It’s been a year since Hamas attacked Israel, and with each passing day, its victory looms larger, or so its leaders claim. As they say, by defeating Iran’s two most important allies in the region, Hamas and Hezbollah, they will be able to achieve the incredible, redraw the geopolitical map of the Middle East.

Of course, only time will tell how the war will play out. But while it is premature for Israel to celebrate its extraordinary military achievements, there is no doubt that Iran and Hezbollah are far behind in the race, Politico comments in its article. And this thanks to the wrong calculations made both by the now dead leader of Hezbollah for three decades, Hassan Nasrallahas well as by the mullahs of Tehran.

In Nasrallah’s case, his mistakes cost him his life – as did his decision to remain in Lebanon, despite the fact that his friend and supporter, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran had urged him to leave.

“Already, Hezbollah has shrunk significantly“, said Paul Salem, former president of the Middle East Institute. “The charismatic leader of Hezbollah is gone. Most of the leadership is dead. Their communications are constantly being targeted. They have lost their deterrent against Israel and have no defense against Israeli airstrikes. Hezbollah’s raison d’être — defending the villages of the south — has also shrunk,” he told Politico.

Hezbollah was meant to be Lebanon’s protector from Israel. While Nasrallah was its leader, Hezbollah became the main reason Israel ended its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, exhausted by heavy casualties inflicted on the Israel Defense Forces. His popularity among Lebanon’s Shiites stems from this Israeli withdrawal, which strengthened Hezbollah’s position and power in the country as a whole.

But this time, Nasrallah overreached. Hezbollah’s relentless cross-border rocket attacks have forced Israel to respond, and now, Iran’s weakness has been exposed. After two missile barrages — one in April and one last week — Iran has been unable to penetrate Israel’s air defenses to much effect. The situation has left Iran’s 85-year-old Khamenei sounding like a thunderous King Lear issuing threats but so far to no real effect.

A basic miscalculation what Nasrallah and the mullahs of Tehran did was to believe that the savage attacks by Hamas on October 7 they changed Israel. Shocked to their core, many Israelis feared that the only Jewish state in the world was facing an existential crisis, and therefore, any risks—no matter how dangerous—had to be met to ensure Israel’s survival. Hence the war in Gaza, and the decision to deal with Hezbollah – first with airstrikes and now with ground operations.

“Nasrallah misread Israel. This is a repeat of the mistake he made in 2006,” said Mr Michael Milsteinformer head of the Palestinian Affairs Division in Israel’s Defense Intelligence Directorate.

The 2006 conflict was sparked by a Hezbollah ambush on Israeli soil that left three soldiers dead and two kidnapped. After the 34-day war ended, Nasrallah publicly admitted that he had misread Israel, saying he would not have ordered the arrest of Israeli soldiers if he had known it would spark a full-scale war. “If I had known on July 11th … that the operation would lead to such a war, would I have done it? I say no, absolutely not.”

But this time he misread Israel as the attacks by Hamas made the Israelis even less tolerant of the threat of Hezbollah.

Another miscalculation what Nasrallah and Iran did was that they underestimated Israel’s military superiority and intelligence capabilities. They did not realize how thoroughly Israel had penetrated Hezbollah’s ranks, allowing Israel to wiretap its communications systems, monitor its top leaders and commanders – including finding Nasrallah’s whereabouts, which had been a closely guarded secret for years – and murder them.

Thus, while Hezbollah was building and improving its network of tunnels in southern Lebanon, the Mossad was digging deeper into the Shiite movement. And in this regard, Hezbollah’s campaign in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad has proven extremely useful – leaving the military structure, formations, and command and control systems much more open to surveillance.

“A lot of the intelligent information being used now comes from human factors, not just technological means,” Milshtein said. “Hezbollah has infiltrated.”

Iran’s decision to launch direct attacks on Israel, crossing what for decades was an unthinkable red line, it has only compounded the mistake of the misunderstanding of Israel and the underestimating his capabilities. For Netanyahu, this was a godsend.

Netanyahu, long derided as the long arm of Iran’s mullahs threatened Israel’s security and widely accused of exaggerating the dangers of a direct attack from Tehran, was able to turn the blows to his political advantage, claiming that the mask had fallen The real enemy was clear already all roads led to Tehran.

Since then, he has had a somewhat easier time with the Americans as well – despite the frustration of the Biden administration where Israel blatantly ignored its fears of the outbreak of a regional war, he finally gave the “green light” for Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon.

But whatever happens, Paul Salem believes that Hezbollah will endure. It has a huge stockpile of long-range ballistic missiles it has not used, and no one should discount the ability of Hezbollah fighters – hardened by years of fighting in Syria – to sustain the guerrilla war.

“They will survive, and they do. They can still fight on the ground, and they have rockets that they can fire at Israel and so on with some effect. But any real recovery will take many, many years,” he concluded.