No risk of larger war from assassination of Nasrallah - opposite - Hezbollah likely so devastated it only does low key rocket attacks - Iran would focus on rebuilding Hezbollah not attacking Israel
As usual this is to help people scared of world war or a larger conflict. So first, to reassure you all that none of Israel’s opponents can even target the USA or most of Europe. China and Russia will definitely not get involved in support of Iran in any situation. So it never was any possibility of a world war.
For more on this see:
BLOG: WW3 in Middle East? BULLS**T
Also Israel has peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan and there is no way it attacks either of those countries. Separatists militants in Iraq, Syria and the Houthis in Yemen could get involved with long distant strikes but basically this is up to Hezbollah. And Iran won’t fight for Hezbollah.
But what happened yesterday leaves Hezbollah so devastated it can’t fight either in any effective way. It’s still got lots of missiles but it’s now lost all the command structure it had to use them effectively and won’t be able to reconstitute it probably for years.
It is a big thing to happen. But the risk is for people in Israel and Lebanon not elsewhere. Biggest risk for anyone in Lebanon and especially Hezbollah run areas in Lebanon as Israel likely has more strikes planned before it sees its mission as accomplished. A much smaller risk in Israel for retaliations from Hezbollah as most rockets will likely be stopped by the Iron Dome and it’s not likely to try a massive attack to overwhelm the Iron Dome - it is going to focus on rebuilding itself.
No risk of world war.
No way Israel attacks Jordan or Egypt.
It’s a big blow for Hezbollah and likely they won’t do much except low level rocket attacks, this may be it over as an effective fighting force for some years. Lots of missiles still but no coordination or leadership to use them.
This is because of the way it has happened with
the mid-range officers killed or injured first
disrupted communications with pagers, walkie talkies and not trusting the mobile phones
then Nasrallah with many other high-ups in a bunker last.
Hezbollah still have lots of missiles they could fire at Israel but they don’t have anyone in command and they don’t have enough of the command structure left to organize to fight back.
Israel is likely to have more attacks still planned but it may have already done the bulk of what it intended to do.
But this is such a devastating attack on Hezbollah that they are not likely to be able to rebuild to fight back effectively for a long time, likely years.
Meanwhile Iran
will focus its attentions on helping Hezbollah to rebuild.
is in no state to fight Israel directly
wouldn’t fight Israel directly to protect a proxy.
Iran sees Hezollah as its proxy precisely to distance itself from a direct fight with Israel.
That is based on listening to expert comment on the BBC by Yezid Sayigh, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center - he says Iran would focus on helping Hezbollah to
reconstitute itself which will take a fair while, years.
learn from the mistakes they made this time if it does rebuild.
If they rebuild they will rebuild differently, maybe not as a large social group with these mass gatherings of supporters.
Hezbollah is clearly still firing rockets at Israel but they are disorganized and not doing anything big. It will take them a fair while to decide what to do next.
From its side Israel likely continues with its planned strikes whatever they are which are probably not completed.
This is my transcript of his interview on the BBC:
Q. Let's speak to Yezid Sayigh who is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Institute in Bierut. He's also an expert in Palestinian History.
Yezid Sayigh, thankyou for joining us here on BBC news. What is your view on the impact the death of Hassam Nasrallah will have on Hezbollah and the conflict that we are seeing unfold?
A. Well clearly Narallah's death will have a massive impact. But had he been killed outside of the context of the ongoing war then things would have been different. Hezbollah would have mourned him but then gone through a selection process for his successor.
But his death follows something like a ten day period in which as your report mentioned, Hezbollah first suffered hundreds, possibly thousands of injuries from the pager attack, then the walkie talkie attack, and has had pretty much all of its military command taken out by various Israeli assassination raids.
And so his death comes at the tail end, I don't want to say the end for sure, I think Israel will continue with many more attacks that it's obviously planned.
But Nasrallah's attack comes at a time when clearly Hezbollah's ability to communicate internally has been jeopardised by the hard choice between exploding pagers or going on to conventional means such as cell phones which are more easily tracked by the Israelis.
