Safe and sound.

 

 

 It has been a hectic week! Far more than usual in this hyperactive region.

 David Daoud is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), focusing on Hezbollah, Israel, and Lebanon issues.

I am quoting from an op-ed he wrote for the Atlantic Council think tank

“On September 27, the unimaginable happened. At approximately 5:22 p.m. local time, reports emerged of a massive Israeli strike on the predominantly Shia southern suburbs of Beirut, known colloquially as Dahiyeh. Six buildings had been flattened, throwing up pillars of thick reddish smoke against Beirut’s skyline. Later in the day Hezbollah’s Al-Manar news outlet said the Israeli explosives had ‘terraformed’ the area. “The first comments from the Israelis were uncharacteristically cryptic, even for them, about the strike’s target. But clearly, it had been someone of high value, someone they wanted to ensure didn’t survive. Then the news started to trickle in on Hebrew media: Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah had been targeted, and there was a growing assessment that he was killed.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s media outlets refused to deny Nasrallah’s presence at the strike’s location, exponentially increasing the likelihood of his death with each passing hour. Confirmation—from Hezbollah and Israel—would only come the next day on September 28. Nasrallah had died, leaving behind an organisation virtually synonymous with his name.

Replacing Nasrallah—not just the man, but the cultish icon—will be a heavy lift whose chances of success are improbable at best, leaving his death as perhaps the one obstacle Hezbollah may not be able to overcome. If, in time, Nasrallah’s demise contributes to the dissolution of the organization that had become so identified with his person during his lifetime, the world will be better off for it.”

Jonathan Panikoff (The Atlantic Council) opines that Iran is split internally about how hard to respond to Israel. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and other hard-liners are likely advocating for a more aggressive response to restore deterrence and shore up Hezbollah. They are almost certainly the factions that pushed for Friday’s ballistic missile strike on Israel.

However, Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s reformist president who took office in July, has spoken of Israel’s escalation as “a trap” to draw Tehran into a wider war that it cannot win. Avoiding direct conflict with Israel is crucial to Iran’s desire to repair its ailing economy and ease Western sanctions against it.

Israel has put Iran in a no-win situation. If it fails to escalate and strike Israel, it loses credibility with its proxies, which believe it hasn’t done enough to help them. Yet escalation could result in retaliatory strikes from Israel on Iran itself, up to and including its nuclear facilities.

Last Friday’s strike looks like something of a compromise, enough of an attack to assuage hard-liners and buy Iran’s leadership time without going so far as to trigger a wider war with Israel or, even worse, with the United States.   

Importantly, Israel’s recent actions have restored the aura of its intelligence capability and strengthened its ability to deter its enemies. Both had been called into question following Hamas’s terrorist attack on October 7, 2023.

It has been the remarkable quality and depth of Israeli intelligence, and probably also its vast mining of data, that has allowed its change of course with Hezbollah.

Accurate and precise intelligence is what allowed Israel to take out Fuad Shukr, one of Nasrallah’s most crucial lieutenants, in late July and to sabotage thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies in September. It was necessary to pinpoint the location of Nasrallah and it will be a valuable asset in any future confrontation.

Unnamed sources told Reuters that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been taken to a secure location inside Iran. The move was made amid heightened security concerns for his safety, a day after the IDF assassinated Nasrallah.

The move to safeguard Iran's top decision-maker is the latest show of nervousness by the Iranian authorities as Israel launched a series of devastating attacks on Hezbollah. Nonetheless, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been urging to settle the score with the “Zionist entity.” Some Middle East affairs analysts claim that Ali Khamenei overruling his aides and advisers ordered the recent missile attack.

In a lead article that appeared in the Economist this week the authors cautioned, “Ever since Hamas’s slaughter of Israelis on October 7th 2023, violence has been spreading. One year on, the Middle East is an inch away from an all-out war between Israel and Iran. Israel’s skilful decapitation of Hezbollah, prompted the Islamic Republic to rain missiles on Israel on October 1st. Israel may retaliate, perhaps striking Iran’s industrial, military or nuclear facilities, hoping to end once and for all the threat it poses to the Jewish state.

Kill or be killed is the region’s new logic. Deterrence and diplomacy would be better.”     I doubt if we will accept their advice.

I want thank friends and family concerned for my safety and wellbeing.

I am safe and sound. The last time I checked all the family were ‘present and accounted for.’

Shana Tova.

 

We live in interesting times.

 

Beni, 

4th of October, 2024.