Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that the death of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on September 27, 2024, in a violent Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, triggered the collapse of the pro-Iranian axis.
“On October 7, we were attacked by the monsters of Hamas. The next day, Hezbollah joined the fight and began launching rockets at our cities. That day, I said we would change the face of the Middle East,” he said during a ceremony at Israel’s Foreign Ministry.
Netanyahu explained that he made this pledge because, it was “clear from day one that the battle was against the entire Iranian axis: Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, the three H’s.”
He recalled that once “the main forces of Hamas were eliminated,” Israel turned its attention to the northern front with Lebanon. “I hope none of you has a pager on you,” he added, referring to the September 17, 2024, pager attack, in which booby-trapped devices exploded in the faces of more than 4,000 Hezbollah fighters and commanders.
According to Netanyahu, Nasrallah was killed because “he was, in fact, the linchpin of this axis. He was the one holding it together. Once he was gone, Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria collapsed, because during the civil war it wasn’t the Syrian army fighting Assad’s enemies, it was Nasrallah, who, whenever a battle turned against Assad, sent thousands of Hezbollah fighters to save the regime. After Nasrallah’s death, Hezbollah became powerless, and Assad fell. From that point on, the land corridor linking Tehran to the sea through Lebanon ceased to exist,” the prime minister said.
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