[ForeignPolicy] Last month, Nicaraguan police raided the office and home of Finance Minister Ivan Acosta, who was forced to resign; allegedly for acts of corruption, but more likely because he had fallen out of favor with the presidential couple. Employees in the Finance Ministry now fear a wave of dismissals, similar to those that occurred following Murillo's purge last year of the Supreme Court, which resulted in the mass firing of some 900 government workers; including magistrates, secretaries, janitors, drivers, and even Ortega's first-born son, Camilo Ortega Herrera, who led the court's technical services department. They canned the IT guy!
On Aug. 6, Nicaraguan news outlet Confidencial reported that in late July, Murillo dismissed Ortega's chief police escort, Commissioner-General Marcos Alberto Acuntilde;a Avilés, who had served as a loyal member of the president's security team since the 1990s.
All this reveals "an internal crisis tied up with the growing power of Rosario Murillo," said Téllez, the former FSLN commander, who served as Nicaragua's health minister from 1979 to 1990. "Rosario is not satisfied with appointees who are unconditionally supportive of Daniel Ortega. She wants people who are unconditionally supportive of her."
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lots of family intrigue - Ortega's brother Humberto is in hospital detention, Murillo wants their 2nd oldest son Laureano to succeed Daniel as Prez. Laureano currently controls a lot of foreign affairs and managing the theft of foreign aid.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
08/26/2024 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[11129 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
#1
One of the reasons that the construction of an inter-ocean canal occurred in Panama rather than Nicaragua was that the latter government could not be trusted. In Panama a pro-canal cabal was created that chose independence from Colombia. It used propaganda to demonstrate that volcanos in Nicaragua would pose a threat to any canal built there. Panama won the day and a canal, which was likely twice as expensive as the proposed Nicaragua canal was undertaken.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. See also here. Responding to that and this story from yesterday. by Kirill Velesov
[REGNUM] The arrest of billionaire Pavel Durov in France has once again raised questions about the methods by which various states gain control over media platforms.
Durov owns the Telegram messenger, which is used by about 900 million people per month. This platform ranks 8th in the ranking of the most popular social networks in the world. India leads in the number of users of this resource.
Telegram has over 1.4 million channels and 140,000 chats, through which over 167 billion messages are sent daily. The company is valued at $30 billion, and its Dubai office employs 30 people.
The passenger of his own private jet Embraer Legacy 600 fell into the hands of French justice at the Paris Le Bourget airport, at about nine o'clock in the evening Moscow time. The French TV channel TF1 told the world about Durov's arrest.
According to him, the warrant was issued by the National Directorate of the French Judicial Police. The bracelets on the arrested man's wrists were snapped by the air transport gendarmerie.
Interestingly, Flightradar24 claims that Durov's plane attempted to change course and head south of the country. The businessman was put on the wanted list shortly before landing at the Paris airport, so it is unclear whether this was a failed escape attempt or Durov decided to go all in, realizing that he would not be able to escape.
The Telegram cryptocurrency reacted sensitively to the arrest: the Toncoin rate fell by 20% in the first hours after the news from the Paris airport appeared.
Among the crimes incriminated to Durov are complicity in terrorism, fraud and pedophilia. According to French law, a judge can imprison a defendant in these criminal proceedings for a term of 20 to 25 years. Durov, by the way, will celebrate his 40th birthday on October 10. It is doubtful that this will happen at large: apparently, he is facing a lengthy trial.
VERSION NUMBER ONE
The thing is that the brainchild of the Durov brothers - and Nikolai, the elder brother of the detainee, played the first violin in the development of the platform code - turned out to be too tough for cyber policemen around the world. The secret of users' correspondence is not available to third parties.
This is where the leading version of the arrest comes from: Western liberal elites want to take control of an independent digital platform.
The attitude towards what is happening was formulated in an indicative way by the American journalist and one of the main enemies of the liberal establishment, Tucker Carlson : “Tonight Pavel Durov will spend the night in a French prison, this is a living warning to all platform owners who do not want to censor the truth. <…> The darkness is quickly gathering over the former free world.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova recalled how Western NGOs called on Russian authorities to stop creating obstacles to Telegram’s work after the adoption of the “Yarovaya Law” on July 1, 2018. Moreover, Durov remained at large while Russian authorities restricted the platform’s operation in Russia.
