[🇱🇧] Lebanon - Israel Conflict -2024

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Israel says it has killed about 250 Hezbollah fighters since ground operations in Lebanon began​

From Tamar Michaelis, CNN's Jeremy Diamond and Pauline Lockwood

Residents run for cover following an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Friday.
Hassan Ammar/AP

Israel’s military says it has killed “approximately 250” Hezbollah militants since launching a ground offensive in southern Lebanon earlier this week.

About 100 of the Iran-backed group’s fighters have been killed in the last 24 hours, the Israel Defense Forces said in a briefing Friday.

“What we have seen in these days of more intense fighting … I can tell you that alongside our casualties we’ve been able to inflict a serious blow to Hezbollah, to its senior level and to its tactical level commanders,” the IDF’s international spokesperson, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, told reporters.

 

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Israel has described its operations in southern Lebanon as “limited, localized and targeted.”

In response to a CNN question about the disparity between such statements and the large number of southern Lebanese villages being asked the evacuate, Shoshani said, “Sadly, Hezbollah has embedded widely and deeply into Lebanon.”

 

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Hashem Safieddine is rumored to be the next leader of Hezbollah. Here's what we know​

From CNN's Nadeen Ebrahim

Hashem Safieddine, center, attends the funeral ceremony of Hezbollah military commander Mohamed Naim Nasser in Beirut, in July.
Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu/Getty Images

The fate of a possible successor to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is unclear following an Israeli airstrike on Beirut.

An Israeli official told CNN that Hashem Safieddine was the target of the strike, but it is unclear if he was killed.

Safieddine is a maternal cousin of Nasrallah – the two studied in Iran together in the early 1980s. Just like Nasrallah, Safieddine is a staunch critic of Israel and the West, with deep alliances with the Iranian leadership.

Safieddine served as head of Hezbollah’s executive council and, until his predecessor’s death, was seen as one of the most likely heirs to the organization’s highest-ranking seat. The group has yet to name a successor to Nasrallah.

 

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Who is Hashem Safieddine, rumored to be the next Hezbollah chief?​

By Nadeen Ebrahim, CNN
October 4, 2024

Hashem Safieddine speaking at a funeral earlier this year.
Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu/Getty Images


The fate of a possible successor to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is unclear following an Israeli airstrike on Beirut.

An Israeli official told CNN that Hashem Safieddine was the target of the strike, but it is unclear if he was killed.

Safieddine is a maternal cousin of Nasrallah – the two studied in Iran together in the early 1980s. Just like Nasrallah, Safieddine is a staunch critic of Israel and the West, with deep alliances with the Iranian leadership.

Safieddine served as head of Hezbollah’s executive council and, until his predecessor’s death, was seen as one of the most likely heirs to the organization’s highest-ranking seat. The group has yet to name a successor to Nasrallah.

The executive council is one of five bodies that make up the Shura Council, which is the organization’s decision-making body. The executive council oversees political matters, as opposed to the Jihad Council which is the group’s military body, which Safieddine is a member of.

Safieddine has previously spoken of the “strong relationship” between Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and especially Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in US airstrike at Baghdad airport in 2020. Safieddine’s son is married to Soleimani’s daughter.

The Shiite cleric was born in 1964 in the southern Lebanese village of Deir Qanoun En Nahr. Like the late Hezbollah leader, he wears the black turban signaling that he is a “Sayyid,” a Shiite honorific title denoting descent from Prophet Mohammed.

The 60-year-old cleric has had a visible presence across Hezbollah’s political stage, especially over the past year. Throughout the Gaza war, Safieddine would make statements denouncing Israel’s actions in the enclave and on his country’s southern border.

 

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Nasrallah “started tailoring positions for him within a variety of different councils within Lebanese Hezbollah. Some of them were more opaque than others. They’ve had him come, go out and speak,” Phillip Smyth, an expert who studies Iran-backed Shiite militias, told Reuters.

Speaking at the funeral ceremony of one of the slain Hezbollah members in May, Safieddine boasted that his group is nonetheless strong and resilient, prioritizing – along with their Iranian allies – the Palestinian cause and the need to liberate the Palestinian people.

