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Israel decimated the group’s leadership last fall and degraded its military capabilities. Can the same strategy work against a far more powerful foe?
June 15, 2025, 5:40 a.m. ET
For months last year, the toll mounted, with repeated Israeli attacks on apartment buildings, bunkers and speeding vehicles.
The head of the elite special forces, the head of the drone unit, the head of the missile unit. All of them killed. The same for the intelligence chief and the head of the southern front — more than 15 senior Hezbollah military commanders eliminated in total.
In assassinating numerous top Iranian officers, the Israeli attacks on Iran, which continued Sunday, seemed to be following the script from last fall, when Israel decimated the Lebanese militia and degraded its military arsenal.
“It’s the same playbook that they used with Hezbollah — let’s eradicate the top leadership,” said Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “It’s all targeted, the assassination of their senior officials in their homes.”
Also in Gaza, Israel has sought to eliminate Hamas, in a war that has killed tens of thousands of people. Over the past 20 months of fighting, Israel has killed one leader of the Hamas organization after another and tried to destroy its capacity to fire homemade rockets into Israel.
On Saturday night, Israel targeted a meeting of Houthi leadership, including the military chief of staff, according to an Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss operational details. The result was not clear. In May, Israel had threatened to eliminate the head of the Houthis.
