Latest news with #Nasrallah
Express Tribune
16 hours ago
- Politics
- Express Tribune
Death wish or stress test?
Listen to article In the past three years, humanity has seemed to teeter on the brink of extinction. When the war in Ukraine began, many of us struggled to visualise the full scope of the threat we faced. Any miscalculation could have brought the war to Europe, where two nuclear powers sit. Further escalation could have led to an extinction-level event — once the nightmare of the Cold War — by dragging the US directly into war with Russia. Last month, we witnessed another episode of extreme brinkmanship, where — compelled by the desire to maintain its muscular image — a populist government afflicted with a shrinking mandate risked full-blown war with its neighbour. India's policy decisions these days seem to have little to do with rationality. It often convinces itself that it can offset the consequences of its actions through a mix of diplomacy, espionage, propaganda and wealth. Since few have dared to challenge the incumbents in New Delhi, their incremental brinkmanship (2016, 2019, 2025) did not come into sharp relief — until now. But the fact is that had President Trump not intervened, or had Pakistan's conventional defences not held, we could have been trying to survive in a nuclear wasteland. Now, yet another gift that keeps giving: Israel's incremental belligerence. First Gaza, then Lebanon, Syria, Yemen — and now Iran. In Iran, it seeks to destroy its nuclear programme and, if possible, overthrow the state. Israel now claims to have destroyed most of the nuclear infrastructure above ground, but lacks the bunker-busting munitions to destroy the underground facility at Fordow. That is why it urges the US to enter the fray. This is a curious development, because until recently, Israel had no shortage of bunker busters. Consider the indigenously developed Spice systems and Rafael's Rocks family of weapons. For instance, the MPR-500 is a smart bomb designed to wreak havoc underground. In Gaza, while claiming to destroy Hamas's fortified underground network of tunnels, Israel regularly used 5,000-lb GBU-28 laser-guided bunker-busting bombs — originally deployed during Operation Desert Storm. A Jerusalem Post report dated 28 September 2024, titled 'Inside Israel's Operation: Step-by-Step Breakdown of How Nasrallah Was Eliminated' by Amir Bohbot stated: Netanyahu gave the go-ahead for the targeted assassination that would shake the Middle East and the Arab world. The Air Force command gave the green light to arm aircraft with bunker-busting bombs. You're telling me that after invading a potentially nuclear-capable country, Bibi Netanyahu suddenly realised, "Oops, we didn't check the depleted inventory"? That would be like Elon Musk taking you to Mars and suddenly realising he forgot to arrange water or oxygen for the colony. What is going on? Bibi can be accused of many things, but such debilitating oversight is not one of them. When you listen to Israeli hawks in the media, you realise they're talking about altogether different weaponry. They want the US to use low-yield nuclear weapons. You may rightly ask: Israel is a nuclear state — why would it need another country's help when it could act alone? Because it has long maintained a façade of deliberate nuclear ambiguity. In fact, the Israeli nuclear programme is the Middle East's worst best-kept secret. Even so, since when has Israel cared about international law or diplomatic niceties? The objective is clear: to drag the US into a murder-suicide pact — at least diplomatically. Once it becomes America's war, Israel cannot be held solely accountable for starting such a large-scale conflict. But revisit the unofficial ask: low-yield nukes are still nukes. Use them to destroy a nuclear facility, and imagine the ramifications — not only for the country being attacked, but for the international order. A nuclear incident could trigger a chain of events that draws other nuclear-capable great powers into the fight. That is the very definition of a world war. It is as if the human race has suddenly developed a death wish. Why else would anyone risk nuclear war if they and their people want to live? Given that the triggers for such wars are usually a mix of national anxiety and rage over human loss (Pahalgam, 7 October), where leaders ostensibly vow to avenge such deaths and ensure nothing like it happens again — how can they not see that the consequences of their actions could lead to far wider devastation, killing far more people and destabilising global security? How many millions would have died if India and Pakistan had turned nuclear? Do these missile exchanges between Israel and Iran not kill people on both sides? Imagine the fear and anxiety among civilians across the region. I'm not preaching. I'm asking legitimate questions. Do these leaders not mind the annihilation of the human race? If they don't — why? It is easy to explain this fatalism within the Abrahamic faiths. All three major monotheistic religions share a similar eschatology. While the timing of the end is still a matter of debate in Islam, Christianity and Judaism, many believe that the three millennia allotted to human existence are over, and therefore the end is nigh. Despite considerable wiggle room, Muslims face a different dilemma: since no specific date is given, many feel free to see the end whenever they want. After every few centuries, they find themselves in a bind and start thinking the end is near — ergo, Al-Qaeda and ISIS's end-times wars. This may explain the tragedy of monotheists. But why are people of polytheistic or pantheistic orientation — like many Indians — not afraid to risk it all? That's when you realise that religious fanaticism might be one factor driving brinkmanship, but eschatology is not the sole reason. We don't know what is in Bibi or Modi's hearts, but we know that they excel at exploiting religiosity and the fanaticism of division to stay in power. To do so, they also promise their people a resurrection of golden past glories in a modern setting. But in Bibi's case, it is clear that even that promise is a means, not an end. As I've mentioned before, he faces many criminal charges — some so petty that mentioning them alongside a prime minister's title seems insulting. In India's case, it is apparent that its ruling elite wants China and America to start a war that will weaken both, allowing India to silently claim the superpower crown. If I weren't Popperian in outlook, I would have thought that history either seeks the destruction of humankind or intends to subject it to a stress test. But even so, my paranoid mind — shaped by science fiction and conspiracy thrillers — keeps pushing me in that direction.
