In Hezbollah leader’s speech are signs of a group driven deeper underground

Hezbollah is on the backfoot. The first sign of that was the absence of a public gathering – typically consisting of high-level party officials and supporters – to watch the militant group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah deliver a televised speech on Thursday.

The second sign was that Nasrallah’s address – his first since two waves of attacks detonated thousands of Hezbollah wireless devices earlier this week – was very possibly pre-recorded.

The leader of the powerful militant group has not delivered a speech in person since the start of Lebanon’s last all-out war with Israel in 2006. But he will often make a point of proving that his broadcasts are being carried by a live transmission. In his speech last month, for example, Nasrallah referenced two sonic booms caused by Israeli jets that had broken the sound barrier over Beirut. These happened in the seconds leading up to the start of his address.

Thursday’s speech was billed as a live transmission, but audiences were given reason to doubt around 20 minutes in, when Israel dropped flares over the Lebanese capital and sent windows shaking with a fresh wave of sonic booms. The roar reverberated throughout the city yet the Beirut-based militant leader neither flinched nor referenced the incident during his speech.

Israel’s fighter jets seemed intent to underscore the gains of Tuesday and Wednesday’s attacks on Hezbollah’s wireless devices: the group had been driven deeper underground.

“Without a doubt, we have suffered a major blow,” said Nasrallah in his speech on Thursday. “(It is) unprecedented in the history of the resistance in Lebanon at least, unprecedented in the history of Lebanon, and it may be unprecedented in the history of the conflict with the Israeli enemy across the entire region.”

Thousands of small explosions swept through the pockets and homes of Hezbollah members this week, targeting pagers on Tuesday, and then walkie-talkies on Wednesday; in all, the blasts killed at least 37, including some children, and injured nearly 3000. The attack, dystopian in its style and scale, blindsided the group that had opted for analogue technologies after forgoing cell phones to avoid Israeli infiltration.

Nasrallah vowed a “reckoning” but was scant on the details. The attack “will be met with a reckoning and fair punishment in ways that they expect and don’t expect,” he said.

But he continued with an unmistakably subdued tone. “However, because this battle was carried out by invisible faces, you must allow me to change my style,” he said.

“The reckoning will come. Its nature, scope, when and where … that’s something we will definitely keep to ourselves,” he added. “Within the tightest circle, even within ourselves, because we are in the most precise, sensitive and deeply significant part of the battle.”

Nasrallah tried to buoy the sober speech by extolling what he described as strategic gains of nearly a year of confrontations with Israeli forces on the Lebanon-Israel border. He also vowed to continue striking Israeli positions until Israel’s offensive in Gaza ends.

“We’ve been saying this for 11 months; we might be repeating ourselves, but this statement comes after these two major blows, after all these martyrs, wounds, and pain,” said Nasrallah. “I say clearly: no matter the sacrifices, consequences, or future possibilities, the resistance in Lebanon will not stop supporting Gaza.”

Responding to Israeli threats of creating a security buffer zone in Lebanon’s southern border area, Nasrallah struck a defiant tone, “welcoming” Israeli troops into the territory where he said Hezbollah militants would swiftly seize the opportunity to attack them.

Meanwhile in Lebanon, people are continuing to reel from the attacks that overwhelmed hospitals with wounded people, mostly with deep flesh wounds to the eyes and face.

Hezbollah will likely recede further into the shadows and regroup about their methods. During the 2006 war, the militant group’s Al-Manar television was on air for the duration of the 34-day conflict, despite Israel’s heavy-handed bombing campaign.

Live broadcasts have long been hailed by Hezbollah as a symbol of defiance against the long arm of Israeli spyware, and their ability to keep broadcasting against the odds has been a point of pride for the group – lending it a mythical quality among its Lebanese constituents and even some of its detractors.

But this week’s attacks on wireless devices punctured that aura. Hezbollah – which literally translates into Party of God – has been rattled, forced to contend with the new reality that it is more exposed than it has ever believed itself to be.