning Nasrallah’s funeral into a large spectacle, but Hezbollah remains at its weakest in decades. After the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, Nasrallah became a larger-than-life figure in jihadist circles. He was the one who stood up to Israel and survived. He was perceived to be untouchable, fomenting fears that targeting him would set off an apocalyptic response from Hezbollah and Iran. We saw in September cracks in Hezbollah’s image of imperviousness. While Hezbollah is certainly not a paper tiger, we witnessed tepid responses from Hezbollah and Iran after Nasrallah’s death. After Hezbollah blocked the formation of a Lebanese government for years, the country now has a new president and prime minister who reached a ceasefire with Israel, which Hezbollah has abided by after over a year of near-daily rocket attacks that forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israelis. Israel’s beeper operation in September 2024 showed that it could penetrate Hezbollah’s communications network. The assassination of Nasrallah and Safieddine showed that Israel could target Hezbollah’s most-protected leaders. The loss of key ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria further compounded Hezbollah’s ability to receive resources from Iran. The new Lebanese government, Hezbollah’s willingness to abide by the ceasefire, and an increasingly assertive Lebanese army shows that Hezbollah has been battered, and its influence is waning. An extravagant, dignitary-filled funeral for Nasrallah was an attempt to remind the region of what Hezbollah was under Nasrallah and project the same strength. While Nasrallah’s funeral drew thousands, reinforcing that Hezbollah maintains its support base in southern Lebanon as well as in Iran’s government, it appeared to be more of an attempt to reassert itself than a declaration of its strength. It is significant that while representatives of Lebanon’s president and prime minister attended the funeral, the president and prime minister themselves did not. It was lip service from a government that may finally be pushing back against Hezbollah’s decades of influence. While we should not yet write Hezbollah’s obituary, it is certainly not the same powerhouse it was even a few months ago.