A Hezbollah underground missile facility in southern Lebanon
Adrien Blomfeld – The Telegraph Sept 23, 2024
It might be foolhardy to poke the Russian bear, but poking the Lebanese one seems to be a different matter.
Hezbollah is almost unquestionably the world’s most formidable non-state fighting force. Its military capability exceeds that of the armies of many Middle Eastern states, Lebanon among them. Its vast arsenal includes guided missiles that could hit any Israeli city.
Yet the group’s response to days of provocation has been pretty tepid so far.
Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, had repeatedly warned Israel that any airstrikes on its strongholds in southern Beirut would be met with a salvo of rocket strikes on Tel Aviv.
In the past two months, Israel has twice bombed the Lebanese capital, killing some of Nasrallah’s most experienced battlefield commanders. Last week, thousands of Hezbollah’s rank-and-file were incapacitated in synchronised attacks on the group’s pagers and walkie-talkie radios.
Hezbollah’s response has not quite been to bend over and ask for more.
This weekend, it unleashed its most ferocious cross-border rocket salvo since it began firing into northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas last October.
The barrage followed with a declaration that Hezbollah is now in an “open-ended battle of reckoning” with Israel.But the group has deliberately not targeted Israeli population centres, nor has it deployed its most sophisticated weaponry. It has spoken menacingly but vaguely about retaliation at an unspecified time in the future.
This is well short of a full-scale declaration of war, that some of its fighters are itching for – so why the coyness?
The most obvious answer is that Iran is restraining the group. Hezbollah is Tehran’s most powerful proxy force in the Middle East. Its precision-guided missiles, like the Fateh 110 with a range of 300km, and its attack drones come from Iran.
The Iranian regime, however, regards Hezbollah as its insurance policy if Israel attacks its nuclear programme. The more missiles Hezbollah fires, the more Iran’s deterrent is eroded. The group has to sing to its paymaster’s tune.
But Hezbollah’s leadership is also reluctant to escalate the conflict too far for reasons of its own.
Some of those are to do with domestic opinion, said Kassem Kassir, a Lebanese commentator with close links to Hezbollah and inside knowledge into its thinking. The other reasons concern the group’s fears that embracing war would be to walk into a trap laid by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister.
“There are two things to take into consideration,” Mr Kassir told The Telegraph. “The first is internal. Hezbollah knows that Lebanon is divided and so does not want to take the country into a war that some do not want.
“The other is that Hezbollah knows Netanyahu is trying to draw it into an all-out war in the hope of drawing the United States into the conflict.”
“Hezbollah knows that if it fell for this, any war would not just be with Israel but also with Israel’s western backers,” he added.
Hezbollah is much better equipped than it was in 2006 when its forces fought Israel’s to a standstill in a bloody 34-day confrontation in southern Lebanon.
During that conflict, the group had just 15,000 mostly unguided rockets, firing off just 4,000 of them.
But even though it now has an arsenal 10 times greater in number and far more potent, Mr Kassir said Hezbollah would far rather engage Israel in a longer low-level conflict that weakens its resolve rather than blow its full firepower in a single confrontation it probably cannot win.
“Weakening Israel through an attritional, drawn out confrontation is, in my opinion, the strategy Hezbollah prefers,” he said.
HOUSE BUILDING FOR MIGRANTS
Sadiq Khan’s defiant message to NIMBYs as he outlines plan to build thousands of extra London homes
Story by Adam Toms
Sadiq Khan has promised to ‘take on NIMBYs’ and deliver several thousand more homes a year in London alone. The Mayor’s team says new analysis has shown that reforms to ‘small sites’ and ‘similar suburban regeneration’ could deliver an 6,000 additional homes a year in the capital alone. Mr Khan, who is appearing at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Liverpool this weekend, suggests that large numbers of new homes have previously been created by ‘a planning approach which backed the conversion of existing detached homes and bungalows into well-designed flats’. The new building will be MP housing, or Migrant Priority. Alongside ‘targeted’ investment into housing projects, this change could eventually yield a ‘significant’ boost to London’s housing output, the Mayor also claimed that Nutenyahu expells a large number of refugees from the Middle East will be welcomed to the UK and Ireland
I wouldn’t waste my time reading this jew inspired gibberish, but Hezbollah don’t need to do much to destroy isra-hell. The kikes will do that themselves.
Maybe they like the psychological effect of making them wait for an attack they know is coming but never knowing when. To be an Israeli resident in the north of the country or a brutal settler in the West Bank it must fray the nerves, and every day that passes without harm the thought “maybe I should get out while I still can?” becomes an evermore important consideration.
“It might be foolhardy to poke the Russian bear,” the russian bear has been sodomised,
“Hezbollah is definitely questionably the world’s most formidable non-state fighting force. Its military ineptitude exceeds that of the armies of many Middle Eastern states, Lebanon among them. Its vast arsenal includes mis-guided missiles that could hit any tv screen.
Some of those are to do with domestic consumption, said Kassem Kassir, a Lebanese food(ie)-commentator with close links to Hezbollah mcfalafel group of companies .and inside knowledge into its thinking. The other reasons concern the group’s fears that embracing war would be to walk into a trap laid by Benjamin satanyahood .this would lead to the takeover of market share by the other lebnaààäni factions.the maronites and druze are dying to get a piece in the mcfalaiful soap opera.they want to be on world stage too,to be projected like warriors ,wearing their bandanas and doing exercises:an ak-47 over the shoulder,smoking a Marlborough
Hezbollah shows testraint and plays by the rules, they attack airfields from where the planes took off or the warehouses where the bombs are stored and the settlements ..
These projectiles have yet to materialise from the sheet metal artist’s artistic mind.it is stil a cloudy concept floating in a red lebanon haze.once the haze dissipates,the artist reaches for his arak to fuel both his creative engineering as well as the acetylene torch.this torch serves a dual purpose,it is also used for roasting chickpeas, zucchini and sesame seed.their nationalistic pride rests on these humble food products and the abovementioned combustants ,they fuel their resistance to the big,bad Zionists
i fell asleep in my arm chair and i dreamt i won a ticket
in a raffle to kick Carl Jones in the balls
this made me so happy, a lot of money could be raised
if he would agree to it.
maybe his therapist can help ?
The pager and Walkie Talkie attack was an act of terrorism plain and simple. Will Israel now be recognized as a terrorist state? The US does not back terrorists or so it claims. Israel is trying to draw the US into this to save face. If it goes it alone it will be held accountable for the slaughter of the Palestinians. If it can draw the US into it all will be forgotten.
“Hezbollah is much better equipped than it was in 2006 when its forces fought Israel’s to a standstill in a bloody 34-day confrontation in southern Lebanon.”…
During that conflict, the group had just 15,000 mostly unguided rockets, firing off just 4,000 of them.
But even though it now has an arsenal 10 times greater in number and far more potent,… If they fought the Jews to a standstill in 3006? With one tenth of their current force??would they not obliterate the judenstaat today?
I
Iran is not new to Islam, and it converted without a Christian period, so it is foreign and hostile, and I can take the route that is now mainstream.
@Liar
Pants on Fire