Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike last year while inside the militant group's war operations room, according to new details Sunday disclosed by a senior Hezbollah official.

A series of Israeli airstrikes flattened several buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sept. 27, 2024, killing Nasrallah. The Lebanese Health Ministry said six people died. According to news reports, Nasrallah and other senior officials were meeting underground.

The assassination of Nasrallah, who had led Hezbollah for 32 years, turned months of low-level strikes between Israel and the militants into all-out war that battered much of southern and eastern Lebanon for two months until a U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect Nov. 27.

“His Eminence (Hassan Nasrallah) used to lead the battle and war from this location,” top Hezbollah security official Wafiq Safa told a news conference Sunday near near the site where Nasrallah was killed. He said Nasrallah died in the war operations room. He did not offer other details.

Lebanese media had reported that Safa was a target of Israeli airstrikes in central Beirut before the ceasefire but appeared unscathed.

During the first phase of the ceasefire, Hezbollah is supposed to move its fighters, weapons and infrastructure away from southern Lebanon north of the Litani River, while Israeli troops that invaded southern Lebanon need to withdraw all within 60 days. Lebanese army soldiers are to deploy in large numbers and alongside United Nations peacekeepers be the sole armed presence in southern Lebanon.

Lebanon and Hezbollah have been critical of ongoing Israeli strikes and overflights across the country and for only withdrawing from two of dozens of Lebanese villages it controls. Israel says that the Lebanese military has not done its share in dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure.

Hezbollah’s current leader Naim Kassem in a televised address Saturday warned that its fighters could strike Israel if its troops don’t leave the south by the end of the month.

Meanwhile, Israel’s defense minister Israel Katz echoed similar sentiments should Hezbollah's militants not head north of the Litani River and their infrastructure remain intact.

“If this condition is not met, there will be no agreement, and Israel will be forced to act on its own to ensure the safe return of the residents of (Israel’s) north to their homes,” he said.

Safa said that Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who negotiated the ceasefire deal with Washington, told Hezbollah that the government will meet with U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein soon. “And in light of what happens, then there will be a position,” said Safa.

Hochstein had led the shuttle diplomacy efforts to reach the fragile truce.

https://www.amazon.com/Africircle-AfriPrime/dp/B0D2M3F2JT

The dream of a free Middle East is coming true

The end of the Iranian regime began in September, when shortly after Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations, Israeli F-15s dropped 84 tons of explosives on the Beirut bunker in which hid Hassan Nasrallah, the talismanic leader of Hezbollah.

It emerged this week that the subterranean lair was so deeply fortified that Nasrallah met his end not in the blast itself but by suffocation. His body was found locked in a ghoulish embrace with a top Iranian general.

There could be no better metaphor for how the fortunes of Tehran are entwined with Hezbollah, its proxy. A year ago, nobody would have believed it, but it now looks very possible – perhaps even likely – that the demise of the Lebanese militia will presage the final, welcome end of Ayatollah Khamenei’s repellent regime before 2025 is out.

The Islamic Republic has never been so weak. Much has been written about its spectacular military humiliation. The Israeli evisceration of Hezbollah wasted tens of billions of dollars and decades of hard work; the Houthis sign their own death warrant nightly by firing missiles at the Jewish state; Syria has fallen, which Tehran views with foreboding; and in October, Jerusalem left the Ayatollah’s air defences in ruins. The following month, he spoke openly for the first time about ways to handle his own eternal rest.

But it’s the people that may bring down the tyrant in blood and fury. After years of sanctions and mysterious attacks on gas pipelines, Iran is in the grip of a winter energy crisis, suffering power outages daily. The economy is in freefall, with the rial plunging to record lows against the dollar, a $500 billion infrastructure deficit and inflation topping 30 per cent.

The benighted residents of Tehran are in Covid-style lockdown, on account of unbearable levels of pollution trapped in the city by the nearby Alborz mountain.

How much more can people take? While they whisper of another uprising, all is not well in the regime apparatus. National humiliation has incensed the young zealots of the IRGC, who are turning on their corrupt superiors.

Israelophobia is everywhere. In both senses. Is Mossad in our pagers? Are our bunkers safe? Officials obsess over a video in which Netanyahu promised a “free Iran” in which “Israelis and Iranians will build together a future of prosperity and peace”.

His words ring relentlessly in their ears. “Every day, that regime gets weaker. Every day, Israel gets stronger. The world has seen but a fraction of our power. Yet there’s one thing the Khamenei regime fears more than Israel… It’s you, the people of Iran.”

According to leaked figures, the regime executed 1,000 people last year, cowing the population as Iran came under pressure from abroad. To appease the restive zealots, new morality laws are due to be imposed. They may also be forced to hike gas and oil prices, measures which in 2019 provoked the uprising that was so bloodily suppressed. With all this in mind, chemical weapons are being prepared for use on their own people.

In quiet moments, I think of the late, murine Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. If he had known that within 14 months of October 7, Mohammed Deif, Ismail Haniyeh and Nasrallah would be dead; Hamas and Hezbollah would be approaching extinction; Bashar al-Assad would be gone, his military hardware in ruins; and the mighty Iran would be teetering on the brink, might he have changed his mind?

Much can be won with economic and military superiority, self-belief, democratic values and courage. There’s a lesson there for the West. We are on the verge of a new Middle East and despite the bleating of jihadi propagandists, that’s excellent news for Britain.

https://www.amazon.com/Africircle-AfriPrime/dp/B0D2M3F2JT