"After the pager operation, Nasrallah was no longer the same man," says close associate
"The consequences were immediate and physical. Nasrallah stopped eating"
Nearly two years after killing of Hassan Nasrallah’s by Israel, revelations continue to emerge about the final days of the man who led Hezbollah with an iron fist for four decades. Now, one of his closest associates, Wafiq Safa, is breaking the silence and paints a striking portrait of a man deeply shaken, well before the Israeli bomb ended his life in his Beirut bunker.
The pager operation of September 17, 2024, an unprecedentedly sophisticated attack carried out by the Mossad, which simultaneously blew up thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah members in Lebanon, broke Nasrallah even before Israel killed him. Hundreds of members and officials of the terror organization were injured, some seriously. The shockwave was immense. But for Nasrallah, it was above all personal and visceral.
Safa recounts: "The mistake made by those around him was to show him the images of the explosions hitting the crowds. When he saw these images, he could not bear it."
In a matter of hours, the all-powerful leader of Hezbollah, who had lived through forty years of wars, attacks, and pressures, was no longer recognizable. "He was no longer the same Hassan Nasrallah," his associate says. "This event was of an entirely different nature."
The consequences were immediate and physical. Nasrallah stopped eating. “At first, he was only drinking water. I think he didn’t eat anything for nearly 24 hours,” Safa confides. “It wasn’t a health problem in the medical sense of the word, but he was no longer the same, even physically. For him, it was the end of the world.”
That day, Safa received a call from Nasrallah. A call that would leave a lasting impression on him. “I heard it in his voice. He didn’t ask me what was happening, because he already knew.” “I told him, ‘The most important thing is to hold on.’ He replied, ‘God comforts me.’ From that moment on, Nasrallah was no longer the same.”
What had broken him was not only the sight of the victims, but also, and perhaps above all, the strategic significance of the attack; an infiltration of the intelligence services of terrifying depth, reaching all the way to the very heart of the organization. Safa does not try to downplay it: “We have to be realistic. This was an infiltration by the Israeli intelligence services. We acknowledge it.”
During their last meeting, a few days before September 27, 2024, Nasrallah gave a paradoxical impression. On the one hand, he remained convinced that Israel would not be able to eliminate him personally. "He still believed that Israel could not reach him," reports Safa. On the other hand, he was aware that Hezbollah's leadership now had to seriously consider being targeted. "He assumed that Israel would not launch a large-scale war, notably because of the organization's military capabilities. In reality, Israel managed to reach him and weaken Hezbollah's ballistic system."