For twenty years, Israel's enemies have counted on one thing above all others: the international community saving them just before the final blow lands. That pattern is what has kept Hamas and Hezbollah alive. Not their fighters, not their rockets, not their tunnels. The question of whether Israel can eliminate both organizations has a simple answer. It already knows how. The real question is whether it will be permitted to finish.
The framing of "can Israel do it" is fundamentally dishonest. It treats the problem as a military one when the military dimension is largely solved.
The IDF has decimated Hamas's senior command structure, destroyed vast stretches of its tunnel network beneath Gaza, and killed more of its fighters than any previous operation.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, entered 2025 as a shadow of the force that once pointed 150,000 missiles at northern Israel. Its top leadership is dead. Its supply lines from Iran are severed or severely degraded. Its ability to recruit in a Lebanon that now partially blames it for the destruction of Beirut's southern suburbs is fundamentally compromised. Israel is advancing north daily and pushing Hezbollah farther away from the border while steadily killing terrorists and destroying weaponry and tunnels.
The word "elimination" trips people up because they imagine it means hunting down every last member of a movement. That is not what strategic elimination means. The destruction of an organization's command capacity, its financing infrastructure, its weapons supply, its territorial control, and its political legitimacy constitutes elimination in every meaningful sense. By those metrics, Hamas as a governing entity is finished. Hezbollah as a strategic deterrent is broken.
What remains of both groups are remnants: dispersed fighters, underground cells, ideology that will always find new hosts. Israel cannot kill an idea. But you do not need to kill an idea to defeat a military organization. You need to destroy its ability to plan, finance, arm, recruit, and govern. That work is either done or nearly done.
The obstacle has never been Israeli capability. It has been the recurring interruption of Israeli operations at the precise moment when irreversible damage becomes possible. In Gaza, that interruption has taken the form of ceasefire pressure from Washington, hostage negotiations that freeze operational momentum, and humanitarian corridors Hamas immediately exploits. In Lebanon, it took the form of a ceasefire agreement that Hezbollah needed far more than Israel did, dressed up as diplomatic achievement.
Iran's weakening changes the calculus dramatically. Hamas and Hezbollah are not autonomous movements. They are Iranian assets, built with Iranian money, armed with Iranian weapons, directed by Iranian strategic priorities. When Iran's capacity to resupply and fund them is degraded, the organizations do not simply adapt. They atrophy.
The blows the Islamic Republic has absorbed since October 2023 are not cosmetic. The IRGC's external operations budget, its weapons transfer network through Syria and Iraq, and its ability to project credible deterrence have all been damaged in ways that will take years to reconstitute, if they ever are.
This is why the window matters. Degraded patrons do not stay degraded forever. Iran has rebuilt before, after sanctions, after assassinations, after explosions at nuclear facilities. Israel's current position, with American backing still in place and Iran genuinely weakened, represents a rare convergence of favorable conditions. These conditions will not last indefinitely.
The honest answer to whether Israel will eliminate Hamas and Hezbollah is this: it will if it acts before the next ceasefire forecloses the option. Every previous conflict ended with both groups intact enough to rebuild, rearm, and re-emerge stronger than before. October 7 happened because Israel allowed that cycle to repeat. The lesson was paid for in blood.
What the critics who warn against "escalation" consistently fail to account for is that the alternative they are defending is not peace. It is the next October 7. It is Lebanon 2006 rebuilt into Lebanon 2035. It is a Gaza that produces another generation of fighters in exchange for a few years of quiet.
Israel can finish this. The only remaining question is whether its leaders and their allies have the nerve to let it.
Amine Ayoub, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is a policy analyst and writer based in Morocco. Follow him on X: @amineayoubx