2024-10-01 01:50:25
A probable successor of the leader of “Hezbollah” Hassan Nasrallah, who was liquidated by Israel, is his cousin Hashem Safidin. He directs Hezbollah’s political affairs and is a member of the group’s Jihad Council. Therefore, many analysts believe that it is too early to consider the terrorist organization weakened.
The world is preparing for a complicated situation in the Middle East and for a full-scale war. The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry warned against travel to Israel until the end of next month. The government begins to evacuate the Bulgarians from Lebanon.
The Pentagon reported that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has authorized the military to reinforce its troops in the Middle East with “defensive” air support and has put other forces on high alert to “respond to a variety of contingencies,” according to spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder. The statement did not specify what new air forces would be deployed to the region.
Today The White House and the pope blamed Israel for the military strikes in Lebanon.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is strengthening his position with a new person in his government. Netanyahu appointed his former rival Gideon Saar as a member of his cabinetreported the Associated Press. The move expands Netanyahu’s ruling coalition and strengthens him politically, as he will now be less dependent on his coalition partners, Reuters notes.
Under their agreement, Netanyahu said Saar would be given a seat in the security cabinet, the body that oversees the management of the ongoing war. In recent months, Saar has said that Israel must continue fighting until Hamas is destroyed. He also called for tougher action against Hezbollah’s backer, Iran. Like Netanyahu, he is staunchly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state.
The media make predictions about what to expect.
With the elimination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, as well as more than ten senior commanders of the Lebanese Shiite group, its command structure has been decapitated. Its communications have been sabotaged with the shocking detonations of pagers and walkie-talkies, and many of its weapons have been destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in recent days.
Now finding Nasrallah’s replacement will be an even bigger challenge, Reuters writes. “The whole landscape will change significantly,” Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy director of the Carnegie Middle East Research Center in Beirut, told the British news agency. According to him, Nasrallah united Hezbollah in the course of its growth.
Any new leader will have to be acceptable to both Hezbollah’s internal factions and its Iranian backers. Currently, Nasrallah’s cousin Hashem Safideen, who heads Hezbollah’s political affairs and is a member of the group’s Jihad Council, is being pointed out as a likely successor, France 24 notes. In 2017, the US State Department designated Saffidin as a terrorist.
“Hezbollah” has no other leader who comes close to the murdered Nasrallah in terms of authority and experience, commented in the “New York Times”. However, US officials and analysts warn that hastily writing off Hezbollah could be a mistake.
US-based Middle East security analyst Mohammed al-Basha told the BBC that “any expectation that this rabidly anti-Israel organization will suddenly give up and seek peace on Israel’s terms is probably misplaced”. The group still has thousands of fighters, many of whom are veterans of the fighting in Syria. Hezbollah also still has a significant arsenal of missiles, many of them long-range and precision-guided, capable of reaching Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities. There will be pressure within the ranks of the Lebanese Shiite movement to use these weapons before they are destroyed, the BBC predicts.
Thanks to years of Iranian support before the start of the current conflict, Hezbollah was among the best-armed unconventional armies in the world, with an arsenal of 150,000 missiles, shells and drones, according to US estimates. According to Israeli analysts, since the previous war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006, the group’s arsenal has grown about 10-fold. More weapons from Iran have arrived in Lebanon in the past year, as well as significant financial aid, a source told Reuters. There are few detailed and publicly available analyzes of the extent to which Hezbollah’s weapons stockpiles have been damaged by Israeli strikes over the past week. In that short period, Israel struck Hezbollah strongholds in the Bekaa Valley, far from Lebanon’s border with Israel. A Western diplomat in the Middle East told Reuters that before Friday’s attack on Beirut, Hezbollah had lost 20-25% of its missile capacity. However, the diplomat did not provide evidence or details of his assessment.
Israel has struck more than 1,000 Hezbollah targets in recent days. According to Israeli officials, the fact that during that time the Shiite group was able to fire only a few hundred rockets a day proves that its capabilities have decreased, also writes Reuters.
The Israeli government can now choose how to continue its military actions, notes Sky News TV. Israel could order a ground invasion of southern Lebanon or continue its successful air campaign. There will be strong voices in Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet urging the Israeli prime minister to take advantage of the situation and send in troops.
But Israel has been fighting in the Gaza Strip with its less experienced opponent Hamas for 11 months without achieving a decisive victory and at an extremely high cost in human lives, notes the New York Times. Hamas’ extensive network of tunnels hampers Israeli forces, and Hezbollah has its own networks. In fact, the group “Hamas” learned from “Hezbollah” how to build tunnels, according to American representatives quoted by the publication.
However, Hezbollah has been seriously hurt not only as a military force, but also in the eyes of the Lebanese people, who are angry that the country is facing a new period of devastating violence. This may be a moment when the more moderate voices in Lebanon, including the national armed forces, can be raised, Sky News predicts. Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, said today, quoted by Reuters, that his country “has no other choice but diplomacy.” “The Lebanese government certainly wants a ceasefire, and everyone knows that (Israeli Prime Minister) Netanyahu went to New York based on the precondition of a ceasefire, only that the decision was made to kill Nasrallah,” Makari stressed.
At the same time, it is possible that Iran, which has so far refrained from intervening, will decide that the time has come to launch the thousands of missiles with which it has supplied Hezbollah, Sky News warns. After all, Hezbollah’s raison d’etre is to act as insurance against a possible Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and that hasn’t changed. But if Tehran judges that its proxies can no longer act as such a shield, it may try to accelerate its nuclear program, the US media summarizes.