"Do you think this time they will appeal to Paris and demand Durov's release or will they swallow their tongues?" Zakharova wrote.
According to Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, Durov remains Russian, and therefore unpredictable and dangerous. That is, there are no "good" Russians for the West and there never will be. Medvedev warned Pavel about problems with the law in any country due to his refusal to cooperate with the authorities.
Durov called his refusal a "principled" position. How far his principled stand will extend now in the face of a long prison term is not yet known.
In general, Russian politicians condemned Durov's arrest, seeing political motives in the actions of the French authorities. And State Duma Deputy Speaker Vyacheslav Davankov called on Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to seek the release of the newly-minted political prisoner.
But will this stir up the remnants of patriotism in the libertarian Durov, who declared back in 2014 that he had no intention of returning to Russia, but ended up in a clash with the West?
SEARCHING FOR CONNECTIONS WITH RUSSIA
Another version has appeared in the community of Russian military experts. Supporters of this version claim that it was the secure Telegram that became the main messenger during the special military operation, since Russian military personnel exchange information there.
"You shouldn't fly to France when most of the combat command of the Russian Armed Forces is sitting in your midst. They might ask for cooperation," says military historian Ilya Kramnik.
However, this version still seems secondary, since the military has other communication channels.
The plane from which the hero of Sunday's news agenda stepped off had arrived from Baku. This gave rise to speculation about his possible meeting there with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Then the interest of Western intelligence services in checking Durov's possible connections with the Russian military-political leadership becomes understandable.
And, of course, despite all the accusatory pathos about the actions of the world behind the scenes, it must be acknowledged that the messenger has more than once become a tool in the hands of those whose intentions were predatory and disgusting.
It is enough to recall the role of the Telegram channel in recruiting terrorists who carried out the massacre in Crocus City. The resource's moderators were members of the Islamic State of Khorasan, which is banned in Russia. Then, the lives of 143 people were tragically cut short. However, there is no answer to the question of what extent the owner of Telegram is responsible.
Perhaps he will be offered to sacrifice the principles of an independent "man of peace" and cooperate with those who organized this arrest by changing the messenger's program code. And it may well be that Durov's team foresaw this development of events and will make any manipulation of the messenger impossible.
#4
LOL Zakharova, whose country has banned Whatsapp, Facebook, Signal.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
08/26/2024 9:55 Comments ||
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#5
Maybe EC. But isn't banning them a bit more honest than secretly sending the FBI to direct their operations?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
08/26/2024 12:29 Comments ||
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#6
It begs the question why they didn't ban Telegram.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
08/26/2024 13:56 Comments ||
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#7
..in the US, the internet was found by SCOTUS to be like the phone company. Does the phone company get shut down because criminals use it to communicate illegal operations and activities? No. You get the actual criminal. Technically, the state has to get a wire tap warrant to listen in. With the internet, the perps remove that necessity and allow usable evidence for conviction to be out there.
#8
One of the charges are that Durov doesn't cooperate with French law enforcement.
Telegram has group talks, and in some of them, drug sales are organized or pictures of child abuse are exchanged. But if French law enforcement learns about one of these groups, Telegram doesn't respond to requests of French LE to cooperate in order to stop it because Telegram seems to believe: We're in Dubai, pound sand.
Well Durov is a French citizen arrested on French territory. Now he has a problem.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
08/26/2024 15:04 Comments ||
Top||
#9
Mr. Durov thought he was being clever a few years ago when he signed up for French citizenship in addition to all the others. What a sad illustration of the saying, so sharp he cut himself.
Long. Information dense. Links to things you probably want to see, dear Reader. Important enough, it seems to me, to go to the link to download and save the whole thing as a PDF or something for future reference.
[ElizabethNickson] There are 1000 ways to commit election fraud and we know all of them.
After engineer and data scientist Kim Brooks worked on cleaning the voter rolls in Georgia for a year, she realized she was on a stationary bicycle. She’d clear a name for various reasons, dead, felon, stolen ID, living at a seasonal campground for twenty years, duplicate, moved out of state, 200 years old, etc., and back it would come within a month. At that juncture she realized that a program within the Georgia voter registration database was methodically adding back fake names.