How do they deal with this kind of situation? How do they deal with the obvious security loopholes they've been exposed to? How do they root out moles within their ranks? How do they replenish their stocks? The list is endless.
So we are looking at an organization that has been attacked both at the lower level of hundreds possibly thousands of its fighters killed or injured but also at mid level and top level command.
So in that sense Nasrallah's death I think marks definitively in my view the moment in which Hezbollah is experiencing what to me is the equivalent of the Arab Israeli war of 1967 when the Israelis launched a surprise attack on three Arab armies and demolished their air forces on the ground and overran massive amounts of territory within 6 days. It's that combination of an operational and intelligence success on the Israeli part that won the day in 67.
We are looking at something on those lines now with Hezbollah. After 67 the Egyptian president rebuilt his armed forces. Waged what he called a war of attrition with Israel along the Suez canal, and eventually this allowed Egypt to regain territory in 1973 in another war.
So I'd say that Hezbollah - I'm not trying to inflate its ability to rebuild and replenish. But I think that however hard it's been hit this is simply not the end of the fight for it.
Much diminished but clearly it will go on - partly I think because it can't afford at this point not to continue the fight because its domestic standing within Lebanese politics I think will start to be very seriously undermined if it is seen as unable to defend itself or to pick itself up and go back and fight again.
Q. Well, Hezbollah still has the capacity of course to fire rockets into Israel as well. Amongst those the other casualties of the strikes last night, Iran confirms that one of its Quds force commanders was killed. How far will Iran do you believe be compelled to go in terms of retaliation, in terms of a response?
A. This clearly is a massive provocation that goes beyond all previous ones such as the assassination of Hamas leader Ishmael Haniyeh in the Iranian capital Tehran two or three months ago. Nonetheless I think Iran's strategic position is to take the blows, absorb the losses and to avoid being pushed into a war that it does not seek at this time for a number of different reasons. I don't think they are ready to take on Israel in a bigger war and I think that they are going to have to absorb this loss in one way or the other.
Crucially I think there will not be a significant military response against Israel. What they will probably be doing I would have thought is thinking about how to help Hezbollah get back on its feet, deal with its security challenges, deal with informers in its ranks and other technological loopholes and vulnerabilities, and how to potentially learn the lessons of this conflict.
I think Hezbollah made the mistake in the past decade or so of preparing to fight the 2006 war all over again against Israel in south Lebanon. I don't think they were well prepared for what's finally happened. And I guess that the next time around if Hezbollah do rebuild, they will rebuild integrating different kinds of tactics and technologies into how they operate.
They might not even operate as a very large social group that can bring a hundred thousand people into a rally with social welfare and so on. They might change in a number of ways we have yet to see. I just don't think they are ready to give up the fight but it will be very very hard for them to pick themselves up from this. And I think the feeling that Iran would not defend them, ... we understand that this is because Iran sees them as serving its strategic deterrence not the other way around butI think that for a lot of Hezbollah's community, society, within the Shia community, within its own ranks, I think will find that something that shakes them, maybe to the core.
EVENTUAL END TO THE CONFLICT WOULD BE ALONG THE LINES OF THE UN RESOLUTION WITH A DEMILITARIZED ZONE SOUTH OF THE YEMENI RIVER
There is no way that Israel breaks the 1994 peace treaty with Jordan - or its agreements with Egypt either. Nobody has even suggested that.
The details of the border with Lebanon is contested. The main conflict is over a few small areas of only a few square miles but both sides have strong views of who they belong to.
Israel and Lebanon have a peace treaty close to completion with only some minor points of disagreement but that was interrupted by the Gaza conflict. It is certainly possible to get to a peace treaty between Lebanon and Israel.
Israel doesn't claim the proposed demilitarized zone in southern Lebanon for itself, it just wants it to be free of Hezbollah weapons and they are close to an agreement on this if they can stop the fighting.
The UN security council resolution calling for a demilitarized zone.
. Security Council Resolution 1701: The situation in the Middle East
This is a solution where a large area of southern Lebanon is demilitarized between the river and the Israeli border, The Litani River is shown in solid blue here:
Litani river shown in solid blue
This is about Lebanon’s call for peace in Gaza Strip
. Lebanon calls for ending Israeli war on Gaza
. Blue Line (withdrawal line) - Wikipedia
Lebanon says there are 13 points of disagreement along the Blue Line.
