9/27/24: Israel Strikes Beirut, Is Hezbollah Leader Dead?
19:09 Share

Kroger brand products exclusively at Fry's have the great taste you'll celebrate. That's why over 40 million people choose Kroger brand products, making them a true crowd pleaser. And with quality guaranteed, you'll love your choice or get your money back. Score Kroger brand products with savings you can cheer for and great taste you can't resist. Fry's, fresh for everyone.

Get ready for a full month of fiesta y cultura because it's time for Viva Tucson. Let's celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month como nunca antes in true Tucson style. From September 15th to October 15th, join us for comida, musica y eventos that you won't find anywhere else. Our rich history and traditions make the Old Pueblo the perfect place para celebrar y aprender.

Mark your calendars so you don't miss out on this celebración. Visita visittucson.org slash viva. Stay farm and DJ Dramos from Life as a Gringo. No making smarter financial moves today secures a financial freedom for a successful tomorrow. ♪

Now we have a level of privilege that our parents never had. So what do we do with it, right? How do we utilize the opportunities that we have that they don't, right? And a lot of that is educating ourselves, educating ourselves on how to not make the same mistakes they did. ♪

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. State Farm, proud sponsor of My Cultura Podcast Network. All right, I'm joined here by Moeen Roubini, a Mideast analyst, to talk about Israel's devastating strike on the Israeli suburbs, which they are claiming, or we'll talk about this in a moment, to have taken out Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.

We'll also talk about the threat that the IDF has been making to the Dahiya suburbs, ordering a massive evacuation of civilians, presaging what could be a Gaza-like assault on southern Lebanon. So, Moeen, first of all, thank you for joining me today. Good to be with you. So the way that this works on YouTube and wherever else people are watching this is that

Many of you, by the time you're watching this, may know a little bit more about the precise outcome of this attack than we do as we're speaking now at 5.06 p.m. Eastern on Friday.

We're going to let's let's have the first part of this conversation on the assumption that the Israeli confidence that Nasrallah has been killed is accurate. Now, we don't know if that's true, but that is what the that is what the claims are. So we'll have that we'll have a conversation based on that possibility, allowing for the other possibility.

That he survived this attack and we'll know more in the coming days, hours and even minutes. This is a developing story. So, Moeen, what do we know so far? My understanding is that this was a block wide. Most of the block is Hezbollah territory.

headquarters and that some of the Hezbollah operations were in bunkers underneath it Israel is saying that Nasrallah was in they had evidence that he was inside the building what do we know so far and also what do we know about the destruction because what we're looking at is unlike anything we've even seen in Gaza from a single strike it appears

Well, this was an unprecedentedly intense air raid, even by Israeli standards. And it hit an area at least as large as a city block in the very densely populated southern suburbs of Beirut. And Israel's claim is that it was targeting...

Hezbollah's Central Command Headquarters, which it insists was located beneath one or more of these buildings, so underground. Israel claims that it successfully targeted this headquarters and that it had precise intelligence that the General Secretary of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah,

along with a number of other senior leaders of the movement were there at the time and is expressing high confidence that they were killed. As of now, we have no verification from Israel that this was indeed a successful attack. At the same time, Hezbollah and its media have maintained strict radio silence.

There could be various explanations for that. It could mean that the strike was indeed successful and that they won't be making any statement until they actually find his remains. It could mean that the strike was a failure and they're not making any statements to keep Israel off balance, perhaps to spirit him to safety. We just don't know. So I think there are two issues here.

One concerns Hezbollah as a movement and the other concerns the broader strategic picture. Regarding Hezbollah as a movement, it has suffered a series of assassinations over the past two weeks of some very senior commanders.

And if its general secretary, who was an iconic, charismatic figure, was indeed assassinated today, and even more so along with other senior figures, it's tantamount to a decapitation strike, which will obviously, at least in the short term,

severely undermine the movement and its ability to act and its organizational integrity and it will throw it into chaos and so on. But having said that, I also would not jump to any conclusions about Hezbollah's future as a movement by losing these cadres and commanders. I mean,

Nasrallah's two predecessors, Abbas Musawi and Raghat Had, if I'm not mistaken, were also assassinated. And it's true that Nasrallah has been a particularly

effective, iconic, charismatic figure within the movement. But Hezbollah also has what's called a very deep bench. It's a very deeply entrenched, very sophisticated organization, even though I should add that these latest events

assassinations do speak to complacency, to infiltration, and so on. So as far as Hezbollah is concerned, it would be a very severe blow. In terms of the wider strategic picture is concerned, it almost doesn't matter whether this attack was successful or not, because what Israel has now done, it has launched arguably the most intensive air raid

in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict at a very densely populated suburb of the Lebanese capital, Beirut. And since then, it has given additional evacuation orders to hundreds of thousands of residents in the same neighborhood. And I think quite clearly, Israel

is dead set on regional escalation. It sought to provoke a very widespread response by Hezbollah, which in turn will be used as a pretext to essentially flatten large parts of the Lebanese capital and perhaps other parts of Lebanon. And I think that