Time of India
a day ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Iran Rejects Talks, Shuts Down All Negotiations Amid Israel Strikes: FM Abbas Araghchi
'There'll Be No Hezbollah': Israel's Katz Declares TOTAL WAR, Cites Nasrallah's Fate As Last Warning Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah continue to escalate as Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Hezbollah's leadership that the country's patience has run out. Referring to the assassination of former Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, Katz cautioned current leader Sheikh Naim Qassem that any act of terror would trigger a decisive response. Qassem, in turn, issued a fiery statement condemning U.S. and Israeli "aggression" against Iran and pledging Hezbollah's full support for Tehran. He rejected claims that Iran's nuclear program poses a threat and framed Western hostility as a response to Iran's independence and support for resistance movements. The war of words signals a deepening regional confrontation as Hezbollah vows to 'act as it sees fit' in the growing Israel-Iran conflict. 4.4K views | 2 hours ago
Bloomberg
2 days ago
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Why Is Hezbollah Staying Out of the Iran-Israel War?
00:00 We've obviously spent a lot of time the last couple of days talking about Iran's ballistic missile systems, their defense systems, their nuclear sites, but not a lot about the proxies. And namely because the proxies have been remarkably quiet, specifically Hezbollah. Why have Hezbollah been so quiet this time around? As you say, remarkably quiet and remarkably degraded. Let's remember what happened back in September when Israel's war on Hezbollah began. They the military capability has almost been wiped out. Israel has said we've destroyed most of their missiles, stockpile their drone stockpiles. And I don't know if you remember those scenes from the idea of the videos that they were really destroying entire villages because they were detonating underground tunnels that Hezbollah built, and that's where they stored most of their arsenal. So arsenal wise, military capability wise, that's been degraded. And secondly, we have to look at Hezbollah's command and leadership status now. Those have been decapitated, especially with the killing of their most revered leader, Nasrallah, and most of their commanders, their high ranking military commanders. And third of all, we have to look at that support base, that support place base. That's always been a fuel for the group. The morale is not there for war. Reconstruction hasn't started. They are distributing very little amount of money to people to rebuild their homes, be it in Beirut, southern suburbs or in south Lebanon. And that is a massive if we're comparing it to 2006 after the Israel Hezbollah war, that was very much different. And Iran is financially squeezed. And you can see that on the ground with Hezbollah, that there is not much money going around. So these three things, plus the domestic pressure they're under, their influence in Lebanon has also been has also declined quite drastically. Right, with the new president who is very pro gulf and pro-U.S. and the new government, excuse me, the technocrats and this pressure to disarm Hezbollah, though the talks have not started locally for that. This is still massive pressure and it shows you how much the group, the group's influence in Lebanon has been degraded as well. So does that change? I mean, of course, a lot of what you listed seems to be structural now in nature, but will the calculus change? Should the US get involved militarily in the war? That's a very good question, and I think everyone's asking this same exact question. That's the concern. If the US joins this war, would Iran try to pressure the proxies to go in? Or because this would mean the survival of the regime now with the Houthis is a bit different. A lot of the experts who follow the Houthis really closely say they don't listen to Iran that much and they're not ideologically linked to the regime, as Hezbollah was before and even now. So the Houthis might not join and join. We saw just one coordinated strike between the Houthis and and Iran and that, of course, the Houthis are too far away. And sometimes those missiles don't even make it past the defense system. But yes, if the US joins, the big question would be would Iran play all of its cards, including, of course, not just US assets in the region, but would it try to revive those proxies? For me, it's it's hard to see that as it's financially being squeezed and its own military capability is also being squeezed. We're seeing it even rationing missiles maybe for that moment when the US joins.