She looked deeper. For new registrants, the culprit was principally Driver’s Services creating new registrations and in this case, the manufacturer was a person, or persons. Within the government office, someone was stealing names and duplicating, even tripling that person’s vote and then forging their signature. Sometimes it was someone who just died, or a teacher who had no voting record. In the case of a nurse who died in 2022 with three registrations, she was registered to vote in two counties, and all three of her voted in the 2022 election and the 2024 primary. Each signature was slightly different, the last three letters spelled, ly, ley, and lley
This operation works under AVR, or automatic voter registration, and is being used to register migrants. They will not vote, but their names have been entered into the Voter Registration database when they apply for a driver’s license and their vote will be voted for them. I imagine that this is repeating something everyone knows, but the borders are open for precisely this reason, so the Democrat/RINO machine can steal their votes. By the way, the process for advancing permanent residency has been cut from 11 months to two.
In 2020, twenty states used operation AVR. Of those, Trump lost 18.
That’s because there are registration fraud rings, as identified in the Arabella doc. and in the work of Omega4America. This worked well in Michigan, where, according to Captain Seth Keshel, who is one of the leads on this fight, believes that Trump likely got 576,443 more votes than were counted and won Michigan by 8.5%.
Every state is host to a dozen or more NGO’s which do nothing but fill out ballots for the faked registrants. Peter Bernegger’s team in Wisconsin has video of NGO functionaries doing just that in Wisconsin in 2020 at 1 am, early morning after Election Day.
Seth works with demographic trends and does detailed statistical analysis; travelling almost ceaselessly to teach Americans how to stop the cheat.
A name to note, for those who want to do something useful beyond or in addition to poll watching this November.
AVR was launched in Michigan, after Trump’s win in 2016. By 2020 there were 547,460 net new registrants in Michigan. Today, more voters are registered to vote than there are people old enough to vote. Keshel:
That means 83.5% of Michigan's population is registered to vote. Pennsylvania claims 8,826,265 registered voters with a population of 12,961,683 per the same estimate used above. That means a paltry 68.1% of Pennsylvania's population is registered to vote, and that Automatic Voter Registration was needed there to boost the rolls and the follow-on phantom votes. Finaly, Wisconsin claims 3,456,732 registered voters with a population of 5,910,955. Only 58.5% of Wisconsin's population is registered to vote, a number that fits within the trend line of states not operating Automatic Voter Registration, and also highlighting why I think Wisconsin will be the easiest of this trio for Trump to carry. Another important thing to keep in mind when highlighting this sort of corruption is that 22.1% of the population is under 18, and therefore not eligible to cast a vote. The Census Bureau also counts illegal aliens and non-citizens in the totals and in many states felons can't vote ever again or at…
Per Keshel’s analysis, the Democrats and RINOs are frantically operating a dying political coalition which began to shift hard after Obama’s performance in his first four years, when not only did nothing change for the working class, it worsened. Democrat registrations in Michigan collapsed to the point where the Dems lost 16,000 as of 2016. Enter AVR and boom, 500+K new registrants.
What we are observing is a coalition shift from wised up voters recognizing that the Uniparty is there to serve itself. And the Uniparty is fighting back hard. While most of this steal is operated out of the Democrat political shops, the RINOS are all in, and I suspect embedded deep in Trump’s campaign. Easier to loot the public during a Democrat regime while voicing all the right frustrations very very loudly, with a subtext of extreme weakness, requiring ever more money.
Bernegger, who is one face of the fight in Wisconsin, says swings used to be much wider as voters became disgusted by one party, and hundreds of thousands would shift, but now they are won within 1-2%, even less, which is why swing states and particularly pivot counties are won by four or five digits, not six. And by 11,000, not 90,000. There are just so many votes NGO’s can manufacture, no matter how hard they work. And work they do, as soon as they determine the number of votes from the voting machines in the late hours of voting day. Hence the panicked, simultaneous, across-the-swing-states voting shutdown in 2020.
Everyone who has dug into election fraud has come to the same conclusion. At the coal face, with the assistance of literally tens of thousands of NGO’s funded by the usual suspects, the government is running the show. The county clerks, the lawyers and judges, various functionaries are the ones stealing the election. Some of them are unwitting, many not. All are breaking federal law.
