Current Nasrallah news below. I'll be avoiding fluff news like retaliatory missile attacks and other happenings and just focus on the dead or alive status and related rumours or statements.
What Happened? Israel blows up some building in Beirut in an attack supposedly targeting Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's very elusive big bad leader.
(this is somehow the best available footage lmao)
Latest:
IDF officially announced Hassan Nasrallah is kill Times of Israel
No body yet. No Hezbollah statement yet. I still consider this unconfirmed but it's extremely unlikely for the IDF to announce this without knowing for sure especially considering how long it's taken to do so.
More:
(in reverse chronology)
New York Times reports that Iranian officials expressed concern that the absence of a statement from Hezbollah on Mr. Nasrallah's status portended bad news and that "The cellphones of Iranian officials across the country beeped with text messages and phone calls asking variations of the same question: Any news from Sayyed? It was a reference to Mr. Nasrallah by his nickname and religious title." NYT
Iranian foreign minister says at UN meeting "the Israeli regime used several 5,000-pound bunker busters that had been gifted to them by the United States to hit residential areas in Beirut" Timers of Israel
(Curious that they are specifically saying bunker busters when this information would be impossible for them to confirm. It's as if the target was in a particularly protected area and that area was penetrated successfully?)
IDF says they are still investigating the results of the "very accurate" strike. Guardian
Hezbollah Health ministry says at least 6 are confirmed dead. No names given. Guardian
It's been hours since the strike and Hezbollah has made no official statement. Only info we have is from unnamed sources at low levels or outside but close to Hezbollah. Top leadership appears to be radio silent and unreachable according to sources close to Hezbollah. Times of Israel
Guardian reports sources close to Hezbollah say Nasrallah is "alive and well" Guardian
Iranian leaders are seething with Pezeshkian saying the attack is an "open and fragrant war crime that once again revealed the nature of state terrorism of this regime." Times of Israel
Ali Larijani, an adviser to Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, tells Iranian state television that "any leader of the resistance will be replaced". -
When asked what leaders he was speaking about Larijani looked panicked and changed the subjectTimes of Israel
Random unnamed Israeli official says "It's very hard to imagine him coming out alive from a strike like that" Times of Israel
Amos Yadlin former head of IDF intelligence says that his sources, which he does not name, are adamant that Nasrallah "is no longer with us." Times of Israel
Sources in Hezbollah claim Nasrallah is "fine".
Israel blows up some building in Beirut in an attack supposedly targeting Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader.
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So far everything I've seen is consistent with both him being killed and him still being alive.
A bunker underneath Haret Hreik is the kind of place where you would expect to find him and the IAF is really good at blowing people up. But I'm not convinced yet that he was actually there. They've obviously had really good intelligence on their military leaders since they've had so much success killing them off, but those guys actually have to do stuff like making phone calls that puts them in danger. Nasrallah isn't micromanaging the war on a day-to-day basis so it's a lot easier for him to just never use phones and never tell anyone he doesn't trust where he's going to be. But I don't believe the Israelis would do this unless they had some good reason to believe he would be there.
The argument that he must be dead because he would have said something by now doesn't make any sense. The guy doesn't sit around all day on his iPhone posting every little thing he does on Instagram all day like a 20-year old thot. When he makes a statement it's a video that gets passed around on a thumbdrive or something and eventually gets to the media. Especially when there was just a very serious assassination attempt against him he's not going to be doing any press conferences.
I guess at this point I'd give it maybe a 65% chance he's dead, 30% chance he wasn't there, 5% chance that he was there and somehow survived.
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Good analysis
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Good job bobby, here's a star
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Either way, Hezb really got fricked in just a month. Most people who follow the war before thought that the IDF would need months to even mop up just a handful of high-ranking officials, risking retaliation by mass infiltration and missile swarm strikes. However, the swift mop-up tells otherwise.
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"Mop-up" is a flippant remark that an r-slured child who thinks war is a game would say.
Having said that, it's surprising to me that they got such good intel on Hezbollah to kill all these guys. This is totally the opposite of what was going on in 2000 where the Israelis were powerless and Hezbollah knew everyone in the country who worked for them. I'm surprised there haven't been more missiles fired. But kinda not surprised. These numbers about "OMG Hezbollah has 200,000 missiles!" always came from the Israelis and never really made any goddarn sense.
Hezbollah is still using its same strategy as 2006 of just demonstrating that they can keep shooting rockets at a steady pace everyday no matter how many of them get killed. It's not the strategy I would pick but it's not failing. The Israelis have killed off half their leaders and have done absolutely nothing to reduce the number of rockets fired.
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Yeah, the mop-up term was
, TBF. On your second paragraph, you're spot-on. Mossad really tapped into Hezbollah quite well, probably having built a network of moles for years. This was unlike in the past, where the entire IDF and Israeli intelligence was basically rendered impotent against Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, its own home turf.
I think that Hezbollah prays for the IDF to invade already to have a rally-round-the-flag effect around them by the Lebanese, as a whole, to overextend the IDF, and just cripple Israel's standing even more. Already, everyone in the IDF and the government, who have been somewhat disagreeing lately in Gaza, have agreed in unison for a full-scale invasion. Sharon would be proud for this outcome, but not his fellow citizens. Not even the
.
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This but I think it's because they have confidence they can do better at close range. Israeli air power has always been dominant. Hezbollah has absolutely no counter to it at all. They can't even try to fight back like the Egyptians did back in the day.
But if the Israelis are stupid enough to try another invasion they're in for problems. Remember in the 2006 war the Israelis had complete control of the air and bombed whatever they wanted with impunity. Hezbollah had complete control of the ground. My best guess of what the Hezbollah strategy is right now is to hope the Israelis try another ground invasion, get defeated, they capture some hostages, and they bargain using them to get what they want. That's very consistent with everything they've done in the past.
Killing Nasrallah is pointless. You can see there I can think of exactly what Nasrallah would do and I'm just some random white guy in America.
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Israel is really going to have a massive future sunk cost if it pursues invasion
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They did this before. The "Security Zone". They had to stay there for 20 years. And then they ran away when they lost.
I think it pretty well proves that IQ myth doesn't work.
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Heck, I said it here a while back that Israel's domestic politics is just enough proof that the
can be stupid
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