Katherine Wells, Andie Parry, Annika Ganzeveld, Johanna Moore,

Siddhant Kishore, Ria Reddy, and Brian Carter

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The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) likely killed a senior Lebanese Hezbollah commander in southern Beirut on July 30. The IDF Air Force targeted Fuad Shukr in response to a Hezbollah rocket attack that killed 12 Israeli children in the Israel-controlled Golan Heights on July 27. The IDF claimed that the strike killed Shukr while Lebanese sources said he survived the strike. A Saudi government-owned media outlet and a Lebanese outlet both also confirmed that Shukr died in the strike. Hezbollah has not commented at the time of this writing. Shukr was a senior military advisor to Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and equivalent to “Hezbollah‘s chief of staff,“ according to Israeli media. He also served on Hezbollah's highest military body, the Jihad Council. Shukr is the second member of the Jihad Council whom the IDF has killed. The IDF also killed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps representative to the Jihad Council, Mohammad Reza Zahedi, on April 1 in Damascus. The IDF claimed that Shukr headed a Hezbollah unit responsible for maintaining advanced weaponry and planning attacks against Israel. The IDF initially did not specify that the strike targeted Shukr, only that it struck “the commander responsible for” the Majdal Shams rocket attack.

CTP-ISW is considering two possible Hezbollah courses of action after the IDF strike that likely killed Fuad Shukr:

• Hezbollah may decide to respond with a major rocket and drone barrage on northern Israel that resembles previous Hezbollah attacks in retaliation for previous IDF strikes on senior commanders. Hezbollah has previously responded by launching salvoes of 100+ rockets targeting IDF bases in northern Israel and the Golan Heights. Hezbollah could attempt to build a strike package that it calibrates to avoid a strong Israeli response, thereby allowing tensions on the border to diffuse and return to the standard tit-for-tat attacks. Hezbollah’s strike package would presumably be larger and strike deeper into Israel than past retaliatory attacks given Shukr’s seniority, however. Israeli sources said immediately after the strike targeting Shukr that this would be the extent of Israel’s response to the Majdal Shams rocket attack, and that further escalation is dependent on Hezbollah's response. Hezbollah officials messaged on July 29 that Hezbollah did not want an all-out war, suggesting that Hezbollah will temper its response to deescalate the situation. There remains the risk that even a carefully calculated strike package would unintentionally strike a sensitive target in Israel and prompt further escalation.

• Hezbollah may decide that in order to restore deterrence with Israel, it needs to conduct a more significant attack that targets civilian and military areas deep inside Israel. This is the less likely but more dire course of action. Hezbollah could calculate that the Israeli strike targeting a senior Hezbollah leader in Beirut who was personally close to Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah crosses a red line and requires a strong Hezbollah show of force to restore deterrence. A senior Lebanese Hezbollah official told Al Jazeera before the targeted strike on Shukr that Hezbollah would respond to any attack on Lebanon and that Hezbollah is capable of striking military installations in Haifa, the Golan Heights and Ramat David.  Nasrallah threatened on July 17 to attack civilian targets deep into Israel in response to Israeli airstrikes that kill Lebanese civilians. The IAF strike in southern Beirut killed at least three people and injured 74, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health speaking to Hezbollah-run media.

Key Takeaways:

• Lebanon: The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) likely killed a senior Lebanese Hezbollah commander in southern Beirut on July 30. Hezbollah may decide to respond with a major rocket and drone barrage on northern Israel that resembles previous Hezbollah attacks in retaliation for previous IDF strikes on senior commanders. In an alternative scenario, Hezbollah may decide that in order to restore deterrence with Israel, it needs to conduct a more significant attack that targets civilian and military areas deep inside Israel.

• Iran: Iran gave its “full blessing” to Iranian-backed Iraqi militias to resume attacks targeting US forces if Israel conducts a “massive retaliatory assault” targeting Hezbollah and/or non-Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, according to a senior Iraqi militia leader who spoke to BBC on July 30. It is unclear whether Israel’s retaliatory strike targeting Fuad Shukr on July 30 constitutes a “massive retaliatory assault.”

• Iraq and Syria: The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—has officially resumed its attack campaign targeting US forces in the Middle East. CTP-ISW assessed on July 17 that Iranian-backed Iraqi militias appeared to have resumed their attack campaign targeting US forces in Iraq.



• Iranian Presidential Inauguration: The Iranian Parliament swore in Masoud Pezeshkian as Iran’s ninth president on July 30. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and newly sworn-in President Masoud Pezeshkian held meetings with numerous foreign officials and Axis of Resistance leaders on the sidelines of the presidential inauguration on July 29 and 30.

Click here to read the full update.

ISW–CTP has launched an interactive map of Israeli ground operations to accompany our daily campaign assessments of the Israel–Hamas war. This product complements the daily static maps that ISW-CTP produces with high-fidelity and, where possible, street-level assessments of the war in Israel.

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