THE GEORGIA NERDS
Kim Porter is the face of the Georgia Nerds.
“We are a group of data scientists and engineers and we have read half a million lines of code. Our sourcing is entirely from the Secretary of State’s data and we use multiple official government records to compare and contrast. Many of us are anonymous. Last week, one of our members, a member of the GOP, stole our database under the direction of the assistant head of the GOP in Georgia. And he refuses to give it back. The GOP want us to stop. We have to get along, we have to trust, we have to shut up…..”
She grins. “We have our work on servers in several states, and in each state there are back-ups.”
“We saw criminal patterns in the 2020 election which were not checked, so they continue. We observed the same pattern in 2022, and the 2024 primaries are ugly.
“In our recent primary in Georgia,” Kim says, “not one elected candidate won fairly. We have the wrong people running. Votes were manipulated in all of Georgia’s 159 counties.”
Porter reports multiple schemes using the deceased, the non-voting, and felons on the voter rolls. “We studied these until we realized it was a computer program stealing the IDs, changing the street, changing their status. They manipulate dates, backdating registrations, but the registration lists are updated every two months and they don’t appear on those old lists.”
They steal an individual’s driver’s license number, her social security number, her birthdate, her height and weight, stay the same, but the address will be fake and so would the signature.
“Generally they use people who don’t vote. They change a street number, a county, a signature: “But only a little fake, in the case of a nurse whose vote was stolen three times over, the last three letters of the signature were changed: ly, ley, lly…”
Each instance of identity theft is criminal; the fine is $50,000.
After the 2020 vote, registrants, whose voter history showed they had only voted in the 2020 election, were cancelled, only to reappear for 2022. “Votes are being deleted, swapped and diluted before , during and after an election.”
Wherever you look in the swing states, and unnervingly in the not-swing states, the same pattern is emerging. Especially in the south, where the left’s stated goal is to overwhelm what they call the “new confederacy”.
Lori Tullos, once military intelligence, is a plaintiff and with precision, she explains her case here.
The bureaucracy, elected officials, the Dems and RINOs are stealing every election down to county supervisor, county clerk. Every seat is gamed to the max.
In Wisconsin the bulldog on Adderall is Peter Bernegger. The writer closes with:
I am pretty sure all hell is going to break loose in November. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are working to prevent the cheat, the Trump team is fielding 100,000 observers alone. But the regime is ahead of them by miles and is funded by an estimated $4 billion. Equally, if they lose a lot of them will be charged with election crimes. Absurdistan plans to cover this story relentlessly, because we are supremely pissed off. If the decision takes three months after November, because of the challenges, if you come here, you will know what is happening.
#1
I learned a new word today, and one amazingly apt for where we are as a nation whose government and media are so adversarial as they commit misprision!
"Misprision -the deliberate concealment of one's knowledge of a treasonable act or a felony."
[RedState] Do you think the DNC went well? I'm not sure the Democrats did. Reading between the lines of what was said and done between all that "joy," I think the Democrats are panicking, and for good reason. They aren't selling themselves well.
If you think this is good, I've got sour news for you. This is the kind of thing that spurs Democrats into action. They live by the mantra "by any means necessary," and if the Democrats are the cornered animal they're hinting they are, then they're about to resort to some really brutal tactics to hold onto power.
The signs are all there. Bizarre time change-ups, internal discord, Democrats avoiding each other, sudden and out-of-place displays of patriotism, speech disruptions, and a presidential candidate that they had to force into the position of nominee by abandoning the Democracy they claim to defend. Even as CNN contributor Scott Jennings noted, noticeably absent from all the speeches and talks was an explanation as to why the country is in the state it is after Democrats have been in control for 12 of the past 16 years.
Moreover, as the DNC went on, a lot of claims were made that were disproven in real-time. Social media denizens and news sites alike watched the proceedings like hawks, calling out Democrats when they pushed lie after lie.
It had a very interesting effect, and while it will take days for polls to catch up, you could see just how much damage people telling the truth and exposing the facts were doing to the Democrat Party and Harris in particular by looking at websites like Polymarket. The website, which allows for betting on everything from sports to politics, prominently displays the 2024 presidential election. Harris led Trump in terms of favorability for a while, but now Trump is on top.
Interestingly, that switch happened during the DNC.