It's quite clearly trying to draw Iran directly into this conflict in the remaining months of the Biden administration. In my view, Israel sees a unique opportunity to engineer a direct military confrontation between the United States and Iran, and it has determined that the road to Tehran leads through the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Yeah, there was an Israeli official who was quoted, I think today saying in response to the 21 day ceasefire that the United States had proposed.

We can't stop now. We've been waiting years for this, which which goes to your point. And I wanted to pick up on something that you alluded to there about the the Da'a doctrine. Can you talk a little bit about what that doctrine is and the irony that it appears to be that they're about to apply it to this area that it is named after? It seems like this strike that that we're talking about now may be just the beginning of a massive assault that's coming.

Well, the Dahya Doctrine, so named by former senior Israeli military officer Gadi Eisenkot, who was also a member of Israel's war cabinet after October 7th until he resigned a few months ago. The Dahya Doctrine is an Israeli military doctrine whereby Israel, in its armed confrontations with its enemies,

deliberately and disproportionately targets civilians and civilian infrastructure with the aim of creating pressure on its military adversaries from their constituencies. Eisenquist first enunciated this in 2008, but it in fact goes back decades. I mean, if you think about the late 1960s, when various PLO guerrilla movements were ensconced

in Jordan, in the Jordan Valley, Israel essentially depopulated the Jordan Valley and destroyed irrigation works in the Jordan Valley, southern Lebanon from the late 1960s onwards. Israel has always, in fact,

have this approach that when faced with a military adversary, you not only seek to attack that adversary directly and seek to defeat it militarily, but at the same time, you try to extract an intolerable price from its civilian support base, from its constituency, and from the infrastructure of the territory or state concerned in order to generate support

political pressure upon that military adversary. And that's essentially what we've been seeing in the Gaza Strip for the past year and what we're now increasingly seeing in Lebanon.

You also mentioned the infiltration that Hezbollah has suffered at the hands of Israeli intelligence. And I've seen some speculation that that Syria may be the weak link here in the in the chain, in the axis between Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and and Hamas. You know, famously, of course, Hezbollah and Hamas split for a while over Hezbollah's support

for Syria's dictator, Bashar al-Assad, who I would argue has no ideology whatsoever. His goal is to remain in power and he's going to side with whoever he can to remain in power. And so he would be, it seems to me, the most susceptible or his entities within factions within his operation might be the most susceptible to Israeli infiltration if he believes that that's his path forward. What is your sense of

why Hamas has been able to resist that type of intelligence infiltration. You mean Hezbollah? I think Hamas has been able to resist it.

But Hezbollah has not. I'm curious why you think that is. Well, there are several issues here. First of all, regarding Hezbollah and Lebanon, it remains unclear whether Israel's ability to target Hezbollah cadres and commanders is a result of signals intelligence or human intelligence, in other words, actual intelligence

penetration of spies and collaborators or perhaps a combination of the two. Regarding the Syrian government, I don't think the Syrian government as such would be playing a role in this for the simple reason that it sees both Iran and Hezbollah as bulwarks that it believes are necessary for its defense and survival. So it's very unlikely that

that the Syrian government would be shooting itself in the foot this way. But I think what you can say is, you know, Syria has been at war for over a decade, has witnessed a profound economic collapse.

The same can be said about Lebanon, obviously, in recent years. And Hezbollah does have enemies in both Syria and Lebanon and elsewhere. And under such circumstances, it's entirely plausible that Israel and or the United States, particularly with the U.S. now maintaining control

also a direct military presence in Syria, would have been able to identify and recruit a number of agents and collaborators. So I certainly wouldn't exclude that. But again, we don't really know to what extent this is Israel

I presume with the support of the United States, Great Britain, Germany and perhaps others, being able to successfully tap into Hezbollah's communication networks and to what extent it is a result of individuals penetrating the organization. I think Hamas is a somewhat different kettle of fish.

