Screenshot of the interview with Hezbollah official Nawaf Moussawi on March 4th on al-Mayadeen channel.
BEIRUT — "We were not defeated because of Israel's intelligence, but due to our own shortcomings," Nawaf Moussawi, head of Hezbollah's resources and borders dossier and former member of the party's political bureau, said Monday night on the Pan-Arab channel al-Mayadeen.
Moussawi resigned from the party in July 2019 "at the request" of its leadership, citing an "accumulation of errors," including an incident in which he and other armed men fired at a police station.
In an interview that sharply contrasts with statements by Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem and fuels speculation about internal divisions, Moussawi lamented the group's "tactical errors and failures" during its war with Israel.
Among the missteps he cited was the explosion of communication devices — including pagers and walkie-talkies — that killed at least 40 people, including a child, and injured more than 2,900 on Sept. 17 and 18. He also pointed to the assassinations of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and senior official Hashem Safieddine in unprecedented Israeli airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sept. 27 and overnight between Oct. 3-4, respectively.
"If I receive a watch as a gift, I have it checked, preemptively, to examine it. How is it possible that a pager was used without being opened and inspected?" Moussawi said, questioning Hezbollah’s security lapses. His remarks came after a former Israeli agent revealed on Dec. 24 that the operation had been in the works for a decade.
Moussawi accused the party of failing to protect its former secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah. "I was shocked to learn that Sayyed [Nasrallah] was still in the southern suburbs of Beirut, residing at the exact location where he was assassinated," he said.
He recalled that during the 2006 war, Imad Moghniyeh, Hezbollah’s military chief who was assassinated in 2008, had overseen Nasrallah’s security and frequently relocated him. He added that he had assumed "this precaution was also in place during the last war."
He warned that Beirut’s southern suburbs are "entirely under American-Israeli radar; there is no place that is not monitored and accessible."
He also expressed similar concerns about Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, saying he should not have accepted to take refuge in a bunker in Haret Hreik. "If I saw with my own eyes that they had struck the place [Nasrallah’s location], would I place myself in an equivalent location?" he said. "What am I betting on? That this location is unknown? But it had already been revealed," lamented Moussaoui, a former MP from the southern Lebanese city of Sour.
'Compensate the shortcomings'
"That's why I say that many Israeli achievements were due to our flaws and shortcomings, not Israeli intelligence," Moussawi said. "I don't know what happened to us."
He added that after the pager attack, Nasrallah "understood that there was an error and a technical flaw."
Moussawi explained that "Hezbollah is conducting an internal investigation into all security and military incidents that occurred," while asserting that the group "is capable of striking the Israeli occupation if it compensates its shortcomings" and corrects both "technical and human flaws," which he described as "significant."
Despite what he called "serious setbacks," Moussawi dismissed suggestions that this marked "the end of Hezbollah [nor] the Axis of Resistance" against Israel.
Despite criticizing Hezbollah’s failures, he maintained that the party inflicted heavy losses on Israeli forces "at the height of the war" and made strategic gains, citing a drone strike on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea.
He also praised Hezbollah’s political presence in Lebanon, highlighting its two ministers in the government, despite "regional and international desire to exclude Hezbollah from the government."
On Monday night, Netanyahu told the Israeli parliament, during a session on the creation of a state inquiry commission into the Oct. 7 attack, that "the world has been able to observe in recent months Israel's ability to deceive its enemies." He said Israel’s "series of immense achievements has changed the entire face of the Middle East" and called the "ideal" timing of the pager explosions a "decisive turning point that contributed to the fall of the Assad regime," on Dec. 8.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient Le-Jour.