The Democrats see all this info and more and aren't going to take this lightly. As they feel the wall at their back, they're going to start lashing out, but don't think they're lashing out alone. They will have their allies in the corporate media and Silicon Valley pulling out all the stops to make sure that the party and Harris look as good as possible in order to fool people into believing she's not the communist she actually is.
As I've covered before, Harris and her VP pick Tim Walz are big fans of censorship and coming down on free speech. Both are on record proclaiming that they will come down on what they call "misinformation" and "hate speech," and they will make themselves the arbiter of what defines those terms.
You and I know how far they're willing to go because we witnessed it in real-time. The Hunter Biden laptop story, Tulsi Gabbard's Google results, and even various attempts to discredit and silence RedState have all come at the hands of the Democrat Party allies who are bent on seeing to it that the Democrats have every advantage. Google even tried to suppress information about the attempted assassination of Trump.
Text taken from the Telegram channel of neinsider.
[ColonelCassad] FORMING NEW GOALS AND OBJECTIVES.
In a New Era of Strategic Competition, the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has identified Russia and China as equal (or close to it) adversaries. At the same time, American strategists clearly understand that the confrontation will be long-term and costly, and the future operating environment will be determined by the expansionist aspirations of all major participants.
According to USSOCOM, in the "new era" of strategic competition, gaining the upper hand in the "gray zone" without allowing a direct clash for as long as necessary will be a "victory" in the new sense. At the same time, the command proposes to significantly reform the US SOF and organize military construction, identifying critically important geographic regions where the confrontation will correspond to the national interests of the United States.
To do this, it is proposed to:
- identify geographic regions and assets of strategic value;
- define US policy regarding strategic competition in the "gray zone";
- involve additional sources, organizations and specialists from the civilian sector of allies in the analysis and assessment.
USSCOM reformers believe that setting new priorities for US special operations forces will allow them to outperform China and Russia in the short term, from superiority in regions of confrontation to successful containment of armed conflicts.
USSOCOM proposes to define a policy of strategic competition "in the gray zone", additionally defining an acceptable level of competition for economic influence, natural resources, reserves of rare earth metals and control over global supply chains. Currently, the SOF command has already taken the initiative to develop and consolidate information and expert assessments in the field of strategic competition and the dynamics of escalation of conflicts in regions of interest.
At the same time, USSOCOM is already attracting independent experts to its work who are able to give a clear assessment of the effectiveness of investments in a particular direction in the confrontation, which in the long-term rivalry, in their opinion, will allow more successful use of available forces and resources to achieve their strategic goals. This will also allow the SOF command to most effectively set goals that will correspond to the strategic plan as a whole.
DEVELOPING SCENARIOS AND STRATEGY OF ACTION.
USSCOM, unlike the aged vultures on Capitol Hill, understands very well that US resources are currently limited, and offers several scenarios for how the situation might develop:
- In the first scenario, the US retains a strategic and technical advantage, but at a cost that is much higher than necessary;
- In the second scenario, the US again retains a strategic advantage, but is unable to create favorable conditions for achieving global goals;
- In the third scenario, the US resources used for strategic competition have a limited strategic impact. Therefore, these resources are better used to quickly acquire new technologies and innovations.
Given that USSOCOM analysts emphasize the limited strategic capabilities of the United States in each of the scenarios, imposing the old approach to competition with potential adversaries, in their opinion, will be ineffective. Instead of competing in all areas, it is proposed to strengthen only those in which the United States is traditionally strongest, i.e. unmanned technologies, computing power, AI, space, etc. So, everything?
Thus achieving global leadership and creating an overwhelming imbalance with the enemy.
As a simple and primitive example, we can observe the use of the simplest FPV drone technology, which has significantly limited the use of combat equipment in conflict zones. USSOCOM leadership has already indicated its intention to focus on innovations to strengthen the US position in gray zones around the world. USSOCOM will also prepare for the outbreak of conflict, including aggression against a US ally or international partner, such as Ukraine.
In accordance with the new strategic approach, the US Special Operations Forces will also be tasked with deterring adversaries, meaning great powers, from unleashing large-scale armed conflicts. The tasks will include collecting information on preparations for the conflict, assessing the operating environment and taking preventive actions that prevent the enemy from focusing on implementing their plans. A thinly guised Phoenix Program, for the next generation of Congress, et. al. who may have forgotten.
