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So Long, Safieddine
The world knew Hashem Safieddine's name for exactly a week before the IDF buried him under the suburbs of Beirut.
I should clarify. If you were possessed of anything beyond a glancing familiarity with Hezbollah prior to recent events, you knew Safieddine as Hassan Nasrallah's cousin and likely heir. He was a prominent, bellicose figure who, like his cousin, traced a decades-old relationship with Iran which was both close and personal.
So, although the world at large was only aware of Safieddin
So, who or what is next?
I don’t know. What I do know is that everyone — myself included — grossly underestimated Israel’s willingness to kill anybody and everybody from, on one end of the innocent-guilty spectrum, women and children to, on the other, the hardest-to-find commanders, the most elusive military figures, uniformed IRGC officials and Hezbollah’s entire leadership pyramid from the top on down.
Everybody’s dead. Or will be soon. The civilians are dead, the fighters are dead, the commanders are dead, the leaders are dead, the buildings are rubble, and what’s not rubble is on fire. It’s astounding.
If I were in Tehran, I’d be very worried. To reiterate: This whole damn thing — the “Axis” — was a giant bluff. Netanyahu called it, and he’s still killing people. Every, single hour dozens of people in Gaza and Lebanon die. And he’s going to keep killing people until that regime in Tehran is either no more or comes begging and pleading for him to stop.
As every regular reader surely knows by now, I’m adamantly opposed to the way Netanyahu is conducting himself and I think that in many respects, we’re witnessing the end of a democratic Israeli state. No one will ever look at Israel the same again. But I gotta hand it to Netanyahu: This is the ultimate manifestation of “F–k around and find out.”
What has happened to all of the businesses (arms, ammunition, oil, other commodities, illegal drugs) that were operated by Hamas, Hezbollah and the IRGC?
It is hard to believe that without those who are no longer alive- those businesses, which fund IRGC, Hezbollah and Hamas, are still functional.
This situation is trending towards despotism. The only ways despots become last years news is overreaching in foreign wars. That there is success in Lebanon is therefore foretelling more bloodshed. Can Netenyahu quit while he is ahead? The lessons from history do not predict a kind future for Netenyahu.