Nasrallah was convinced that he could survive the flurry of Israeli attacks on his army, which he had built patiently over the years under Iranian guidance and finance. Nasrallah believed that he could still win the war, as he did in 2006, thanks to what he called a ‘divine intervention’. Nasrallah boasted that, since his military intervention on 8 October 2023, he had imposed a ‘security zone’ inside Israel instead of in Lebanese territory. He bragged about the Israeli government’s decision to evacuate 43 communities located up to five kilometres from the Lebanese border, totalling around 68,000 civilians—an event without precedent since the War of Independence in 1948.