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2024-09-26 Syria-Lebanon-Iran
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Pager, walkie-talkie explosions took 1,500 fighters out of action – Hezbollah source
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[IsraelTimes] Officials within the terror group say chain of command remains intact, and fighters are trained to operate even if it breaks down, pointing to underground arsenal, tunnel network
The explosion last week of thousands of Hezbollah’s communication devices across Leb
...an Iranian satrapy currently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
put 1,500 fighters out of commission due to their injuries, with many having been blinded or had their hands blown off, a Hezbollah official told Rooters.
While that is a major blow, it represents a fraction of Hezbollah’s strength, which a report for the US Congress on Friday put at 40,000-50,000 fighters. The terror group’s leader, His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
...The satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb...>
, has said it has 100,000 fighters.
The blasts, which were widely blamed on Israel, were closely followed by IDF aerial assaults over the past week that have left the powerful Lebanese Shiite terror group and political party reeling.
Yet Hezbollah’s flexible chain of command, together with its extensive tunnel network and a vast arsenal of missiles and weapons it has bolstered over the past year, is helping it weather the unprecedented Israeli strikes, three sources familiar with the Lebanese group’s operations said.
On Friday, Israel killed the commander who founded and led Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force, Ibrahim Aqil. And since Monday, Lebanon’s deadliest day of violence in decades, the health ministry says more than 560 people, among them 50 children, have died in air barrages. The tally does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Israel said it targeted homes where Hezbollah emplaced rockets, missiles and other arms, having repeatedly called on residents to flee.
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said on Sunday that Aqil’s death had shaken the organization. Israel says its strikes have also destroyed thousands of Hezbollah rockets and shells.
But two of the sources familiar with Hezbollah operations said the group swiftly appointed replacements for Aqil and other senior figures killed in Friday’s Arclight airstrike
...KABOOM! ...
in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Nasrallah said in an August 1 speech that the group quickly fills gaps whenever a leader is killed.
Since October 8, when Hezbollah began firing at Israel in support of its ally Hamas
 ..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response ...
, it has redeployed fighters to frontline areas in the south, including some from Syria, the three sources said.
It has also been bringing rockets into Lebanon at a fast pace, anticipating a drawn-out conflict, the sources said, adding that the group nevertheless sought to avoid all-out war.
Hezbollah’s main supporter and weapons supplier is Iran. The terror group is the most powerful faction in Tehran’s "Axis of Resistance®" of allied irregular forces across the Middle East. Many of its weapons are Iranian, Russian or Chinese models.
The sources, who all asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, did not provide details of the weapons or where they were bought.
Hezbollah’s media office did not reply to requests for comment for this story.
Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King’s College London, said that while Hezbollah operations had been disrupted by the past week’s attacks, the group’s networked organizational structure helped make it an extremely resilient force.
"This is the most formidable enemy Israel has ever faced on the battlefield, not because of numbers and tech but in terms of resilience."
POWERFUL MISSILES
Fighting has escalated this week. Israel killed another top Hezbollah commander, Ibrahim Qubaisi, on Tuesday. For its part, Hezbollah has shown its capacity to continue operations, firing hundreds of rockets toward Israel in ever deeper attacks.
On Wednesday, warning sirens sounded in Tel Aviv as a single surface-to-surface missile was intercepted by air defense systems, the Israeli military said. Hezbollah said it had targeted an Israeli intelligence base near Tel Aviv, more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the border.
The group has yet to say whether it has launched any of its most potent, precision-guided rockets, such as the Fateh-110, an Iranian-made ballistic missile with a range of 250-300 kilometers (341.75 miles). Hezbollah’s Fateh-110s have a 450- to 500-kilogram warhead, according to a 2018 paper published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Hezbollah’s rocket attacks are possible because the chain of command has kept functioning despite the group suffering a brief spell of disarray after the pagers and walkie-talkies detonated, one of the sources, a security bigshot, said.
The three sources said Hezbollah’s ability to communicate is underpinned by a dedicated, fixed-line telephone network — which it has described as critical to its communications and continues to work — as well as by other devices.
Many of its fighters were carrying older models of pagers, for example, that were unaffected by last week’s attack.
Rooters could not independently verify the information. Most injuries from the exploding pagers were in Beirut, far from the front.
