As Iran threatens Israel, the danger of Tehran’s long-vaunted missile program remains in question

A handout picture provided by the Iranian Army office on December 30, 2022, shows Iranian troops during a military drill in Makran beach on the Gulf of Oman, near the Hormuz Strait. (AFP)
A handout picture provided by the Iranian Army office on December 30, 2022, shows Iranian troops during a military drill in Makran beach on the Gulf of Oman, near the Hormuz Strait. (AFP)
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Updated 03 September 2024
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As Iran threatens Israel, the danger of Tehran’s long-vaunted missile program remains in question

As Iran threatens Israel, the danger of Tehran’s long-vaunted missile program remains in question
  • Israel is widely suspected of carrying out the assassination, though it has not claimed it
  • Retaliation had been expected for days after a suspected Israeli strike on April 1 hit an Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus, Syria, killing two Iranian generals and five officers, as well as a member of the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: As Iran threatens to attack Israel over the assassination of a Hamas leader in the Iranian capital, its long-vaunted missile program offers one of the few ways for Tehran to strike back directly, but questions loom over just how much of a danger it poses.
The program was behind Iran’s unprecedented drone-and-missile assault on Israel in April, when Iran became the first nation to launch such a barrage since Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein lobbed Scud missiles at Israel in the 1991 Gulf War.
But few of the Iranian projectiles reached their targets. Many were shot down by a US-led coalition, while others apparently failed at launch or crashed while in flight. Even those that reached Israel appeared to miss their marks.
Now a new report by experts shared exclusively with The Associated Press suggests one of Tehran’s most advanced missiles is far less accurate than previously thought.
The April assault showed “some ability to strike Israel,” said Sam Lair, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies who worked on the analysis. But “if I were supreme leader, I would probably be a little disappointed.”
If Iranian missiles are not able to hit targets precisely “that recasts their role,” Lair added. “They’re no longer as valuable for conducting conventional military operations. They may be more valuable simply as terror weapons.”
As an example, he recalled the harassing missile fire seen on cities in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, when Iran could fire a variety of missiles at a large city and hope some got through.
Iran has repeatedly said it will retaliate for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh. Israel is widely suspected of carrying out the assassination, though it has not claimed it.
The Iranian mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment. But Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tacitly acknowledged the country’s failure to strike anything of importance in Israel.
“Debates by the other party about how many missiles were fired, how many of them hit the target and how many didn’t, these are of secondary importance,” Khamenei said. “The main issue is the emergence of the Iranian nation” and the Iranian military “in an important international arena. This is what matters.”
A fusillade of missiles and drones

