In Israel, Nasrallah's death will be viewed as a huge victory published at 13:18 British Summer Time 13:18 BST
Jeremy Bowen International Editor
In Israel, the killing of Hasan Nasrallah will be seen as a huge victory.
For more than 30 years he has been the beating heart of Hezbollah. With the aid of his close allies in Iran, he turned Hezbollah into a fighting force that in 2000 forced Israel to end a two-decade occupation of south Lebanon.
In 2006, he led Hezbollah as it fought Israel to a standstill.
Nasrallah has been Israel’s biggest single enemy – in recent years, only Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the Hamas attack on Israel in October last year, has come close.
Against the wishes of its American allies, Israel has taken the fight to Hezbollah after almost a year of an attritional border war.
In the last few weeks Israel has activated a war plan it has been working on since the last war with Hezbollah ended in 2006.
Israel has inflicted huge damage on its enemy in Lebanon. Killing its leader is the biggest blow of all.
The question now is how Hezbollah – and Iran – will respond. They might now be concluding that if they don’t hit back hard they will be facing a strategic defeat.
The uncertainty and danger in the Middle East is why the US and Israel’s western allies tried to persuade Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire to create a pause for diplomacy.