Hezbollah stepped up the use of pagers after banning its fighters from using cellphones on the battlefield in February, in response to commanders being killed in strikes.
If the chain of command breaks, frontline fighters are trained to operate in small, independent clusters composed of a few villages near the border, capable of fighting Israeli forces for long periods, the senior source added.
That is precisely what happened in 2006, during the last war between Hezbollah and Israel, when the group’s fighters held out for weeks, some in frontline villages invaded by Israel.
Israel says it has escalated attacks in order to degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities and make it safe for tens of thousands of displaced Israelis to return to their homes near the Lebanon border, which they fled when Hezbollah began firing rockets on October 8.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has said it prefers to reach a negotiated agreement that would see Hezbollah withdraw from the border region but stands ready to continue its bombing campaign if Hezbollah refuses, and does not rule out any military options.
Hezbollah’s resilience means the fighting has raised fears of a protracted war that could suck in the US, Israel’s close ally, and Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate Jews Zionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
— especially if Israel launches, and gets bogged down in, a ground offensive in southern Lebanon.
Israel’s military did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian warned on Monday of "irreversible" consequences of a full-blown war in the Middle East. A US State Department official said Washington disagreed with Israel’s strategy of escalation and sought to reduce tensions.
UNDERGROUND ARSENAL
In what two of the sources said was an indication of how well some of Hezbollah’s weapons are hidden, on Sunday rockets were launched from areas of southern Lebanon that had been targeted by Israel shortly before, the two sources said.
Hezbollah is believed to have an underground arsenal and last month published footage that appeared to show its fighters driving trucks with rocket launchers through tunnels. The sources did not specify if the rockets fired on Sunday were launched from underground.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Monday’s barrage had destroyed tens of thousands of Hezbollah rockets and munitions.
Israel’s military said long-range cruise missiles, rockets with warheads capable of carrying 100 kilograms of explosives, short-range rockets, and explosive UAVs were all struck on Monday.
Rooters could not independently verify the military claims.
Boaz Shapira, a researcher at Alma, an Israeli think tank that specializes in Hezbollah, said Israel had yet to target strategic sites such as long-range missiles and drone sites.
"I don’t think we are anywhere near finishing this," Shapira said.
Hezbollah’s arsenal is believed to comprise some 150,000 rockets, the US Congress report said. Krieg said its most powerful, long-range ballistic missiles were kept below ground.
Hezbollah has spent years building a tunnel network that by Israeli estimates extends for hundreds of miles. The Israeli military said Monday’s airstrikes hit Hezbollah missile launch sites hidden under homes in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah has said it does not place military infrastructure near civilians. Hezbollah has issued no statement on the impact of Israel’s strikes since Monday.
TUNNELS
The group’s arsenal and tunnels have expanded since the 2006 war, especially precision guidance systems, leader Nasrallah has said. Hezbollah officials have said the group has used a small part of the arsenal in fighting over the past year.
Israeli officials have said Hezbollah’s military infrastructure is tightly meshed into the villages and communities of southern Lebanon, with ammunition and missile launcher pads stored in houses throughout the area. Israel has been pounding some of those villages for months to degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities.
Confirmed details on the tunnel network remain scarce.
A 2021 report by Alma, the Israeli think tank, said Iran and North Korea
...hereditary Communist monarchy distinguished by its truculence and periodic acts of violence. Distinguishing features include Songun (Army First) policy, which involves feeding the army before anyone but the Dear Leadership, and Juche, which is Kim Jong Il's personal interpretation of Marxism-Leninism, which he told everybody was brilliant. In 1950 the industrialized North invaded agrarian South Korea. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force opposing the invasion, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel. Seventy years later the economic results are in and it doesn't look good for Juche...
both helped build up the network of tunnels in the aftermath of the 2006 war.
Israel has already struggled to root out Hamas commanders and self-reliant fighting units from the tunnels crisscrossing Gaza.
"It is one of our biggest challenges in Gaza, and it is certainly something we could meet in Lebanon," said Carmit Valensi, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, a think-tank.
Krieg said that unlike Gaza, where most tunnels are manually dug into a sandy soil, the tunnels in Lebanon had been dug deep in mountain rock. "They are far less accessible than in Gaza and even less easy to destroy." 
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Posted by trailing wife 2024-09-26 00:00||
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