In wars as we have known them, high military commanders do not often die. After losing a war, if they are unfortunate enough that the winner does not care for the Geneva Conventions, losses of commanders can only then become massive, in the form of the liquidation of the defeated. The Islamist political-military organization Hezbollah, which operates in Lebanon as an extended arm of the Iranian regime, has lost over five hundred operatives, both high-ranking military commanders and field commanders, even before conventional military escalation between it and Israel began.
After an unprecedented (obviously Mossad) operation with informants who exploded in the pockets of Hezbollah’s military and political operatives, which sowed panic and chaos in their ranks, a surgically precise Israeli operation followed to liquidate high-ranking Hezbollah commanders who gathered live in Beirut, deep underground, to avoid the danger of potential explosions of devices that served as communication aids. All this happened a few days before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the start of the Israeli military operation ‘Northern Arrow’, aimed at neutralizing Hezbollah’s military activities from southern Lebanon, securing Israel’s northern border strip, and returning home the population that was displaced after October 7 last year due to Hezbollah’s ‘support war’ for Hamas in Gaza.
A new generation war
This is, obviously, the announced ‘new generation war’, which seems to have ended or at least been brought to a close, even before it formally began. Before the new Israeli military operation was announced, most of the opposing Hezbollah command was taken out of action, and panic was sown among the rest. Thus, Hezbollah’s military capabilities were drastically reduced, and the story of Hezbollah as the strongest army that is not officially a state army has become, at least for a while, part of history.
Threats of revenge sent from a hidden place these days by Hezbollah’s religious and political leader Hassan Nasrallah increasingly sound like threats from an empty gun. Nasrallah is, as military analysts announce, a logical next target in this new generation war. Therefore, his current priority is to secure his own shelter, check the informant and mobile phone, and especially the people who guard him. Namely, at this stage of Middle Eastern warfare, Israel has shown absolute dominance over its opponents, not only in a technological sense, like the operation with informants, but also in the depth of intelligence infiltration into enemy ranks, which sows even greater chaos than technology.