That is, using small forces and proxies to create hotbeds of tension that will prevent larger-scale actions from starting. That is, from creating man-made disasters to implementing the concept of indirect control over strategic infrastructure facilities of international importance, political and economic blackmail, etc. Most likely, we are now seeing the initial testing of this approach in the Kursk region.
The US National Security Strategy, adopted in 2022, states that the main priority of the United States will be deterring aggression while being ready to engage in armed conflict under the best possible conditions, giving priority to confrontation with China in the Indo-Pacific region and with Russia in Europe. In implementing this strategy, USSOCOM is defined as one of the most important roles, using limited resources to create conditions for effective action, preventing a full-scale conflict before favorable conditions for its beginning.
RESULTS AND FUTURE USE OF US SOF IN THE GLOBAL CONFRONTATION.
Significant changes are currently taking place that may lead to unpredictable events in world politics, and this is one of the reasons for the reorientation and reform of USSOCOM from the global fight against terrorism to strategic actions. It is assumed that now the US SOF command will focus on new areas of activity.
- Countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. USSOCOM will prioritize countering state and non-state structures and their attempts to acquire, develop and deploy weapons of mass destruction. The United States will seek to limit the spread of Russian and Chinese potential to countries that do not possess nuclear weapons (for example, the deployment of TNW in Belarus);
- US SOF groups will be formed for the so-called "civil affairs", which, having language skills, will build strong ties with public associations and organizations on enemy territory. The goal is to create public influence networks oriented toward US interests in anticipation of an armed conflict. Civil relations initiatives will be implemented to reach key constituencies in critical regions, such as creating separatist sentiment in specific regions.
- Information Support Operations. USSOCOM can use information support operations to achieve strategic effect in priority geographic areas by targeting key populations whose changing perceptions can have a measurable impact on shifting the operating environment in the United States’ favor. With its broad digital reach and relatively low cost compared to other core activities, information support operations can provide opportunities to counter China and Russia in new ways.
- Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief. USSOCOM identifies humanitarian assistance as a key driver of U.S. influence around the world. USSOCOM also plans to use humanitarian assistance to reduce or increase radicalization of vulnerable populations in regions of interest.
- USSOCOM leadership will continue to use SOF to prepare for future armed conflict, more broadly than it has done since the creation of the Office of Strategic Services.
The format of the fusion of an independent intelligence structure and a paramilitary organization in one person is assumed. The so-called cyber component will also be included here.
- USSOCOM will have the ability to initiate economic sanctions, which it will use in a strategic confrontation with China and Russia. Moreover, USSOCOM can become the leading component of the Ministry of Defense in synchronizing joint efforts with other departments in this direction.
- USSOCOM will receive priority in the use and implementation of new technologies, including in the area of operations in the so-called "smart cities". With a developed control and video surveillance system. That is, they will receive technologies to combat biometric systems associated with the enemy's technologies to combat terrorism and ensure national security.
We clearly see the undisguised, in fact, activity to restructure one of the key special services of our enemy on the eve of a global confrontation. At the same time, the Americans do not hesitate to define the zone of action of their special forces, including the territory of Russia. They designate their goals to create large groups of influence within the country and the formation and support of separatist movements. And this is the minimum.
In fact, everything new is well forgotten old, but in this case seasoned with modern technologies. Secret operations in the style of the "Cold War" are just around the corner, I hope our specialists have a worthy response to this. But unfortunately, we are far from the Soviet Union now.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Leonid Tsukanov
[REGNUM] Lebanese Hezbollah has announced the launch of its own retaliatory operation in response to the Israeli assassination of one of the movement's high-ranking commanders, Fuad Shukr.
The movement attacked Israeli territory with missiles and drones without waiting for Tehran to decide on its response to the death of Shukr and a number of other high-ranking members of the "Axis of Resistance."
Hezbollah's operation, although it took place in isolation from the rest of the "Axis of Resistance," was not criticized by official Tehran or other Iranian proxy groups. This suggests that the strike on Israeli territory was provocative in nature and was intended to draw the Israelis into the fight in new directions.