Retaliation had been expected for days after a suspected Israeli strike on April 1 hit an Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus, Syria, killing two Iranian generals and five officers, as well as a member of the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah.
Footage aired on state television showed that Iran’s April 13 assault began with Revolutionary Guard commander Gen. Hossein Salami speaking by telephone with Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajjizadeh, the commander of the Guard’s aerospace division.
“Start the ‘True Promise’ operation against Zionist regime’s bases,” he ordered.
As the missiles headed skyward, people across Iran stopped what they were doing and pointed their mobile phones at the launch noise from their cars and the balconies of their homes. Videos analyzed by the AP showed multiple launch sites, including on the outskirts of Arak, Hamadan, Isfahan, Kermanshah, Shiraz, Tabriz and Tehran.
Grainy footage later released through pro-Iranian military social media accounts showed missiles thundering off truck-based mobile launchers. Iran’s bomb-carrying Shahed drones, widely used by Russia in its war on Ukraine, leaped off metal stands, their engines whirring like lawnmowers through the night sky. Some were launched by pickup trucks racing down runways.
The triangle-shaped drones went first, taking hours to reach their targets. Then came the Paveh cruise missiles, taking a shorter time, and finally the Emad, Ghadr and Kheibar Shekan ballistic missiles, which needed only minutes, according to an analysis by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. Drones and missiles also came from Yemen, likely fired by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.
Israeli officials estimated that Iran launched 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles and 120 ballistic missiles. In Jordan, an AP journalist filmed what appeared to be a ballistic missile being intercepted above the Earth’s atmosphere, likely by an Israeli Arrow 3 missile, with the blast radiating out like a circle.
The US, the United Kingdom, France and Jordan all shot down incoming fire. The Americans claimed to have downed 80 bomb-carrying drones and at least six ballistic missiles. Israeli missile defenses were also activated, though their initial claim of intercepting 99 percent of the projectiles appeared to be an exaggeration.
The attack “was very clearly not something symbolic and not something trying to avoid damage,” said Fabian Hinz, a missile expert and research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies who studies Iran. It was “a major attempt to overcome Israeli defenses.”
US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, told the AP they assessed that 50 percent of the Iranian missiles failed at launch or crashed before reaching their target.
Strike on air base
suggests poor accuracy
In the aftermath, analysts at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies examined the strike on the Nevatim Air Base some 65 kilometers (40 miles) south of Jerusalem in the Negev Desert. The center’s experts long have studied Iran and its ballistic missile program.
The base came into immediate focus after the suspected Israeli strike on the Iranian diplomatic mission in Syria. Iran’s ambassador to Syria, Hossein Akbari, claimed that the strike was conducted by Israeli F-35Is, which are based at Nevatim.
The air base also figured into Iranian military propaganda. Iranian state television aired footage in February of a Revolutionary Guard test that targeted a mock-up resembling F-35I hangars at Nevatim. Ballistic missiles, including some of the kinds used in the April attack on Israel, destroyed the mock-up.
In the attack, at least four Iranian missiles struck Nevatim, as seen in satellite images and footage released by the Israeli military.
The only debris found in the area — collected from the Dead Sea — suggests Iran used Emad missiles to target Nevatim, the analysts said. The liquid-fueled Emad, or “pillar” in Farsi, is a variant of Iran’s Shahab-3 missile built from a North Korean design with a reported range of 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles). That indicates the Emads were likely fired from the Shiraz area, which is within the estimated limits of the missile’s likely capabilities, the analysts said.
Based on Iran’s focus on the F-35I, the James Martin analysts assumed the likely target point for the Iranian fire would be a cluster of aircraft hangars. The position also serves as a near-central point within the Nevatim base itself.
That offers “a much more valuable target” than just “poking holes in the runway,” Lair said. But none of the Iranian missiles directly hit those hangars.
Assuming Iran targeted the hangars, the James Martin analysts measured the distance between the hangars and the impact zones of the missiles. That gave an average of about 1.2 kilometers (0.75 miles) for the “circular error probable” — a measurement used by experts to determine a weapon’s accuracy based on the radius of a circle that encompasses 50 percent of where the missiles landed.
That’s far worse than a 500-meter (1,640-foot) error circle first estimated by experts for the Emad. After a UN weapons ban on Iran ended in 2020, Iran separately advertised the Emad to potential international buyers as having a 50-meter (164-foot) circle — a figure that is in line with top missile specifications for systems deployed elsewhere, said Hinz, the IISS missile expert.
The results from April’s attack were nowhere near that precise.
“This means the Emad is much less accurate than previous estimates indicated,” Lair said. “This indicates the Iranians are a generation behind where previous assessments thought they were in accuracy.”
The poor performance may be attributable to electronic warfare measures designed to confuse the missile’s guidance system, as well as potential sabotage, poor missile design and the distances involved in the attack.
What’s next
In the past, Iranian threats to retaliate against Israel generally took the form of either attacks by Iranian-backed forces in the Mideast or assaults aimed at Israeli targets elsewhere, such as embassies or tourists aboard.
Geography limits the options for a direct Iranian military attack. Iran shares no border with Israel, and the two countries are some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) apart at the shortest distance.
Iran’s air force has an aging fleet led by F-14 Tomcats and Mikoyan MiG-29 fighter jets from the Cold War, but they would be no match for Israel’s F-35Is and its air defenses. That means Iran again would need to rely on missiles and long-range drones.
It could also enlist help from allied militias such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels to overwhelm Israel’s defenses. Israel and Hezbollah exchanged heavy fire on Aug. 25.
Always present in the background is the risk that Tehran could develop a nuclear weapon, a threat that Iranian officials have repeated in recent months. While Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful, Western intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency say Tehran had an organized military nuclear program until 2003.
US intelligence agencies said in a report in July that Iran has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.” However, building a weapon and miniaturizing it to put on a ballistic missile could take years.
“Iran has the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the region and continues to emphasize improving the accuracy, lethality and reliability of these systems,” the report from the director of national intelligence said. “Iran probably is incorporating lessons learned” from the April attack.
 