 

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Following the back-to-back explosions that targeted Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies, Safieddine said that his organization “will not back down until the end.”

Saffiedine has long been a hawkish critic of US policy, which he sees as aiding and abetting Israel’s actions in Gaza and southern Lebanon.

In 2021, he accused Washington of “interfering” in Lebanese domestic politics, saying that “American tyranny” is “sabotaging” the region’s nations, citing Iraq and Afghanistan among examples.

The United States designated Hezbollah a foreign terrorist organization in 1997, and in 2017 designated Safieddine a foreign terrorist.

 

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Gulf Arab states fear targeting of region’s oil facilities as war escalates, expert says​

From CNN’s Nadeen Ebrahim and Mostafa Salem


Oil producing Gulf Arab states are likely concerned about implications of an Israeli retaliation against Iran, especially if Israel targets Iran’s oil installations, a regional expert told CNN.

Such an attack would cause significant economic damage, threaten other oil facilities in the region, and create an ecological disaster, with oil potentially spilling into the Persian Gulf from damaged Iranian pipelines, said Hasan Alhasan, a senior fellow for Middle East Policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

Concern of a wider war that could involve the targeting of the region’s oil facilities has already sparked a jolt in oil prices.

Iran has signaled in the past that if it can’t sell its oil, then no one else in the region can either, Alhasan said, raising questions about the safety of Gulf Arab oil installations if Iran’s are hit by Israel.

“There are real concerns about the first-order and second-order implications of such an Israeli attack,” he told CNN, noting that as long as Gulf states maintain a line of neutrality, Iran is unlikely to resurface past hostilities that directly target Gulf Arab states.

 

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Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian met with Gulf Arab ministers in Qatar’s capital Doha on Thursday.

“Our neighbors are our priority,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on X. “StrongRegion our goal—#Dialogue is a must,” he said.

A UAE official told CNN that regional discussions are focused on “the necessity of concerted regional and international efforts to halt the escalation and prevent further loss of life.”

Pezeshkian said he told the Qatari ruler in Doha that the “troubles” brought upon the region by Israel are “due to the existence of differences and factions among us,” according to the state news agency IRNA.

 

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Israel says it struck tunnel crossing to prevent “weapon smuggling” into Lebanon from Syria​

From CNN's Tamar Michaelis and Pauline Lockwood


Israel’s military says it struck an “underground tunnel crossing” on the Lebanese-Syrian border on Thursday to “prevent weapons from being smuggled into Lebanese territories”.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the tunnel’s operations were led by “the 4400 Unit, the unit responsible for the transportation of weapons from Iran and its proxies to Hezbollah in Lebanon.”

“Additionally, infrastructure sites adjacent to the Masnaa border crossing between Syria and Lebanon were struck last night,” the IDF added in its statement on Friday.

An Israeli airstrike near the main Lebanon-Syria border crossing halted traffic in both directions, a Lebanese official said on Friday.

The strike, late on Thursday, destroyed the road leading to the Masnaa crossing with Syria, Public Works Minister Ali Hamie told CNN, adding the checkpoint “has been cut off.”

The Masnaa border crossing lies in the Beqaa valley on the Beirut-Damascus international highway, a major transport link for people and goods between the two countries.

The highway has been used by tens of thousands of people to flee Israeli bombardment in recent days.

 

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Iranian foreign minister meets Lebanese prime minister in Beirut a week after Nasrallah’s assassination​

From CNN's Eyad Kourdi

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, left, meets with Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati in Beirut, Lebanon, on October 4.
Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi traveled to the Lebanese capital, Beirut, on Friday for meetings with government officials, a week after the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Araghchi met Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and expressed Iran’s commitment to Lebanon and “its support in the face of Israeli aggression,” the Iranian foreign ministry said in a statement.

Iran’s top diplomat said his country “will launch a diplomatic campaign to support Lebanon and request a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.”

It is unclear if Araghchi will meet Hezbollah officials during his visit.