INTERRUPTED ANSWER
The Lebanese Hezbollah operation lasted several hours and was positioned as an "artillery preparation" before more serious actions. Representatives of the movement believe that they managed to catch the Israeli leadership by surprise and once again debunked the myth about the impenetrability of the Israeli air defense system.
The Israelis, for their part, claim that they knew in advance about the planned action, and therefore were able to almost completely disrupt it by carrying out preventive strikes on Lebanese territory. For these purposes, the IDF deployed more than 100 aircraft - a quarter of the national air fleet.
However, the game, apparently, was worth the candle. According to the IDF, Hezbollah initially planned to use about 6,000 missiles and drones in the attack, for which it concentrated more than 1,500 launchers in its control zone.
However, after the massive air raid, the movement was able to carry out only 320 launches and hit 11 targets, a significant portion of which, according to statements by the Israeli General Staff, turned out to be false. Among the thwarted "tasty" targets, in particular, are the Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv and the base of the special intelligence unit "Unit 8200" in Ramat Hasharon.
Each side predictably portrays itself as the winner. Hezbollah believes that it deserves to “win on points” — because it was able to carry out strikes on Israeli territory in the face of “internal betrayal,” which deprived them of the element of surprise, and even hit a number of targets.
In addition, the thesis about a certain “special goal” for which this adventure was started migrates from statement to statement by the Hezbollah press bureau. It is expected that the veil of secrecy will be slightly lifted by the movement’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, whose speech, according to tradition, is scheduled to take place within 24 hours after the operation.
Israel, however, reports on the successful repelling of “aggression by pro-Iranian agents.” Particular emphasis is placed on the fact that, unlike the April incident, the attack was repelled without the participation of foreign partners and exclusively by IDF forces.
Although in this case there is a certain amount of cunning in the statements of the Israeli General Staff. A few days before the exchange of blows, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Army, General Charles Brown, urgently arrived in the Middle East. He probably not only participated in coordinating the actions of the Israelis, but also simultaneously interacted with other regional allies of Washington.
In case Hezbollah's individual action is picked up by other Iranian proxy groups operating in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
PUSH TO THE NORTH
After the exchange of massive blows, both sides took a tactical pause. Hezbollah focused on regrouping before the next stage of the retaliatory operation, and Israel - on developing a new response strategy. The country's leadership took 48 hours to think, introducing a state of emergency in the country.
The question of how to proceed next hung in the air.
On the one hand, the Israeli government – and especially the far-right populists within it – have received the long-awaited “casus belli,” which allows them, if not to launch a comprehensive operation against Hezbollah, then to significantly increase the strike force on the Israeli-Lebanese border.
The current state of affairs has given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a free hand. He sees the hypothetical opening of a “second front” against the Lebanese Hezbollah as a good way to strengthen his authority and, at the same time, complete the defeat of the “security forces opposition” led by former Defense Minister Benny Gantz, which has been accusing Netanyahu of indecisiveness for the past year.
Possible objections from official Beirut are not taken into account: any discontent from Lebanon is rebuffed with the argument that the country’s leadership “condones” the actions of Hezbollah, thereby threatening the security of the countries in the region.
At the same time, the United States is holding back Israel's possible attack. The White House and the Pentagon, although they are assisting the Israelis in repelling Hezbollah's attacks, are unlikely to agree to igniting a new conflict in the Central Command's zone of responsibility. Especially in conditions where they have not managed to completely "extinguish" the previous one, which engulfed the Gaza Strip.
Washington will probably do everything in its power to dissuade Israel from a large-scale operation in the border area – at least while negotiations on establishing a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip continue.
Given that the next round starts on August 25 and that even after the exchange of blows between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel has not withdrawn its delegation, Washington's exhortations are working so far.
It is not worth excluding, however, that Washington is trying to buy some time to prepare its regional allies for a quick and consolidated response to the threat – in case Hezbollah’s operation ultimately turns out to be an Iranian trap, and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon escalates into a clash with the entire “Axis of Resistance.”
The anti-Iran coalition is now largely occupied with finding out whether Hezbollah acted autonomously from Tehran or whether it played the role of bait. If these fears are even indirectly confirmed, Israel is unlikely to engage in a direct confrontation with Hezbollah – but in retaliation it will increase the frequency of targeted liquidations of the movement’s commanders, including its top leadership.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
