Wave of top-level Hezbollah killings suggests Israeli intelligence has infiltrated the group.
Hassan Nasrallah Confirmed Dead
The Wall Street Journal reports Israeli Airstrike Killed Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah
Israel said it killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah with a massive airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs Friday, flattening part of a neighborhood to eliminate the cleric who led the group for three decades and built it into a fearsome foe.
Senior officials from Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were also at the site, people familiar with the matter said. Israel’s military said the strike also killed Ali Karaki, a Hezbollah commander whom Israel targeted earlier this week.
Iranian Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan, a deputy commander in the IRGC, was killed in the Israeli attack targeting Nasrallah, according to state TV. The fate of the others wasn’t immediately clear, but people familiar with the matter said they were also believed to be dead. Hezbollah has lost touch with several senior officials following the blast, some of the people said. On Saturday afternoon, Hezbollah acknowledged Nasrallah was dead.
“His powerful leadership is different,” a senior Israeli official said. “Some people are irreplaceable.” Nasrallah had overseen Hezbollah’s transformation into the world’s most heavily armed nonstate militia and its integration into Lebanon’s political system.
The Shia cleric had found himself increasingly isolated in recent weeks by Israel’s relentless campaign of targeted killings of his most trusted fighters. Israel killed top lieutenant Fuad Shukr in an airstrike this summer on his apartment on the upper floors of a southern Beirut residential building, where he had been summoned by a phone call shortly before. He had eluded the U.S. for four decades.
The strike at Nasrallah at around 6:20 p.m. local time Friday came shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York. “We will not accept a terror army perched on our northern border able to perpetrate another Oct. 7-style massacre,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu’s speech came before a largely empty U.N. chamber, after dozens of diplomats walked out when it was announced that Netanyahu was next to speak. His comment came amid U.S.-led efforts to seek a diplomatic solution before full war breaks out.
Not Just Another Terrorist
AP has some interesting quotes on the Death of Hassan Nasrallah
Nasrallah, linked by Israel to numerous deadly attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets, has been on Israel’s kill list for decades. His assassination is by far the biggest and most consequential of Israel’s targeted killings in years, and significantly escalates the war in the Middle East. The Israeli military said it carried out a precise airstrike on Friday while Hezbollah leaders were meeting at their headquarters in Dahiyeh, south of Beirut.
In his first public remarks since the killing, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s targeting of Nasrallah was “an essential condition to achieving the goals we set.”
“He wasn’t another terrorist. He was the terrorist,” Netanyahu said. “There is no place in Iran or in the Middle East that Israel’s long arm cannot reach. And today you know how much that is true,” he said.
Israel vows to keep up attacks on Hezbollah
Israel’s Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said Saturday that the killing of Nasrallah was “not the end of our toolbox,” indicating that more strikes were planned. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called it “the most important targeted strike since the founding of the State of Israel.” Late Saturday, Gallant’s office said he was meeting with top army commanders to discuss the expansion of military activities along Israel’s northern front.
Any comments on where this leads?
I have no firm opinion.