Hezbollah has now confirmed that its secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in the Israeli airstrikes on the group’s headquarters in Dahiyeh yesterday.
Nasrallah’s demise is the culmination of an Israeli campaign, particularly intense over the past week, to cripple Hezbollah’s military and terrorism capacities. It has brought Hezbollah to its most vulnerable condition since its creation.
Contrary to the myth-making that Hezbollah emerged in 1982 as a “resistance” organisation against Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and became a “proxy” of Iran, in reality the group was created earlier. Indeed, it comprises an integral unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the vanguard of the Islamic Revolution that rules Iran. Nasrallah’s life history testifies to this.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini forged a jihadist cadre on Lebanese territory in the late 1970s, with assistance from the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), and Nasrallah was part of this milieu. Some of these jihadists went back to Iran to lead the Revolution in 1978-79 and were labelled the IRGC. Those who stayed in Lebanon officially took the name Hezbollah in 1985.
Rising to the top of Hezbollah in 1992, Nasrallah’s department of the IRGC was the one Tehran often used in its international murder spree that decade, which included bombing Jewish targets as far away as Argentina and assassinating Iranian dissidents in Europe. The nature of the Islamic Revolution, a transnational jihadist network that recognises neither nationality nor borders, can be seen in Nasrallah having a senior IRGC officer, Abbas Nilforoushan, alongside him when he was killed.
For all the anger in the region against Israel over Gaza, many are celebrating Nasrallah’s demise, especially in Syria, where Hezbollah led the IRGC’s international jihad to rescue the Iran-dependent tyrant Bashar al-Assad. On the other hand, there is sorrow: the rapidity and relative ease of Israel’s decimation of Hezbollah demonstrates how little it would have taken, and how low the cost would have been, to spare the Syrians so much death and destruction.
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SubscribeThe IDF and Mossad are the best; eliminating the terrorists top tier in two weeks. Brilliant!
Compare and contrast with the pathetic efforts of the US and
GB in respect of Red Sea shipping.
….and even the pathetic efforts if the IDF and Mossad on October 7.
It is probably too much to ask of the UN (the international community) but they should step in to establish order in Lebanon and keep everything south of the Litani river free of Hezbollah – after Israel did heavy lifting.
The UN diplomats are walking out. AGAIN.
This is what happened at the start of the Ukraine war. If diplomats walk out there can be no diplomacy.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13899295/Benjamin-Netanyahu-anti-Semitic-swamp-fiery-speech.html
It is the most absolutely ridiculous, most disgusting thing to walk out, in my opinion. It is supposed to be a centre for preventing a global war. You cannot prevent a war by walking out.
Diplomacy is dead. The UN is a largely irrelevant talking shop. Realpolitik rules the world and there are dark days ahead.
That is what they were meant to do under Israel withdrawing in an agreement that was meant to de-militarise southern Lebanon. They didn’t do it then so why would they now? It would be the most dangerous peacekeeping mission in the world.
This was part of the 2006 cease fire agreement, and it failed miserably. The UN “peacekeepers” were supposed to keep Hezbollah north of the Litani River. But of course this would have meant confronting Hezbollah. So the peacekeepers did nothing except collect a paycheck from the UN..
Feels overly optimistic and simplistic to me.
Let’s hope this the beginning of the end of Hezbollah. I hope Israel eliminates the large cache of missiles, especially the precision guided one, that Hezbollah has. Hezbollah is supposed to be north of the Litani River as per UN resolution 1701, which has proved worthless. Maybe the IDF will go in and clean Hezbollah out of there. Who knows, maybe Lebanon can become a sovereign country again.
If Israel wants to succeed, it needs to act quickly and not always clear things with the Biden / Harris Administration.
I’m beginning to wonder if the size of Hezbollah’s arsenal hasn’t been greatly exaggerated.
Either that or they’re literally scared to death to go near their launchers because they’ll be targeted.
The problem though is this:
“Hezbollah is…. deeply woven into Lebanon’s Shia population”.
It’s not the specific organisation. It’s the mindset of that religion and it’s follower base.
There were UN soldiers on the checkpoints when I went to south Lebanon, but I couldn’t really fathom what they were doing there other than maintaining a facade. I’m assuming now war has come they are long gone.
I’m afraid that as long as Iran is governed as it has been since 1979, the region will be unstable.