QUOTE "We face a historic opportunity to liberate our lands and prevent the enemy from invading our borders and our airspace," Nasrallah said in his speech.
Some of the main ones mentioned in that article are
the Land Terminus point B1 between Israel and Lebanon where the blue line reaches the sea
- Lebanon wants Israel to withdraw from this areaGhajar / Rhadjar - an Alawaite Arab village on the Hasbani River. Split in half by the blue line but Israel controls all of it, Lebanon wants half
Mount Dov / Sheba farms - raised land north of the village of Majdal- Shams of strategic importance, Lebanon thinks it should be part of Lebanon
QUOTE Dorothy Shea, former US ambassador to Lebanon, said recent talks between delegations of the two nations has concluded in an agreement regarding 7 of the 13 points of contention, this according to Asharq Al-Awsat, an Arabic international newspaper based in London.
They are relatively minor points but ones that matter to Lebanon and Israel.
There are two other main issues mentioned in that article
Lebanon doesn’t currently have a prime minister so it’s hard to conclude an agreement until they have one (haven’t had one since 2024 when Michel Aoun resigned the day before his office ended without a successor)
The issue is that after Lebanon’s financial crisis its government hasn’t been able to agree on a prime minister to lead them out of it Lebanese President Aoun leaves office amid political uncertaintyMany in Hezbollah are landowners in southern Lebanon south of the Litani river and don’t want to be forced out from their lands and homes
So it’s a difficult situation but neither side want a war and both will try to find a diplomatic way forward.
The Lebanon / Israel conflict is different from the Gaza Strip one.
In Lebanon the country is independent, it's not occupied by Israel in any way and the disagreement is over some very small regions of a few square miles along the border between Israel and Lebanon, minute details of where exactly the border is.
Although Hezbollah are counted as terrorist because of a couple of high profile car bombings, it doesn't do terrorism like Hamas do and it is far more of a militant group than a terrorist group although it is labelled as terrorist by some countries.
For Gaza Strip, Hamas is a terrorist group with a strong focus on terror and it has eliminating the state of Israel as an aim though obviously not practical.
Hamas has a military and a political wing and the political wing is more moderate. It is not impossible that in the right conditions it could renounce violence as Fatah did, which originally was terrorist too but then renounced violence and formed the peaceful Palestinian Liberation Organization.
Then you also have the civilians in both countries. In Lebanon they have a genuine democratic government though not working that well at present. The political wing of Hezbollah is currently minority in parliament.
In Gaza strip Hamas is an unelected government that seized power after they got a majority of seats locally in Gaza Strip - but didn’t have control of the presidency which remained Fatah.
Hamas has never had any elections in Gaza Strip, and doesn't recognize the president of the Palestinians.
Hamas has the political aim of ending the state of Israel which is obviously unrealistic.
In the proposed two-state solution for Gaza Strip, Hamas wouldn’t have any role in government. So politically Gaza Strip is far harder to solve and involves putting in place a new government. It can't be run by Jews, as there is no way that this would last long term.
The basic proposal is a meritocracy transition government by experts who are appointed for their expertise - as they work towards a democracy that has to be set up in such a way as to make sure it can never endanger Israel again - but can't be run by Israel. There are various ideas for a solution.
But in the case of Lebanon it already has a democratic government with many members not keen on Hezbollah which has a minority of seats currently in government.
So that is about an agreement between Lebanon and Israel as two independently governed sovereign states under the UN charter.
While Gaza Strip is seen by most as an occupied territory with Israel as the occupier. Israel have different ideas about it legally but it is certainly not an independent state.
So that's the situation. And Israel has no chance of eliminating Hezbollah and there is no way it could takeover Lebanon. It's maximalist goal would be to force Hezbollah out of the proposed demilitarized zone with a ground invasion. Though having killed Nasrallah it may not be planning that any more.
Whatever Israel do, in the end it has to be resolved diplomatically between two soverign states.
