Death of Hezbollah’s Nasrallah pushes Mideast conflict into new territory
Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia, on Saturday confirmed the death of Hassan Nasrallah, its longtime leader, in a strike marking a major escalation of Israel’s campaign against Iran’s proxies in the Middle East.
The death of Nasrallah, after Israeli bombs flattened three apartment buildings near Beirut shielding what it said were Hezbollah’s underground headquarters, pushed Israel’s war against Iran-backed forces into new territory. Iran has long sought to have the proxies – Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen – serve as the front line in its fight with Israel.
But if one of its most important military assets, Hezbollah, has been substantially weakened, it could leave Israel feeling less threatened and put pressure on Iran to decide whether to respond.
While fiercely condemning the attack, Iran’s leaders have not taken any direct steps in retaliation, nor have they punished Israel for the killing last month of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran’s capital. That inaction has led some analysts to conclude that the Iranians do not want to risk a direct confrontation with Israel.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, released a statement Saturday saying, “All the resistance forces in the region stand with and support Hezbollah.”
www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/sep/28/hezbollah-chief-killed-in-israels-torrent-of-airst/
Weeks after Hamas launched the surprise attack on Israel that started the Gaza war last October, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, laid out his group’s approach to the war.
Speaking by video link from a secret location, he said that Hezbollah sought to strike a balance between launching cross-border attacks on Israel in support of Hamas and avoiding an all-out war.
“Some in Lebanon say that we are taking a risk,” he said. “But this risk is part of a beneficial, correct calculation.”
That calculation has failed dramatically over the last two weeks, as Israel has launched an escalating series of attacks on the group. The campaign has already incapacitated thousands of rank-and-file Hezbollah members by blowing up their electronic devices and killed many of the group’s senior leaders in airstrikes.
dnyuz.com/2024/09/28/as-hezbollah-pursued-a-limited-war-israel-went-for-a-knockout/
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that Israel had “settled the score” with the killing of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in an air strike in Beirut.
“We settled the score with the one responsible for the murder of countless Israelis and many citizens of other countries, including hundreds of Americans and dozens of French,” he said in his first statement since Nasrallah’s death on Friday.
He was alluding to 1983 bombings in Beirut that killed 63 people at the US embassy and 241 US marines and 58 French paratroopers at their barracks.
www.barrons.com/news/netanyahu-says-we-settled-the-score-with-nasrallah-s-killing-619c28bd
Iran’s supreme leader has said the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah “will not go unavenged”, a day after he was killed in an Israeli air strike in Lebanon.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced five days of mourning in Iran in response to what he called the “martyrdom of the great Nasrallah”, describing him as “a path and a school of thought” that would continue.
Iranian media reported that a Iranian Revolutionary Guards general was also killed in the Israeli strikes in Beirut on Friday.
Israel’s military said Nasrallah had “the blood of thousands… on his hands”, and that it targeted him while he was “commanding more imminent attacks”.