The Cruelest Day(s)

Today in Washington, D.C.

As I began to write this last Wednesday, I was literally watching the Iranian ballistic missile attack on Tel Aviv—> in real-time…..and wondering, "Is this a step forward for mankind? War as reality TV??"

I suppose the missile strike on Israel was inevitable—Hezbollah couldn't just sit idly by as Israel continued to dismantle the proxy army they had so painstakingly built and funded for over four decades.

The questions we should be asking as of now:

1. Will Iran be satisfied with a one-day barrage, or will it continue? (As of today, the answer seems to be yes- we’ve made our point.)

2. Will the Iron Dome (more effective against slower-moving drones) and David's Sling (specifically designed for the higher-flying ballistic missiles) be able to handle a sustained attack, or will the US use some of the impressive array of firepower it has stationed in the area? (US destroyers -including the USS Cole!- were involved in responding to the attack).

3. What will Jordan do? (open their air space to Israeli and US fighter planes)

4. What will Egypt do? (not a peep heard from them.)

5. And most importantly, how will Israel respond? (We'll get to that.)

The defanging of Hezbollah over the past 15 days or so has been nothing short of remarkable. I do have a major quibble with all of the commentators regarding their analysis on one point: they all have warned about getting too excited about the "decapitation" strike that killed Nasrallah and reminded us that there is always someone who steps right up to replace the slain terror chief. I'd agree with that in a historical sense. However, I'd argue that this situation is very different.

I think that Israel has executed a true "decapitation" strike against Hezbollah that began with the pager attack on September 17th that is estimated to have killed or wounded ~4,000 of Hezbollah's best fighters (hundreds critically). How do we know that they were among their best fighters? Well, they were important enough to be issued pagers, suggesting that they were expected to respond at a moment's notice.

The next day (18th), hand-held "walkie-talkie" radios suddenly began to explode, which killed an additional 14 fighters and wounded 450 more.

On September 19th, the Israeli Air Force struck hundreds of missile launchers across southern Lebanon, rendering them useless.

On the 20th, Israel bombed a residential building in Beirut, killing Ibrahim Aquil, Hezbollah's military commander, as well as 37 others. Fifteen of the dead were senior commanders of various units, including Ahmad Wehbe, head of the elite Radwan Force. Aqil had been wanted by the U.S. for involvement in the deadly 1983 attacks on the U.S. Embassy and the Marine Barracks in Beirut. The Israeli military said they had intelligence that suggested Aqil was planning an attack on northern Israel, similar to the October 7th Hamas attack.

On September 21st, the Israeli Air Force struck an additional ~400 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, including rocket launchers and additional military infrastructure in southern Lebanon.

On September 22nd, the Israeli military announced it hit an additional 290 targets; on the 23rd, they blanketed southern Lebanon with more than 1,300 airstrikes after warning residents to evacuate. Hezbollah responded by launching ~200 missiles at northern Israel, but most were intercepted by the air defense system. (Note: Hezbollah has fired more than 9,000 rockets at northern Israel since October 8th, 2023, forcing the evacuation of more than 50,000 Israeli residents). Later that night, Israel bombed the apartment building where Ali Karaki, Hezbollah's southern front commander and third in the organization's hierarchy, was staying. He survived... for the moment.

On the 24th, Hezbollah and Israel continued to trade fire, and Israel issued more warnings to residents in southern Lebanon to flee while heavily bombarding the area with hundreds of additional airstrikes. A strike in southern Beirut killed the head of Hezbollah's missile division, Ibrahim Kobeissi. The Israeli military announced the callup of 2 additional reserve brigades to "prepare very strongly" for a ground invasion into southern Lebanon.

On September 26th, Mohammad Surour, the head of Hezbollah's newly established drone unit who oversaw the group's drone and cruise missile attacks on Israel (from Lebanon), was killed in a targeted strike on Beirut.

Additionally (as everyone knows), on the 26th, Israel struck Hezbollah's underground headquarters in southern Beirut, killing its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, as well as 20 other members as they apparently held a meeting. One of the 20 was the above-mentioned Ali Karaki. (Nasrallah himself became Hezbollah's leader in 1992 only because an Israeli helicopter strike killed Abbas Musawi.)

On September 29th, Nabil Qaouk, the Commander of Hezbollah's Preventive Security Unit and a member of Hezbollah's central council, was killed in an Israeli raid of outer Beirut's Chyah area. (Qaouk was designated a global terrorist by the US in October 2020 and sanctioned.)

On September 30th, Hamas' top commander in Lebanon, Fatah Sharif, was killed in a targeted strike at the Al-Buss refugee camp at Tyre.

Taken in total, I would posit that this is far more than the traditional decapitation strike that simply takes out the leader of a terror group. In those cases, the experts are correct; there is always a next in line who is more than eager to step into the martyred leader's shoes. (However, if you're really serious about incapacitating a terror group, target the finance guys, or the bombmaker-they're the ones that tend not to train their replacements! The loss of either of those men puts a serious dent in the group's ability to function for a considerable amount of time.)

In my opinion, what Israel did here is much closer to the military "purge" executed by Joseph Stalin in 1937-8, when he ordered the execution of ~35,000 Red Army members and imprisoned about 1 million more. Historians estimate that 81 of 103 flag officers were killed, including 3 of their 5 marshals, 13 of 15 army commanders, 8 of 9 admirals (suspected due to their opportunities for foreign contacts), 50 of 57 army corps commanders, 154 out of 186 division commanders, 16 of 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars. While younger officers and NCOs were moved up quickly, they lacked the skill and experience of the purged leaders. It's impossible to quantify what this meant in the opening years of World War II. Still, common sense says that the Red Army paid dearly as the new commanders learned their lessons the hard way... through the lives of the Russian recruits.

What does this mean for Hezbollah? A conservative guess is that Israel has killed/disabled ~10% of their leadership. The remaining big 4 dare not use any electronic means of communication and probably dare not meet either. Reportedly, Hezbollah is desperately searching for the moles that supposedly infiltrated the organization in both Lebanon and Iran. It has been widely reported that the Israelis have known of Hassan Nasrallah's whereabouts for months and waited for the optimal time to strike. That seems consistent with Israel's approach to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh (a top leader of Hamas) who, in a catastrophic lapse of Iranian security, was assassinated on July 31st, when an explosive device smuggled into the Tehran guesthouse where he was staying during the inauguration of the new president of Iran was detonated.

To add insult to injury, the guest house was part of a large compound owned and protected by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And the bomb was apparently placed ~2 months before being detonated.

The strategy is certainly having a psychological impact:

On Friday (October 4th), it was reported that Naim Qassem, Deputy Secretary General of Hezbollah since 1991, not only turned down a "promotion" (shall we say) but also resigned from his current position, electing to return to Iran to "devote himself to religion."

On the 6th, Sheik Ibrahim Amon also supposedly refused the nomination to become the next Hezbollah leader. There are also reports that senior Hamas and Hezbollah leaders are fleeing to both Turkey ( a NATO member) and Qatar (supposedly a US ally.)

And to add insult to injury, the Washington Post ran a story yesterday detailing the story behind the pager attacks. Apparently, Mossad has been selling bugged walkie-talkies to Hezbollah for 9 years. The idea for the pagers came up two years ago. Hezbollah actually paid ~$1.750 million over the years for the very instruments that destroyed them.

However, the fact that the walkie-talkies contained listening devices raises a disturbing question: how is it that with these thousands of devices, Israel never picked up a hit of the Hamas attack of October 7th, 2023? Bibi has a lot of questions to answer when this is over.