The reason being that since Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip in 2007, there has been increasingly restricted passage of individuals into and out of the Gaza Strip, primarily because of Israel's blockade. And this has really reduced access.

the opportunities for Israel to recruit Palestinian collaborators. Secondly, Hamas, like Hezbollah, placed a lot of emphasis on counterintelligence and was screening and monitoring individuals who, for whatever reason, did have contact with the Israeli and, for that matter, Egyptian authorities quite closely. And although Hamas obviously

also has opponents and enemies within the Gaza Strip. It's a much smaller territory. It's a much smaller society where essentially everyone knows everyone else. It's not too much of an exaggeration. And so it was easier for Hamas to keep tabs on Palestinian society in Gaza than it would have been for Hezbollah to do the same in Lebanon.

I want to play quickly for you the response of the Pentagon to the strike and get your reaction to that. Let me figure out how to do this. Here we go.

- I'm a novice at this. Okay, here we go. - I just called on both sides to not escalate the situation. Is this an escalation? - Yeah, again, that remains to be seen. We're still assessing. - Six apartment buildings in the suburbs of Baywood have been leveled. You have to assess whether that's an escalation? - You're telling me that. I do not know that to be true. So again, we are still assessing the situation. We are going to continue to have our calls with the Israelis to get more details.

I appreciate the question. I hope you would also appreciate that this just happened a few hours ago. So yes, we are still doing an assessment for you. Thank you.

So you can you can have an escalation and obviously leveling an entire city block and killing hundreds upon hundreds of people is an escalation. But can you have an escalation if if the other side just refuses to escalate with you? Where do you see this going? Well, you know, if if Hezbollah would have so much as thrown a pebble across the Israeli Lebanese border,

This spokesperson along with other colleagues would have wasted about a millisecond to decry has butler's unconscionable Escalation and an illegitimate warfare against Israel But in this case if ten years from now Israel has yet to confirm that it escalated today The official US position will be worse to looking into it. We're consulting with our Israeli partners and so on I mean, I you know

The same government, the United States, which spent months warning the world about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, supposedly has absolutely no idea

Israel, a very close ally with whom it has extremely close intelligence links. In this case, it supposedly has no idea what's going on, has absolutely no involvement in anything, only learned about it, not through its own sources, but when the Israelis decided to inform them during or after the fact. So

I think Washington is playing this double game of being very deeply involved in Israel's activities, and I would suspect helping to plan them with provision of superior intelligence capabilities, of course, all the arms and weapons that were used to carry out this attack, and not least providing diplomatic and PR cover, but at the same time feigning ignorance

seeking to distance itself from these things. As far as escalation is concerned, I mean, a number of people have pointed out that, in fact, Hezbollah has been behaving with relative restraint in the past two or three months, where its responses to Israel's clear demands

steps up the escalation ladder to the extent that it has simply incinerated the ladder, you know, it hasn't yet responded with, let's say, full-scale

attacks on Israeli civilian infrastructure, it's been quite measured in seeking to limit its targeting to Israeli military and intelligence facilities. I suspect that's no longer going to be the case, and it's now going to engage in more widespread and more comprehensive attacks on Israel. And in a sense,

This will play right into Israel's hands if one accepts the premise, which I certainly do, that Israel's strategic goal is to push the region towards a full-scale armed conflagration with the intent of

of producing a direct US-Iranian confrontation in the few months that Biden is still in office, because Biden is someone whom has proven time and again that he will stop at absolutely nothing to support Israel, even where it contradicts the US's own stated preferences.

and will ensure that Israel is immune from any consequences for its actions, irrespective of what it does. I'm sorry, I can't hear you.

I've muted myself. Mouine Rabbini, thank you so much for joining me today. People can find you on twitter.com slash Mouine Rabbini. Excellent person to follow. And where else can they catch you? I publish most of my material on Jadalia, a website where I'm co-editor. And that's www.jadalia.com. Excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you.

And hide a secret from everyone around her.

The next great CBS mystery, Matlock, continues with a new episode Thursday, 9, 8 central on CBS and streaming on Paramount Plus. Get ready for a full month of fiesta y cultura because it's time for Viva Tucson. Let's celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month como nunca antes in true Tucson style from September 15th to October 15th. Join us for comida, musica y eventos that you won't find anywhere else.

Our rich history and traditions make the Old Pueblo the perfect place para celebrar y aprender. Mark your calendars so you don't miss out on this celebración. Visita visittucson.org slash viva.

High Five Casino is a social casino with real prizes and big Vegas hits at HighFiveCasino.com. The hottest games right from Vegas and all winnings go straight to your bank account. Hundreds of exclusive games, free daily rewards, and come back to get free coins every four hours. Only at HighFiveCasino.com.

High Five Casino is a social casino. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited. Play responsibly. Terms and conditions apply. See website for details at highthenumber5casino.com. High Five Casino.