Killing a person much easier than killing an idea or ideology. Nonetheless nobody can blame Israel for these actions, nor opting to create and police themselves a deep border area. Too often critics of Israel forget 60k people have been displaced by c9k rockets launched by Hezbollah. What other Country in the World would put up with that. The only real surprise is they waited until now.
As regards combating the idea – much more difficult esp when it’s nourished and supported by IRGC. One wonders how many Gaza Palestinians might now, despite deep hatred of the IDF, wish Hamas gone and prepared to do something about that? Or whether the gangster state Hamas and Hezbollah create still able to suppress that ever turning into practical action?
Just been reading about Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea’. V different times and media scrutiny utterly different, and yet what he was prescient about was the need to hit an idea by taking pitiless war to the civilian heartland supporting it. One suspects IDF strategists can’t say it but know their military history.
‘Killing a person much easier than killing an idea or ideology’
That’s a very strange comment.
Ideas and idealogies should be easier for anybody to kill than a person.
Killing a person because you are scared of their idealogy or ideas is very questionable practice, really surely it is preferable and easier to combat ideas and idealogies with better ideas and idealogies, ideally leading by example, than it is to kill a person?
Israel are fighting a terrorist organisation not really an idea. Your sentence doesn’t really make sense in this context. Israel is at war, because it has been attacked, it isn’t setting out to kill an idea or a person. It is an army fighting a terrorist group. Not killing a person to kill an idealogy.
They’ll just be replaced with something else. Israel creates their own enemies because they can’t imagine peace. That said, I grew up watching Assad’s thugs massacre the innocent in Syria, so my sympathy for the innocent victims of indiscriminate Israeli atrocities in Palestine and Lebanon does not extend to Nasrallah.
Chris, if the IDF forcibly expel the palestinians from gaza and the westbank, how long will the palestinian’s claim to that land last?
just as long as the red indian’s claims to America. ie Indefinately.
They can’t imagine peace except with Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain, UAE, Sudan (soon), and very likely Saudi Arabia. The only ones who can’t imagine peace are arm chair thumb warriors like Chrys, who hate it when Jews win
Not about religion it’s about the destruction of the apartheid state of Israel, long live the Palestinian resistance
Correct Chris many on this site are too happy to watch the massacre of Arab children on the middle east. I ask those who support Israel, would they not fight for their country like the Palestinians and Lebanese do?
Do you really believe Hamas and Hezbollah care about those people? They’re the ones fighting and killing. I don’t see the people and the terrorists as the same. The terrorists have created so much pain for the Palestinians. They have not represented the people for as long as I can remember. The money they’ve spent in Gaza in their own interests has harmed Palestinians and created a place of poverty, despite help from international agencies. The Palestinian people have never been well represented in their relations with Israel.
As horrible as the treatment of Palestinians by Israel is, it’s hard to miss the crucial difference between a justified Palestinian resistance and Iranian meddling in the regional conflicts under pretence of fighting western “imperialism”. Israel is an oppressive power but it doesn’t have any territorial dispute with Lebanon ( besides some made up Sheba farms). Iran is playing regional politics vying for leadership in the region with catastrophic results
George, if Israel forcibly expel the palestinians from gaza and the westbank, how long will the palestinian’s claim to the land last?
That question was so good it was worth asking twice.
It’s a very effective one. Fancy having a crack at it?
Vat is zis horrible treatment of which you speak?
Man, the normalisation of Israel’s actions in both the article and the comments are shocking. Israel is breaking international human rights law and the laws of war. But no one cares because hey as long as our allies are doing it then it’s fine ? Shocking.
I like this site, but unfortunately it does draw in a few contrarian weirdos sometimes. But don’t be discouraged if you get a lot of dislikes, hatred from ignorant people is a mark of honour.
Adrian and Chris, are you two pearl-clutchers going to solve Israel’s very real problems from your armchairs?
Rubbish.
What country would put up with constant bombardment of missiles from their neighbours?
Why is Isreal held to different standards than any other country?
Both USA and UK bombed German and Japanese cities in ww2.
Why should Israel not be allowed to do the same against its enemies?
Why all the antisemites like you are so concerned about Palestinians?
What about protesting against Kurds not having their own country?
Why are you not worried about Genocide of Ighurs in China or Rhahinga in Burma?
What about human rights of people of North Korea and Iran and Venezuela?
Clearly no concern of yours?
But Israel, the only democracy in sea of dictatorships in Middle East is a problem?
No country should put up with another country relentlessly using proxies to murder its people. Yet asshats pretending to be clever demand Israel should do exactly that.