MORE DETAILS ABOUT HOW HEAVILY HEZBOLLAH WERE DAMAGED IN JUST 10 DAYS
Hezbollah is very much weakened because they lost
their leader
Most of their top commanders
Many of their officers
Many of their fighters
all their usual ways of communicating with each other
All in just 10 days.
They also discovered
they must have informants / moles in their midst they didn't know about
their supply chains are dodgy
They decided to buy pagers and walkie talkies so that Israel wouldn't spy on their mobile phones But the company they bought the pagers and walkie talkies from was a shell for an Israeli company.
So it turns out that Hezbolah bought pagers and walkie talkies manufactured by an Israeli company with a small amount of explosive in each one.
Hezbollah paid Israel for the bombs that blew up in the faces of their officers. It is very embarrassing for Hezbollah.
And then someone told Israel where Nasrallah and his commanders were meeting. Israel dropped 85 bunker busting bombs all on the same spot to hit him.
The lower and middle range Hezbollah recently shifted to pagers - those things that go beep beep that you normally see only in old films today. When a doctor gets the beeps they know they are needed urgently but have to ring up or go in to find out what it's about. So Hezbollah used those to avoid using mobile phones because Israel could track them on mobile phones.
So the first thing that happened is that within minutes of each other all on the same day several thousand pagers all blew up within a few minutes of each other.
It turned out that the pagers Hezbollah bought each had a few grams of plastic explosive inside them and special electronics that triggered the explosives to blow up when they received a particular message - and Israel must have sent that same message to them all.
It wasn't just Hezbollah, also the Iranian ambassador in Lebanon had one of those pagers too presumably to contact Hezbolah.
Many of them lost hands or were seriously injured - and many of them lost one or both eyes. There was so much eye damage that they ran out of eye surgeons in Lebanon and had a special flight of Hezbollah officers with eye injuries to Iran which is veyr good on medicine to treat them.
But Israel didn't check where the devices were before exploding them and many blew up in places like markets / shopping malls and many civilians were hurt not just Hezbolalh also some kids died.
Then next day Israel blew up a large number of similar Hezbollah walkie talkies. and some other devices belonging to Hezbolah in the same way. The walkie talkies also were to avoid using mobile phones.
Then they had a day of bombing southern Lebanon where they blew up many Hebollah missile supplies and dropped bombs on cities in Southern Lebanon and including ordinary home where they claimed there were hidden cruise missiles and such like with a photo of one in the attic of a house. The films of some of the explosions showed other things shooting out of the bombed buildings sideways suggesting they did indeed hit missile dumps though they looked like ordinary houses.
Israel said they blew up stockpiles of missiles that Hezbollah had been building up for 20 years. But they lieky have destroyed only a few thousands of the likely 150,000 missiles they have stored in Lebanon.
Then finally they chose a moment when Nasrallah was talking to a meeting of the high command and they dropped 85 bunker busting bombs on the place where Nasrallah was - deep underground below ordinary buildings in the Hezbollah run part of Bierut.
It was very deep - all 85 bombs one after anoher precisely targeted a small hole in the ground until they reached the bunker.
This means that in 10 days Hezbollah has lost
many of its stockpiles of missiles
many fighters and officers
most of their command structure
all their usual means of secure communications.
They must be very disorganized.
Meanwhile Lebanon itself is also in a chaotic state with many civilians having to leave areas that are under control of Hezbollah and southern Lebanon. And the hospitals in Lebanon are overwhelmed.
So it's a bit of an underestimate to say that the structure of Hezbollah is severely damaged. If it was just Nasrallah it would be a severe loss for them but they could elect a new leader of a strong organization and continue.
But he was killed along with many of the top commanders who were in the same room with him in a room they believed to be secure from risk from bombing deep underground - and that was after the lower ranks of Hezbollah was already in chaos. Plus after nearly a year of Israel targeting them with many recorded assassinations of Hezbollah commanders too in the last year.
And he was killed at a time when their means of communicating with each other were also severely disrupted.
This is why they are likely disrupted for years not just a few days.
They will basically have to rebuild from the ground up. They also need to find someone to organize the rebuild and liaise with Iran. It’s going to be a very long process for them if they do rebuild.
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