 


Worldwide protests against Israel demand end to war in Palestine, Lebanon

Worldwide protests against Israel demand end to war in Palestine, Lebanon
Updated 27 sec ago
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Worldwide protests against Israel demand end to war in Palestine, Lebanon

Worldwide protests against Israel demand end to war in Palestine, Lebanon
  • Thousands of people across the globe hit the streets to end conflict on Gaza and Lebanon

RIYADH: People have hit the streets around the world to protest against Israel’s deadly military offensives in Gaza and Lebanon.

Demonstrators expressed outrage against the Israeli aggression, demanding an end to the war in Gaza, describing the situation as “genocide,” and calling upon the global community to act.

Protests have taken place from the Middle East to Europe, the US, India, Pakistan and Far East Asia.

Israel has killed 41,615 Palestinians in Gaza since it launched its brutal offensive in October 2023, according to local health authorities.

The military action has sparked a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza that has inflamed opinion globally.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg joined thousands of protesters in Stockholm last week to condemn Israel’s “genocide” in Palestine and urged global action to intervene.

“On Saturday, thousands of people and a large number of solidarity movements and organizations filled the streets of Stockholm to stand against oppression and for justice,” Thunberg posted on X.

The demonstration, organized by various NGOs, demanded an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and unhindered humanitarian aid access.

Thunberg said remaining silent during a genocide is to be complicit and underlined the importance of boycotting Israel, Israeli companies and institutions, and imposing sanctions.

Swedish artist and activist Samuel Girma called Israel “a terrorist state” and urged a boycott of trade with Israel following “terror attacks in Beirut, Lebanon.”

Fellow Swede Dr. Uno Horn condemned Israel’s operations. “They are killing children,” said Horn. “It’s not war; it’s a terror attack.”

Multiple demonstrations broke out in New York City last Thursday, ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the UN General Assembly on Friday.

Thousands of people also gathered at the steps of the New York Public Library and marched toward the UN to hold a rally.

In Pakistan, protesters hit the streets of Karachi on Sunday and clashed with police who stopped them from reaching the US Consulate during demonstrations over Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

The Indonesian Council of Ulema on Tuesday urged citizens to keep up the fight for “Palestinian independence” by continuing to boycott products over their links to Israel as the war in Gaza nears its one-year mark.

Cholil Nafis, chairman of the council, called on Indonesians to “never stop the boycott movement because the genocide has not stopped either.”

Indian-administered Kashmir was rocked by large anti-Israel, pro-Palestine and pro-Lebanon protests on Sunday that continued on Monday.

Nasrallah’s assassination by Israel has raised political temperatures amid ongoing Jammu and Kashmir regional assembly elections.

Following the Israeli attacks on Beirut, protests unfolded in Helsinki, Finland, where demonstrators demanded an immediate end to Israeli operations in Lebanon.

In Paris, protesters gathered near the famous Fontaine des Innocents, holding banners that read “End the Genocide in Gaza” and “Boycott Israel.”