Asharq Al-Awsat
3 days ago
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Settling for Half a Victory in the Iran-Israel War
This war had been brewing for two decades - long anticipated but repeatedly avoided. Both the Iranian and Israeli sides had succeeded in avoiding direct confrontation, limiting themselves to proxy wars, until the October 7, 2023, attack happened. At that point, the Israelis decided to eliminate the sources of threat and shift their strategy from 'mowing the lawn' - targeting the proxy threats as they grow - to destroying the entire octopus. They started with Hamas, then dismantled Hezbollah's capabilities, exposed the Assad regime in Syria, and now, the war has reached Iran. There, Iran is developing its nuclear and missile capabilities, which have rendered Israel's deterrence doctrine obsolete, making war necessary to restore the balance of power in Israel's favor and reinforce deterrence. When it comes to the Israeli concept of deterrence, Ben-Gurion said: 'A long war is not an option for us; deterrence is our true weapon.' Moshe Dayan explained it further: 'We must scare them from even thinking of waging war, not just win it.' Deterrence remains a cornerstone of Israel's military policy, and that's why it seeks - at least in theory - to strip Iran of its threatening capabilities. But fighting between two heavily armed and destruction-ready forces is an extremely dangerous affair. We have seen in recent history how wars have spun out of control. Hassan Nasrallah never imagined that he and his group would be wiped out when he launched a few rockets. Bashar al-Assad never thought he would end up an isolated refugee in a suburb of Moscow. And Yehya al-Sinwar never envisioned the horrific destruction of Gaza when he planned the October 7 attack. It's only been a few days of fighting, yet the losses are significant. The Iranians have lost top-tier commanders, and their nuclear and missile facilities have sustained major damage. The Israelis are bleeding too - Jaffa, Israel's third-largest city, has suffered massive destruction not seen since the 1948 war, due to Iranian missile attacks. The Iron Dome did not offer full protection for a small country in both population and land. This confrontation differs from previous wars in terms of how victory and defeat are defined. The Israelis are now prepared to tolerate heavy human losses. In the past, governments would fall if as few as five people were killed. So far, Israel has lost over 400 soldiers in the Gaza war, and it hasn't stopped. That's what makes this different - both Israelis and Iranians are willing to bear the cost, and each side sees it as an existential war. Each party accuses the other of crossing red lines by targeting civilians, seemingly laying the groundwork to justify expanding the war, just as happened in the Iran-Iraq war, when most missiles were deliberately aimed at cities. Israel's defense minister warned: 'Tehran will burn if Iranian attacks on cities continue.' This in turn will lead to targeting political leaders, who were considered off-limits at the start of the war. Can the war be stopped in its first week? Israeli sources say they have achieved an immediate success by dismantling Iran's defenses - systems, missiles, and command centers - but strategic Iranian capabilities remain, as not all facilities have been destroyed. Will both sides settle for half a victory to halt the war and return to nuclear negotiations? Perhaps Tehran is willing, to stop the ongoing destruction, while the Israelis don't seem satisfied yet with the results; they want to 'complete the mission' to ensure Iran won't threaten them for the next twenty years. There are other players too, particularly US President Donald Trump, who is likely inclined to stop the war. Will he act in the second week before things spiral out of control? How could it spiral? The Russia-Ukraine war began with two countries; today, it includes North Korean troops, Iranian drones, and Western European experts.
