9/27/24: Israel Strikes Beirut, Is Hezbollah Leader Dead?

We'll also talk about the threat that the IDEAF has been making to the Dahiya suburbs, ordering a massive evacuation of civilians, presaging what could be a Gaza like assault on southern leban And So Mouen, first of all, thank you for joining me today.

Israeli confidence that Nasraula has been killed is accurate. Now we don't know if that's true, but that is what the that is what the claims are.

Israel claims that it successfully targeted this headquarters and that it had precise intelligence that the General Secretary of Hasbudlah Hasasla, along with a number of other senior leaders of the movement were there at the time, and is expressing high confidence that they were killed. As of now, we have no verification from Israel that this was indeed a successful attack. At the same time, has Buddah and its media have

maintained strict radio silence. There could be various explanations for that. It could mean that the strike was indeed successful and that they won't be making any statement until they actually find his remains. It could mean that the strike was a failure and they're not making any statements to keep his real off balance, perhaps to spirit him to safety. We just don't know. So I think there are two

issues here. One concern is Hasbudlah as a movement, and the other concerns the broader strategic picture regarding regarding hasbud as a movement has suffered a series of assassinations over the past two weeks of some very senior commanders and if it's general secretary, who was an iconic charismatic figure, was indeed assassinated to day and even more so along

with other senior figures. It's it's tantamount to a decapitation strike, which will obviously, at least in the short term, severely undermine the movement and its ability to act and its organizational integrity, and will throw it into chaos and so on. But having said that, I also would not jump to any conclusions about Hasabuda's future as a movement by losing these cadres and commanders. I mean, uh No SODA's two predecessors best MUSSOI and if I'm not mistaken, we're also assassinated.

And it's true that Nosrela has been a particularly effective, iconic, charismatic figure within the movement, but Hasabelda also has what's called a very deep bench. It's a very deeply entrenched, various, sophisticated organization. Even though I should add that these latest assassinations do speak to complacency, to infiltration and so on, So as far as has Buddla is concerned, it would be a very severe blow in terms of the wider

strategic picture is concerned. It almost doesn't matter whether this attack was successful or not, because what Israel has now done has launched arguably the most intensive air raid in the history of the Arab Israeli conflict at a very densely populated suburb of the Lebanese capital, Beirut. And since then it has given additional evacuation orders to hundreds of thousands of residents in the same uh in the same neighborhood. And I think quite clearly Israel is dead set on

regional escalation. It sought to provoke a very widespread response by Hasbuda, which in turn will be used as a pretext to essentially flatten large parts of the Lebanese capital and perhaps other parts of Lebanon. And I think it's quite clearly trying to draw Iran directly into this conflict.

In the remaining months of the Biden administration, in my view, Israel sees a unique opportunity to engineer a direct military confrontation between the United States and Iran, and it has determined that the road to Tehran leads through the southern suburbs of Beirut.

will dose to there about the daya doctrine. Can you talk a little bit about what that doctrine is and with the irony that it appears to be that they're about to apply it to this area that it is named after, it seems like this strike that we're talking about now maybe just the beginning of a massive assault that's coming.

their constituencies. Isis unquote first enunciated this in two thousand and eight, but in fact goes back decades. I mean, if you think about the late nineteen sixties, when various plo guerrilla movements were ensconced in Jordan in the Jordan Valley. Israel essentially depopulated the Jordan Valley and destroyed irrigation works

in the Jordan Valley southern Lebanon. From the late nineteen sixties onwards, Israel has always, in fact had this approach that when faced with a military adversary, you not only seek to attack that adversary directly and seek to defeat it militarily, but at the same time you try to extract an intolerable price from its civilian support base, from its constituency, and from the infrastructure of the territory or state concerned, in order to generate political pressure upon that

military adversary. And that's essentially what we've been seeing in the Gaza Strip for the past year and what we're now increasingly seeing in Lebanon.

ideology whatsoever. His his his goal is to remain in power, and he's going to decide with whoever he can to remain in power, and so he would be it seems to me the most susceptible or his or entities with factions within his operation might be the most susceptible to Israeli infiltration if if he believes that that's his path forward. What is your sense of why you know Hamas has

been able to resist that type of infiltrate intelligence. I think Hamas has been able to resist it, but Hesbla has not.

Regarding the Syrian government, I don't think the Syrian government as such would be playing a role in this, for the simple reason that it sees both On and has Buddah as bulwarks that it believes are necessary for its defense and survival. So it's very unlikely that the Syrian government would be shooting itself in the foot this way. But I think what you can say is that you know, Syria has been at war for over a decade, has

witnessed a profound economic collapse. The same can be said about Lebanon obviously in recent years, and has Budda does have enemies in both Syria and Lebanon and elsewhere, and under such circumstances, it's entirely plausible that Israel and or the United States, particularly with the US now maintaining also a direct military presence in Syria, would have been able to identify and recruit a number of as and collaborators.

So I certainly I wouldn't exclude that, But again we don't really know to what extent this is Israel I presume, with the support of the United States, Great Britain, Germany and perhaps others, being able to successfully tap into Hazabadlah's communication networks, and to what extent it is a result of individuals penetrating the organization. I think Hamas is a

somewhat different kettle of fish. The reason being that since Hamas sees power in the Gaza Strip in two thousand and seven, there has been increasingly restricted passage of individuals into and out of the Gaza Strip, primarily because of Israel's blockade, and this has really reduced the opportunities for

Israel to recruit Palestinian collaborators. Secondly, Hamas, like Hasbuda, placed a lot of emphasis on counterintelligence and was screening and monitoring individuals who, for whatever reason, did have contact with the Israeli and for that matter, Egyptian authorities quite closely. And although Hamas obviously also has opponents and enemies within the Gaza Strip, it's a much smaller territory. It's a

much smaller society where essentially everyone knows everyone else. It's not too much of an exaggeration, and so it was easier for Hamas to keep tabs on Palestinian society in Gaza than it would have been for Hasbunda to do the same in Lebanon.

We're consulting with our Israeli partners and so on. I mean, you know, the same government the United States, which spent months warning the world about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, supposedly has absolutely no idea what Israel, a very close ally with whom it has extremely close intelligence links, in this case, it supposedly has no idea what's going on, has absolutely no involvement in anything, only learned about it, not through its own sources, but when the Israelis decided

to inform them during or after the fact. So I think Washington is playing this double game of being very deeply involved in Israel's activities, and I would suspect helping to plan them with provision of superior intelligence capabilities of course, all the arms and weapons that were used to carry out this attack, and not least providing diplomatic and pr cover, but at the same time feigning ignorance, seeking to distance

itself from these from these things. As far as escalation is concerned, I mean, a number of people have pointed out that, in fact, Hasbudah has been behaving with relative restraint in the past two or three months, where it's responses to Israel's clear steps up the escalation ladder to the extent that it has simply incinerated the ladder. You know, it hasn't yet responded with let's say, full skill attacks

on Israeli civilian infrastructure. It's been quite measured and seeking to limit its targeting to Israeli military and intelligence facilities. I suspect that's no longer going to be the case, and it's now going to engage in more widespread and

more comprehensive attacks on Israel. And in a sense, this will play right into Israel's hands if one accepts the premise, which I certainly do, that Israel's strategic goal is to push the region towards a full skill are conflagration with the intent of producing a direct US Iranian confrontation in

the few months that Biden is still in office. Because Biden is someone whom has proven time and again that he will stop at absolutely nothing to support Israel, even where it contradicts the US's own stated preferences, and we'll ensure that Israel is immune from any consequences for its actions, irrespective of what it does. I'm sorry, I can't hear you.