Many wore keffiyehs and carried images of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed by Israeli forces in 2022.

Pro-Palestinian protests have been held at universities across the UK since the early days of Israeli offensive in Gaza.

At Newcastle University, a pro-Palestinian encampment was set up on a lawn in front of the college’s buildings. The group responsible describes itself as a “student-led coalition fighting for an end to Newcastle University’s partnership with defense companies supplying Israel.”

Students in the cities of Leeds, Bristol and Warwick have also set up tents outside their university buildings to protest the war in Gaza.

In Paris, pro-Palestinian protests erupted at the Sciences Po university and the Sorbonne University in late April.

As demonstrations escalated in April 2024, more than 2,000 people were arrested on US campuses amid polarized debates over the right to protest, and the limits of free speech.

Clashes with police at New York’s Columbia University, Portland State and UCLA in particular captured global attention.

Several universities across Australia joined the pro-Palestinian protests, with the University of Queensland in Brisbane and University of Sydney becoming gathering points.

Demonstrations and sit-ins have also long been held on campuses in parts of Asia and the Middle East

Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi saw protests with students expressing solidarity with Palestine.

Demonstrations also swept campuses across Canada. At McGill University in downtown Montreal, pro-Palestinian student protesters set up an encampment and like their counterparts in the US, students demanded to divest from companies with ties to Israel.

Campus protests in Lebanon also escalated in late April, with demonstrators waving Palestinian flags and renewing the calls for a boycott.

Protesters demonstrated around the University of Amsterdam campus in the Netherlands in May while in Austria, dozens of protesters camped on the campus of Vienna University, pitching tents and stringing up banners.

Protests also spread to three universities in Lausanne, Geneva and Zurich in Switzerland, and at Free University in the German capital Berlin, a demonstration was held with people erecting a protest camp in a campus courtyard.
 


Lebanon’s death warrant signed on Oct. 7, and we have been updating the obituary ever since

Lebanon’s death warrant signed on Oct. 7, and we have been updating the obituary ever since
Updated 18 min 33 sec ago
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Lebanon’s death warrant signed on Oct. 7, and we have been updating the obituary ever since

Lebanon’s death warrant signed on Oct. 7, and we have been updating the obituary ever since
  • Lebanon being drawn into someone else’s catastrophe
  • Hezbollah’s ‘hubris’ and unilateral actions are to blame

LONDON: How does one write a feature looking through Lebanon’s year without it sounding like an obituary?

Across Lebanon and wherever in the world citizens found themselves on Oct. 7 last year, phones buzzed and lit up with notifications of the seemingly unbelievable news.

Hamas, the insurgent militant group that had been running the Palestinian enclave of Gaza since 2007, had launched a surprise attack on Israel.

At first, near disbelief. Could it possibly be true?

Israel had long boasted about the impregnable nature of its “Iron Wall,” the high-tech, 7-meter-tall fence surrounding Gaza.

Bristling with cameras, watch towers, robotic machine guns, razor wire, radar and underground sensors, it was designed precisely to prevent exactly such an incursion.

Yet with every fresh ping, with every update flashing on smartphones, the unthinkable became increasingly possible, then probable and, finally, certain.

Hamas, relying on a combination of brute force and ingenuity — bulldozers smashed through the fence and drones dropped explosives on watch towers, knocking out the remotely operated machine guns — had broken through the Iron Wall in as many as 30 places.

More than 1,200 Israelis and others were killed, and 251 taken back to Gaza as hostages.

Hearts sank. All Lebanese knew full well that Lebanon was never not going to get involved, whether its citizens wanted to or not.

Past is prologue, and Lebanon’s history is riddled with sudden yanks into conflicts in which it has no business being involved.

From Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, in response to Palestinian militants using the country’s south as a launching pad for missiles and attacks, to the 2006 war between Iran-backed group Hezbollah and Israel, Lebanese citizens have always found themselves caught in the crossfire.

