While many in Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and elsewhere around the world celebrate the death of Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, the New York Times mourns his demise, describing the murderous fanatic as a gentle and tolerant religious sage "who maintained that there should be one Palestine with equality for Muslims, Jews, and Christians". The Times assures us that as a Shiite, he represented a "historically marginalized group", so he was a Good Guy since he was Oppressed. It's all about the narrative among those who hate the West. You will never see a non-Progressive coded American treated so reverently in a Times obituary.
What next for Israel, for Hezbollah, for Iran? Hezbollah had always been Iran's ace in the hole against Israel. The potential Israeli threat against Iran's nuclear program - a reasonable threat given Iran's policy goals of Death to Israel! and Death to the Jews! - was checked by possible retaliation from Hezbollah's huge rocket arsenal.
In 2000, Israel ended its occupation of south Lebanon without any preconditions, abruptly withdrawing its forces. Hezbollah filled the vacuum, building its power base in the region, right on Israel's northern border. In response to Hezbollah attacks, Israel reentered Lebanon in 2006, fighting a tough war in which it won a tactical victory but proved a strategic loss, because it was fought as a conventional war on Hezbollah's terms. A UN Resolution promised that the area of Lebanon south of the Litani River would be demilitarized but, in reality, it was never enforced with the UN Peacekeeping Force serving as a shield while Hezbollah rebuilt its military capabilities. After October 7, Hezbollah banked on being able to demonstrate solidarity with Hamas, launching several thousand rockets, forcing the evacuation of almost 100,000 Israelis from their home, believing itself at minimal risk of massive Israeli retaliation.
This time around Israel pursued a different strategy, focused on dismantling key Hezbollah capabilities and taking out the organization's leadership and middle management, as well as creating an atmosphere of mental insecurity for the survivors, rather than taking on its opponents in a ground war. It's been impressive watching that strategy implemented. Earlier this summer, the Israelis took out a good percentage of Hezbollah's rocket launching capabilities. More recently we have the pager and cellphone exploits, and an increased pace of assassination of leadership, culminating in Nasrallah's death.
What has also become evident is the extent of Israeli intelligence assets in Lebanon, compared to Gaza. A lot of people in Lebanon, while they may not be pro-Israel, really hate Hezbollah, because that group has reduced the nation and its people to puppets.
In the past couple of days, it has been reported that Israel has turned back flights from Iran to Beirut carrying replacement equipment for Hezbollah, a demonstration of Israeli intent not to allow Hezbollah to rebuild. The next question is whether Israel will take advantage of Hezbollah's current state to temporarily reoccupy south Lebanon and use the time to systematically destroy Hezbollah's complex infrastructure in the region. If Hezbollah cannot rebuild, and other forces in Lebanon reassert themselves, it means Iran's shield is gone.
The recent events also highlight the impotence of Biden administration policy and the amateur hour performance of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.(1) President Biden delusionally believed freeing up tens of billions to fund Iran woud somehow have a positive impact from our perspective, instead of enabling its support of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Putin regime. Blinken is the quintessential model-UN kid, living in a dream world, with the shallow credentials of expertise so common to those in the foreign policy "establishment". His negotiations strategy regarding Hamas and Gaza is embarrassing.
Hamas: We want 100.
Blinken: We'll give you 95.
Hamas: No, and now we want 105.
Blinken: We'll give you 100.
Hamas: No, and now we want 110.
Blinken: We'll give you 105.
When you sell your house, Blinken is the guy you want negotiating on behalf of the buyer.
Sullivan appears to think that the Israelis are the bad guys because of Netanyahu. I don't like Netanyahu and wish he were not in office, but after all these years it should be clear that no matter who headed Israel's government, Hamas and Hezbollah would be pursuing the same course. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised that Sullivan appointed as National Security Council lead on intelligence matters a guy who headed the antisemitic Students for Justice in Palestine group at Georgetown.
And, don't forget, this is the team that gave a wink-wink to Putin if he was restrained enough to just "wet his beak" by taking the rest of the Donbas, giving a thumbs-up to Nordstream 2 and the INF treaty to show their good faith, and, when that didn't work, put restraints on Ukraine's response, allowing Putin an asymmetrical advantage in the use of weapons. Don't try to make sense of their policy, since they can't.
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(1) Sullivan and Blinken also played important roles in the Russia collusion hoax. In 2016, Sullivan, then with the Clinton campaign, was one of the lead promoters of the Alfa Bank allegation, the conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign had a secret server connected with Alfa Bank that supposedly allowed the Kremlin to communicate with the campaign. Like the rest of the allegations it was misinformation.
In 2020, Blinken, working for the Biden campaign, organized the infamous letter by 51 former intelligence officials denouncing the Hunter Biden laptop story as a Russian disinformation operation. It wasn't, and they knew it.
Sullivan and Blinken's roles in spreading misinformation in an effort to influence presidential elections contributed significantly to the erosion of trust in our institutions, leading to the current instability in our public processes, and posing a danger to the continuation of our democracy. They have no business being in leadership roles in our country. They should be outcasts, shamed for their behavior.
