Then they’ll just have to kill more, faster, to get inside the training loop.
[IsraelTimes] While multiple layers of leaders in Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah have been taken out, all three have managed to press on, while broader goals behind assassinations have gone unmetOver the past two weeks, the Israel Defense Forces has killed both the leader of Hamas
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...’s military wing and his replacement — the latest in a long string of assassinations aimed at senior members of Iran-backed terror groups.
They were identified as Mohammed Odeh and Izz al-Din al-Haddad, architects of the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Officials say their killings were part of broader efforts to pursue those behind the onslaught that triggered the war in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
But while assassinations may provide tangible achievements that leaders can brand as victories, they rarely address the underlying grievances that propel conflicts.
"The killing of military chiefs such as Odeh and Haddad points to Israel’s operational ability to reach Hamas’s military leadership," said Nasser Khdour of the nonprofit ACLED, which tracks reports of political violence and conflict worldwide. But, he added, "the killing of senior commanders is unlikely, on its own, to push Hamas toward disarmament or make it accept the complete removal of its role in Gaza’s security and governance."
AN AGE-OLD TACTIC
Israel has carried out dozens of assassinations throughout its history, but Paleostinian and Lebanese terror groups have often endured and grown even more powerful after the loss of top leaders.
Take Hezbollah, for example. An Israeli
...
KABOOM!...
killed its then-leader Abbas Musawi in southern Leb
...home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade....
in 1992. Under His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
...The late, lamented satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb...>
, his charismatic replacement, Hezbollah grew into the region’s most powerful gang and fought Israel to a bloody stalemate in 2006.
Nasrallah and nearly all of his deputies were killed in the 2024 war between Israel and Hezbollah. The Iran-backed group suffered other major losses that year, but resumed missile and drone attacks on Israel days after the start of the current war.
Hamas has lost one leader after another. Israel killed its founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in a 2004 airstrike. Nearly all the architects of the group’s October 7 massacre have since been killed.
But the group remains in control of the nearly half of Gaza that the IDF doesn’t occupy and is still managing to recruit new members and maintain a tight grip on Paleostinian society, as no alternative to the terror group has been stood up.
While the US is seeking to install a technocratic Paleostinian government to replace Hamas, the plan hinges on the terror group agreeing to disarm, which it has shown little willingness to do.
So both Hamas and Hezbollah press on, fueled by the decades-old grievances stemming from the Israeli-Paleostinian conflict.
The United States has also resorted to assassinations against al-Qaeda and the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group, taking out the late Osama bin Laden
...... who was laid out deader than a mackerel, right next to the mackerel......
in a 2011 raid in Pakistain and ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019. Both groups have been vastly diminished, but only after years-long wars involving ground forces.
WHO COMES AFTER
Yossi Kuperwasser, the former head of Israel’s military intelligence research division, said in March that assassinations can be an effective tool but are not a "cure for all problems."
"These operations by themselves don’t dramatically change the ability of those organizations to cause damage and to carry out attacks," he acknowledged. "But it’s important for Israel to weaken its enemies."
In Gaza, Lebanon, and now Iran, he noted, Israel has taken out dozens of figures, reshaping the leadership structure in lasting ways.
Targeted killings were a key strategy in the early days of the Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for
spontaneouslytaking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet
militiasto extend the regime's influence. The word
Iranis a cognate form of
Aryan.The abbreviation
IRGCis the same idea as
Stürmabteilung (or SA).The term
Supreme Guideis a the modern version form of either
Duceor
Führeror maybe both. They hate
war. Top military and political officials up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
...the very aged actual dictator of Iran, successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini...>
were killed in the war’s opening salvos. Khamenei has been replaced by his son, Mojtaba, who is seen as even less compromising.
Kuperwasser said that assassinations in Iran hadn’t transformed the theocracy but had changed it.
"Maybe there’s not ’regime change’ yet, but there is ’change in regime.’ The people are not the same people," he said.
US President Donald Trump
...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US...
, for his part, insists that regime change has in fact taken place, citing multiple layers of Iran’s leadership that have been taken out.
And yet, the Islamic Theocratic
Republicremains in power, with authority shifted to its less theocratic but more hardline Revolutionary Guard.
Meanwhile,
...back at the Alamo, Davy was counting their remaining cannon balls and not liking the results...
the goals of the operation pertaining to curbing Iran’s ability to threaten its neighbors have gone unmet.
KILLING LEADERS CAN ALSO BACKFIRE
In past instances, assassinations have served to radicalize followers or members of political movements and terror groups, elevating more extreme successors or turning slain leaders into deaders with enduring influence.
Northeastern University political scientist Max Abrahms said data from Afghanistan, Pakistain, Israel, and the Paleostinian territories show violence against civilians spikes after assassinations.
"Leadership decapitation is risky," he said. "When you take out a leader that prefers some degree of restraint and had influence over subordinates, then there’s a very good chance that, upon that person’s death, you’re going to see even more extreme tactics."
Targeted killings can create leadership vacuums and the potential for change, but only when coupled with a coherent political strategy, said Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.
"You can decapitate an organization or defeat it militarily, but if you don’t follow through politically, it doesn’t work. And it’s hard to see how this goes much further," he said.
Are y’all sure this has not had an impact on the organization?
IDF says ‘nearly a third’ of Hezbollah’s forces killed during years-long multi-front war[IsraelTimes] IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin says the military has killed “nearly a third” of Hezbollah’s forces amid the multi-front war of recent years.
“We are striking with great intensity at all times. Our troops are operating in the forward defense line area and eliminating dozens of terrorists every week,” he says in a video statement from the Northern Command.
Defrin says the IDF has killed over 2,500 Hezbollah operatives since hostilities escalated amid the war with Iran. “Hezbollah has around 30,000 terrorists, of whom we have already eliminated nearly a third of its force,” he says.
He says that recently, the IDF struck “sector commanders and operational personnel, thereby inflicting significant blows to Hezbollah’s command-and-control capabilities.”
“Hezbollah is battered and weakened and is in a survival war for its continued existence, this is the reality on the ground,” Defrin adds.