Their dead, wounded, ruined homes and countless devastated lives are written off by all sides as collateral damage.

Now, one year on since the start of Hamas’ assault on Israel and the latter’s devastating response in Gaza — which has claimed in excess of 40,000 Palestinian lives, including more than 6,000 women and 11,000 children — once again Lebanon is being sucked into someone else’s catastrophe.

It all seemed depressingly inevitable from the outset, when the day after the Hamas attack its ally Hezbollah began exchanging fire with Israel over Lebanon’s southern border.

Since then, Lebanon has suffered immense damage, especially in its southern villages and towns, which have been repeatedly and indiscriminately pounded by Israeli jets targeting Hezbollah outposts.

Nearly 1 million Lebanese have been displaced internally, 1,974 have been killed including 127, and 9,384 wounded, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

The situation began to deteriorate alarmingly on Sept. 17, when thousands of Hezbollah pagers, sabotaged by Israeli agents, exploded simultaneously across Lebanon, killing a dozen people, including two children, and wounding thousands more.

The following day similarly sabotaged walkie-talkies detonated. This time 30 people died and hundreds more were injured. Now Israeli troops have invaded the south of Lebanon.

Lebanon has been in a spiral since 2019, when it was rocked by a disastrous and ongoing financial crisis that has seen the lira drastically devalued.

Since then further blows have included the COVID-19 pandemic, which struck Lebanon in early 2020, and the devastating Beirut Port explosion later that year that rocked the capital and destroyed thousands of structures.

To make matters worse, political paralysis has left Lebanon without a president or an effective government for the past two years.

In a statement issued on Oct. 31, 2023, the first anniversary of Lebanon’s presidential vacancy, the US State Department accused the country’s “divided parliamentarians” of “putting their personal ambitions ahead of the interests of their country.”

Issued just over three weeks after the Hamas attack on Israel, the statement added presciently: “Even as rising tensions along Lebanon’s southern border threaten the country’s stability and the economic crisis deepens, the Lebanese people are deprived of leadership when they need it most.”

Around the world, since Oct. 7, Lebanese have been glued to their screens, holding their breath with each missile fired across the border in either direction.

And listening with growing anxiety to the pronouncements of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the fiery speeches of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Nasrallah’s death in an Israeli air strike on Beirut on Sept. 27 killed at least five other people and injured dozens more.

For the Lebanese in Lebanon and abroad, every day begins with a recap of the destruction and a counting of the dead, injured and missing. Every day ends with evacuation drills across areas of the capital targeted by Israeli bombs and missiles.

Today, as before, they are helpless bystanders, witnesses to the destruction of their country and the loss of the lives of their friends and family members.

As Michael Young of the Malcom H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center wrote late last month, “the opening of a front in the south on Oct. 8, 2023, was the final straw. Hezbollah consulted none of its Lebanese partners in initiating a war in defense of its ally Hamas in Gaza.”

Hezbollah, he added, “displayed remarkable hubris in being completely indifferent to the fact that Lebanon paid a heavy price in the past for the Palestinian cause — especially the Shia community itself.

“After hubris comes nemesis, however, and today Hezbollah is largely alone in facing the violent Israeli campaign against Lebanon.”

Perhaps. But for now, the war has seen Lebanon’s sectarian noose grow ever tighter.

Social media has become a parallel battleground, for the preaching of one side against the other, pitting blame based on religiosity and correlating silence with acquiescence.

The Lebanese have always reluctantly accepted that, in Lebanon, this is just the way things are.

It remains to be seen whether, in the wake of the current disaster engulfing the country, the Lebanese will finally abandon their passive acceptance of a cruel fate dictated by others.
 