Hindustan Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
This time Hizbullah isn't helping Iran
When Naim Qassem, the greying former chemistry teacher who succeeded Hassan Nasrallah as the head of Hizbullah, sat down for a television interview on June 12th, the symbolism displayed marked a subtle but significant shift. Gone were the portraits of Ayatollah Khomeini and the ever-present Iranian flags. Instead, behind him was the yellow standard of Hizbullah and the Lebanese cedar. Last summer, as Israel killed many of Hizbullah's senior leaders, including Nasrallah, there was simmering discontent within the Shia militia and political party. Iran, its long-time patron, did not intervene to help it. For some in the group, that was a betrayal. But Tehran was never going to trade its own skin for that of its proxy. 'Iran sponsored Hizbullah because it wanted Hizbullah to fight the Israelis,' says Meir Javedanfar, an Iran expert, rather than Iran having to. 'That would have been completely reversing and putting the whole subcontracting model on its head.' At the time one Shia critic of the group likened the relationship to a president and his bodyguards. 'It is the bodyguard's duty to defend the president. It is never the president's duty to defend his bodyguards.' More on the war between Israel and Iran: That logic never troubled Hizbullah's senior ideologues, particularly Nasrallah, who were content with their role as Iran's loyal enforcers. They were fighting for the Islamic Revolution. But for the movement's domestic base, it was an unpleasant feeling. 'The rank and file, the average Shiites who sustained heavy casualties and who endured Israel…were frustrated,' says Hilal Khashan, a political-science professor at the American University of Beirut. 'They really expected Iran to come to the rescue.' Thoughts and prayers Those frustrations returned with force on June 13th, when Israel launched a blistering aerial campaign against the Islamic Republic. The strikes bore a chilling resemblance to previous offensives against Hizbullah: precision intelligence, the elimination of commanders and a swift degradation of air defences. From Beirut, there was little more than a formal message of condolence. Once, Hizbullah was seen as Iran's ultimate deterrent—a force capable of preventing an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear programme. Nasrallah had boasted of 100,000 fighters and an arsenal of rockets. Now, as the members of the high command of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are being killed, its Lebanese protectors are silent. Hizbullah may have little choice but to sit this out. Israel's intelligence agencies had deeply penetrated the group since the two last fought a major war in 2006. In just over a year of fighting that started after Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7th 2023, Israel wiped out Hizbullah's military capabilities. The fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria in December has paralysed its efforts to rebuild. Today Hizbullah's missile stockpiles are depleted, and thousands of its fighters remain marooned and unarmed in Iraq, having fled there after a ceasefire with Israel in November 2024. 'Hizbullah as a fighting force is a thing of the past,' says Mr Khashan. 'They have become a lame duck. They can't even defend themselves.' Constraints are not just military. Domestic politics, too, have clipped the group's wings. After two years of paralysis and caretaker governments, a new Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun, the former head of the army, was appointed in January. He is determined to reassert the authority of the state over the country, at the expense of militias including Hizbullah. What remains of Hizbullah's leadership knows full well that dragging Lebanon into another war could tip the country into internal strife. Though Hizbullah swept recent municipal elections, there are even embers of resentment among its base too. Many remain angry that the group dragged Lebanon into Hamas's war after the October 7th attacks, while offering little aid to Shia communities whose homes were reduced to rubble. Hizbullah's influence over state institutions is waning: its men have been ousted from sensitive airport jobs, and the army is reclaiming control over points it once controlled in the south. The airport road, which only months ago was flanked by portraits of Nasrallah and Qassem Suleimani, head of the IRGC's foreign operations, now boasts adverts promising 'A New Era' for the country. Provoking another conflict, whether internal or external, could weaken the group even more. More broadly, the network of proxies and militias once known as the 'axis of resistance'—Iran's regional umbrella—has come apart. Hizbullah, long the crown jewel in that axis, is not interested in fighting. As one observer notes, without Hizbullah the axis of resistance no longer really exists. Many trace the unravelling to the assassination of Suleimani in an American drone strike in Baghdad in 2020. 'He was the institutional memory…he created the axis of resistance,' says Saeid Golkar, an Iran expert at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Israel's bloody campaign in Gaza has massively weakened Hamas's offensive capabilities, while some of the axis's more powerful Iraqi chapters are more interested in playing the country's elections scheduled for later this year. Without Suleimani, the glue that held Iran's shadow network together has dissolved. The success is 'not just building these networks, but also running the networks was a pair of shoes his successor, Ismail Qaani, was simply never able to fill,' says Mr Javedanfar. And Hizbullah, once the fiercest of Iran's proxies, is increasingly behaving like just another Lebanese political party—wounded, wary and watching from the sidelines. Sign up to the Middle East Dispatch, a weekly newsletter that keeps you in the loop on a fascinating, complex and consequential part of the world. Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines to 100 year archives.
