The Foreign Desk is live in the immediate hours after Israel announced the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Andrew Mueller speaks with David Wood of the International Crisis Group in Beirut, and analysts Lina Khatib and Yossi Mekelberg of Chatham House. Plus: we hear from Hezbollah scholar Aurélie Daher. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
You're listening to the Foreign Desk, first recorded at midday London time on Saturday 28th September 2024 on Monocle Radio.
Within the last few hours, the Israel Defence Forces have declared that yesterday's massive airstrike on a Hezbollah headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut killed the organization's long serving Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah.
This special live edition of the Foreign Desk assesses the motivations for and likely ramifications of an assassination extraordina and seismic, Even by the tumultuous standards of recent Middle Eastern history.
Hassan Nasrallah would never have been under any illusion about the risks he was running.
He inherited the leadership of Hezbollah in 1992, when his predecessor, Abbas Al Moussawi was killed by helicopter launched Israeli missiles which struck his motorcade.
Israel tried to do much the same to Nasrallah during the short Israel Hamas war of 2006.
Israel bombed his house and his but missed him.
Since October last year, when Hezbollah began a sustained missile campaign against Israel in sympathy with Hamas in Gaza, Nasrallah must have had some sense of the net tightening.
Several senior Hezbollah officials had died in targeted strikes of one kind or another, as had Hamas Chairman Ismail Hanya, even before last week's explosions of personal communications devices used by Hezbollah members, which killed dozens, injured thousands, and perhaps made it necessary necessary for Nasrallah to conduct meetings in person at headquarters.
What is left of Hezbollah now?
Will Hassan Nasrallah's apparent death inevitably inflame the region further?
Or might things actually become calmer with this perennial agitator removed?
And will Iran feel obliged to avenge the passing of their protege?
This is the Foreign Desk, and welcome to a special live edition of the Foreign Desk.
I'm Andrew Muller and we are joined first of all by David Wood, senior analyst for Lebanon at the International Crisis Group.
He joins us from Beirut.
David, there's been a couple of hours in Lebanon now to absorb this news, or at least what Israel's defence forces seem pretty certain is news.
Has there been much in the reaction of, much in the way rather of obvious reaction in Lebanon?
Hi, Andrew.
So I think that the obvious reaction from people has been of both shock and confusion.