Israel picked off another top enemy commander on Monday, when Wissam Al-Tawil (stage name “Hajj Jawad”) died in a strike on Majdal Selm in south Lebanon, where he was carbonized while driving.
Al-Tawil was a high-ranking member of the Radwan force, an interplanetary militia loyal to King Stannis of planet Polaris Prime. I’m just joking, but the dizzying hodgepodge of militant subgroups has an unmistakable air of interstellar farce to it.
There’s actually nothing funny about the Radwan Regiment, though, and if there is, be sure to laugh from a safe distance. The group’s predecessor was behind the ambush and kidnappings which sparked the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006.
Radwan, as we know it today, was trained and consolidated by the Quds. It’s Hezbollah’s commando unit. They’re spec ops. In the fight to restore Bashar al-Assad to power during Syria’s civil war, Radwan fought alongside Harakat al-Nujaba, the Tehran-loyal Iraqi militia which lost a top commander to a US drone strike in Baghdad last week.
An official who spoke to AFP described Al-Tawil as having played “a leading role in managing Hezbollah’s operations in the south.” An undated, unverified photo circulated Monday claimed to show Al-Tawil serving as Qassem Soleimani’s driver.
The image above, depicting Al-Tawil with Soleimani, is, as far as I can tell, authentic.
For Hassan Nasrallah, the strike against a top Radwan unit chief was yet another slap in the face, coming as it did on the heels of last week’s Beirut drone strike which killed Hamas deputy Saleh Al-Arouri, the group’s de facto ambassador to Hezbollah, and a key figure in Iran’s inter-sectarian “Axis of Resistance.”
“This is a very painful strike,” one security source told Reuters on Monday, of Al-Tawil’s demise. Another source said “things will flare up now.”
Of course, things are already flaring up. Dozens of Hezbollah fighters have died in tit-for-tat shelling along Lebanon’s border since the onset of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza three months ago.
Over the weekend, The Washington Post ran a lengthy piece detailing US concerns around the prospect of a second front in Israel’s war against its regional foes. “Israel has made clear it views as untenable the regular exchange of fire between its forces and Hezbollah along the border and may soon launch a major military operation in Lebanon,” the Post wrote, adding that, “US officials are concerned that Benjamin Netanyahu may see an expanded fight in Lebanon as key to his political survival.” The White House, the Post suggested, “has warned Israel against a significant escalation in Lebanon.”
Antony Blinken is in the Mideast this week for another whirlwind tour aimed at assessing the humanitarian situation in Gaza and preventing spillover. It’s Blinken’s fourth trip to the region since October.
As most readers are surely aware, it’d be an understatement to call Hezbollah a significantly more capable force than Hamas. Hezbollah is an army, almost proper. A(nother) war with Hezbollah would be… well, a war. It’s not like Hamas and Gaza. It’s not shooting fish in a barrel (notwithstanding the fish the IDF shot on Monday).
That said, and with allowances for the fact that Hezbollah is much stronger than it was in 2006 and that Israel is preoccupied in Gaza and thereby stretched thin, Hezbollah isn’t a “match” for the IDF exactly, and Nasrallah would rather not. Engage in a full-on fight, I mean.
Still, Monday’s strike on Al-Tawil was an insult, and a rather egregious one at that. Last week, in some of his first public remarks following Al-Arouri’s assassination, Nasrallah warned Israel. “Whoever thinks of war with us — in one word: He will regret it.” That was actually four words, but maybe something was lost in translation and anyway, who’s counting?
Yep – it is one word only in Arabic.
Good to know.
FWIW “al-Tawil” is “the Tall”, perhaps another stage name. Or not.
We all carry around favorite random bits of trivia, and one of mine relates to Polaris (albeit it neither involves the Polaris Prime military nor King Stannis). Polaris is actually younger than the dinosaurs. One of the youngest stars in the night sky, its age is estimated at just ~56 million years.
As to the topic at hand, Hezbollah spent the last decade honing their craft by fighting in Syria’s brutal civil war. I would not want to be in an army that found itself fighting a ground war against them–hardened veterans all–on their own home turf. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be in any army under any circumstances, but that has to be close to some sort of worst-case scenario.
I don’t want to be into any army either but, err, my understanding was that battle hardening didn’t make veterans of everyone… Apparently, Talibans were still brittle troops when the Americans showed up despite the resistance to the Soviet and the conquest of Afghanistan against all other Afghan factions…
Furthermore, it doesn’t even matter if the other side is made up of Rambos. As long as they got mostly small arms and light equipment, the technological edge of the greenest western army would guarantee a lopsided victory.
Which is why these type of fighters wisely choose to fight asymmetric wars and refuse to engage in battle… Man to man, they don’t seem to match up and even if they did no exposed infantryman will withstand an F-35 cruise missile…
Israel and the US do not have an endless supply of missiles or even 155mm artillery shells. Hezbollah appears to have a hefty inventory of rockets and missiles.
Speaking of avoiding conventional warfare, an earlier use of guerrilla-like tactics was employed by the US rebels back in the 1770s. Ethan Allen and the Green Moutain boys and such.
Hezbollah already fought Israel to a stalemate in 2006, and that was despite Israel taking full advantage of its massive air superiority. Furthermore, Israel wasn’t simultaneously fighting a ground war in the Gaza strip. And in the 18 years since, Hezbollah has only gotten stronger. But yes, the Taliban were brittle to a full-strength invasion by the full weight of fresh American troops backed by the weight of an Article-5 activated NATO and the truly righteous anger still burning fresh from the horrors of 9/11. Also, what as an “F-35 cruise missile?” I feel like you’re just throwing around guesswork and buzzwords.
I was specifically addressing the idea that Hezbollah is a formidable army. They aren’t (afaict/imho). They’re an effective insurgency/guerrilla force.
F-35 can carry cruise missiles, I thought and checking Wikipedia and Lockheed Martin website, they agree – “The external wing stations can carry large air-to-surface weapons that would not fit inside the weapons bays such as the AGM-158 Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) cruise missile.”
Just a matter of wording. An F-35 carrying cruise missiles.
But do you want to expose an incredibly expensive aircraft to ground defenses just to launch cruise missiles? On such nearby targets?
Cruise missiles wouldn’t need to be air-launched, distances are so short there. Ground launch or sea launch I’d think. Exception maybe for a high value target.
Netanyahu’s decision making is more suspect as his position gets worse. A Politico article posited that he’s now increasingly being told what to do by the most extreme right wing of his wobbling coalition, which seems reasonable to me. I don’t know if there is a mechanism for him to be removed before the Gaza war “ends”, but one hopes there is, because otherwise it is in his interests for it to drag on longer than necessary.
JL – in line with your thoughts, why did Netanyahu choose to kill Al-Tawil while Anthony Blinken was in flight to the region?
As per story written before the news:
“US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling to Israel on Monday to discuss de-escalation efforts, the (Washington) Post reported.
“It is in no one’s interest — not Israel’s, not the region’s, not the world’s — for this conflict to spread beyond Gaza,” Blinken’s spokesman Matthew Miller said as he boarded the plane, according to the Post.”
derek, my fear is that either Netanyahu or his right wing controllers may increasingly think a longer or wider war is in their interests. Which seems mad but I learned a long time ago that people make decisions based on their own information, motivations, and incentives, which may bear little relationship to the greater good or even objective reality.