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Hezbollah confirms assassination of leader
In a statement, the Lebanese group has confirmed Israeli claims that its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed yesterday.
Here are some highlights from the statement:
- His Eminence, the Master of Resistance, the righteous servant, has passed away to be with his Lord and to His pleasure as a great martyr,
- His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary-General of Hezbollah, has joined his great, immortal martyr comrades whose path he led for nearly thirty years, during which he led them from victory to victory.
- We offer our condolences … to Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei, may his shadow endure, the great authorities, the mujahideen, the believers, the nation of resistance, our patient and struggling Lebanese people, the entire Islamic nation, all the free and oppressed people in the world, and his honorable and patient family.
- We offer our condolences and congratulations to his fellow martyrs who joined his pure and holy procession following the treacherous Zionist raid on the southern suburb.
- The leadership of Hezbollah pledges … that it will continue its jihad in confronting the enemy, in support of Gaza and Palestine, and in defense of Lebanon and its steadfast and honorable people.
- To the honorable mujahideen and the victorious and triumphant heroes of the Islamic Resistance, you are the trust of the beloved martyr Sayyid [Nasrallah].
Nuclear weapons and possible regional escalation scenarios
The potential for major regional escalation is high and could come in different forms, according to Sami al-Arian, director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University.
He told Al Jazeera that “one form obviously is a regional war that Iran would be part of”.
“But I doubt that that would be a beginning. I think there will be major retaliatory strikes coming from Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and other places, possibly. That may lead to a regional war depending on how Israel responds,” al-Arian said.
He also said that “apparently, Israel is trying to get a regional war, particularly a few weeks before the presidential elections in America, trying to draw America into this fight”, adding that Israel has “a major interest in trying to get Iran’s power degraded, particularly its nuclear programme”.
“There is also a theory that Iran has been waiting until it develops that nuclear weapon and didn’t want to escalate before it actually has that weapon. Whether that is true or not, we have to wait and see,” al-Arian said.
“There is no evidence that it has the weapon, but it has the capability of having it, particularly after it has massively enriched uranium to the point where it can get a nuclear weapon within a few weeks. Whether they make the decision to have it or not, that remains to be seen,” he added.
‘The worst is to come regardless of the outcome of the strike on Nasrallah’
We’ve spoken to Joseph Bahout, the Beirut-based director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, about Israel’s ongoing assault on Lebanon and what could happen next.
Here’s what he said about the situation in Beirut this morning:
“I’m talking to you and there’s a drone flying over the southern suburb where I live some 500-600metres from. Bombings have not stopped all night long – you can see pictures of people on the streets, on the roads, sleeping in open-air spaces, really left alone without any care and sometimes without any food to eat.
“So Lebanon today is a complete mess, it’s a country in chaos and I think that the worst is to come regardless of the political and military results of the strike on Hassan Nasrallah or not.
And here are Bahout’s comments about how things might play out:
“There are a series of questions – what will the death of Hassan Nasrallah and then what does this change in the Lebanese domestic equation?
“Hezbollah is a very powerful party within the Lebanese chessboard; of course the party is now weakened and decimated for a while but I think it will bounce back, at least politically internally. So we’ll have to see what will be the behaviour of the party – and that has to do with the regional conundrum.
“And then are the next steps in the Israeli-Lebanese war. We are faced with one or two strong scenarios.
“Either Netanyahu and the Israeli leadership will take this as an opportunity to push the momentum and maybe try to get it to a ground offensive against Lebanon, taking benefit of the probably enormous disarray that Hezbollah is in today, or it will upscale and continue this massive bombing campaign, as it is the case right now, in order to force Hezbollah, if it remains intact, to sign a sort of ceasefire and revise the security arrangement in the south.”
