It is no coincidence that Israel targeted Haytham Ali Tabatabai, the Hezbollah military commander recently assassinated in Beirut. He was no ordinary figure by any measure; rather, he embodied a determination to directly oversee Hezbollah’s reconstruction. Tabatabai was transferred from Yemen to Lebanon to help lead Hezbollah in what its backers envisioned as a post-Israel phase, following Israel’s elimination of much of the organization’s senior leadership.
He symbolized two core elements: a deepening involvement in Yemen and a commitment to managing Hezbollah’s revival as a multifaceted force. Both roles fit within a broader, long-term strategic framework. This strategy depends on cultivating assets across the region—assets that reduce the need for direct confrontation with adversaries by acting as proxies in conflicts—while simultaneously seeking accommodation with the United States, an effort that has become increasingly unattainable under an administration like Trump’s, which maintains an especially close relationship with Israel.
Recent statements by Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, shed light on the role the organization and its patrons continue to pursue, both through the group itself and through figures like Tabatabai—well beyond Lebanon’s borders and outside what used to be the recognized “rules of engagement.” Those rules effectively vanished after Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood attack of October 7. Hassan Nasrallah’s successor acknowledged that Tabatabai, killed in Beirut, had been in Yemen from 2015 to 2024. He also fought in Syria in defense of the minority regime that Bashar Assad inherited from his father. Hezbollah’s direct involvement in the war against the Syrian people only deepened hostilities between most Syrians and a Lebanese faction that had fully aligned itself with a wider expansionist agenda.
The late Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh was the first to publicly point to Iran’s support for the Houthis back in the summer of 2004. This came during an interview I conducted with him, published across several Arab media outlets, including the now-defunct Lebanese newspaper Al-Mustaqbal. Saleh, who was assassinated by the Houthis eight years ago, also spoke about the longstanding connection between Hezbollah and the Houthis.
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Only weeks after that interview, in the fall of 2004, the first of six wars between the Houthis and the Yemeni army erupted, continuing until 2010—just months before the Muslim Brotherhood capitalized on the Arab Spring to topple Saleh’s regime in February 2011. What stands out about the dates Naim Qassem cited regarding Tabatabai’s role in Yemen is that his most intensive activity began in 2015, after the Houthis captured Sana’a on September 21, 2014.
This does not imply Hezbollah was uninvolved before that point, but rather that its efforts became more concentrated on consolidating Houthi control of the capital. Nor does it suggest that Tabatabai—along with others—was previously uninterested in Yemen. From this perspective, it was necessary for someone of Tabatabai’s stature to devote himself almost entirely to Yemen, given the developments that unfolded following the Houthi takeover of Sana’a. More importantly, his presence helps explain the push—either directly or through Hezbollah—to accelerate the consolidation of power to a degree that effectively eliminated any other Yemeni actor’s influence over political decision-making in the north.
It is no minor detail that Tabatabai was in Sana’a during the tense period leading up to the rift between Ali Abdullah Saleh and the Houthis in August 2017, a crisis that peaked when Saleh publicly rejected Houthi dominance in December 2017. Within days, the Houthis assassinated him, ending a partnership that no longer aligned with Abdul-Malik al-Houthi’s objectives.
Hezbollah has played multiple roles outside Lebanon’s borders, all part of a strategy implemented either by the group or by those directing it—roles carried out by figures such as Tabatabai in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. Yemen was especially important because of its geographic position at the heart of the Arabian Peninsula. Its transformation into a missile launch point stressed a clear intent to pressure the Gulf Cooperation Council states one by one. The end of Tabatabai, in the manner it occurred, was no ordinary outcome. It signaled the collapse of an entire project—one that ultimately proved unworkable.
Yemen, and before it Lebanon, were central to this project, whose future now hangs in the balance amid a shifting regional landscape in Syria, where the country is gradually returning to its people, and as Yemen awaits the day when territory controlled by Hezbollah is returned to Yemenis themselves. In a region where nothing happens by chance, Hezbollah—or those behind it—cannot sustain influence in areas where they are no longer permitted to dominate, whether directly or through their proxies.
Kheirallah Kheirallah (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)