Palestine at the UN: A new chapter in the quest for statehood

Palestine at the UN: A new chapter in the quest for statehood
Updated 24 min 44 sec ago
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Palestine at the UN: A new chapter in the quest for statehood

Palestine at the UN: A new chapter in the quest for statehood
  • Palestine’s first UN General Assembly seat marks progress toward two-state solution

RIYADH: More than 140 of the UN’s 193 member states have now recognized the state of Palestine.

Sept. 10 marked a significant moment as Palestine secured a seat at a UN General Assembly for the first time in history.

This was achieved despite opposition from Israel in Palestine’s quest for statehood. 

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said during his address at the General Assembly: “We affirm our appreciation for the countries that have recently recognized Palestine.

“We urge all nations to show the courage to make the same decision and join the international consensus represented by the 149 countries that recognize Palestine,” he said.

A groundbreaking development occurred recently when Prince Faisal bin Farhan announced the launch of the “Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution” on Sept. 26.

This alliance, endorsed by Arab and Islamic countries along with European partners, aims to advance the two-state solution as a means to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The inauguration of the alliance marks a significant milestone in international efforts toward lasting peace in the region.

Saudi Arabia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Prince Faisal bin Farhan speaks during the 79th Session of the United Nations General Assembly at the United Nations headquarters in New York City on September 28, 2024. (AFP)

A resolution was passed on May 10 of this year to acknowledge the review of Palestine’s UN membership in the UN Security Council, as well as the extension of additional privileges to Palestine, which currently has observer status.

Saudi Arabia expressed its support for the UN General Assembly resolution, confirming that the state of Palestine meets the requirements for becoming a UN member state.

The recognition of Palestine as a state has been a gradual process, with different countries recognizing it at different times. Most recognitions occurred after the Palestinian declaration of independence in 1988, while others joined in subsequent years.

Most African countries recognized Palestine soon after 1988, especially those in the non-aligned movement, such as Egypt, Algeria, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Nigeria, Morocco and Sudan.

Some European countries recognized Palestine over the years, with the most recent trend of recognition from EU countries.

In 2024, Slovenia, Spain, Ireland, Norway and Armenia recognized the state of Palestine.

Iceland and Cyprus joined in 2011, Sweden in 2014 and the Vatican City in 2015.

Albania, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia (later split into Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia), recognized Palestine in 1988.

Other countries such as Russia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia, joined in the 1990s.

Asian recognition also largely began in 1988, with widespread support among Muslim-majority countries and the socialist bloc.

These countries include Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea, Qatar, Bahrain, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Afghanistan and Yemen. 

The state of Palestine will be granted additional rights and privileges in participation following the 79th session of the General Assembly, without affecting its current rights and privileges.

One of these rights includes the right to actively participate in conferences and meetings organized by the UN and other international bodies, as well as the right to propose and present amendments both orally and on behalf of a group. 

The two-state solution has long been regarded as a potential path to peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With recent developments and initiatives, there is renewed hope for progress toward this goal.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres captured the urgency of the situation, warning that the repercussions of the devastation in Gaza could escalate into a broader conflict with catastrophic outcomes for the entire region.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas commended the General Assembly for adopting a resolution that called on Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories within 12 months, during the 79th session of the UN General Assembly on Sept. 26.

Saudi Arabia reaffirmed its commitment that it will not form diplomatic ties with Israel until significant advances are made regarding Palestine. 

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said on Sept. 18 that the Kingdom would not recognize Israel without a Palestinian state.

“The Kingdom will not stop its tireless work toward the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and we affirm that the Kingdom will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without that,” the crown prince said.

This position underscores Saudi Arabia’s unwavering support for the Palestinian cause and the realization of a viable two-state solution.

It is a continuation of historical Saudi efforts to help achieve Palestinian statehood, including the Arab Peace Initiative – A comprehensive plan to end Arab-Israeli conflict first proposed in 2002.


Israel obstructing search for Hezbollah’s Safieddine, Hezbollah official says

People inspect the damage, in the aftermath of Israeli strikes in Choueifat, amid the ongoing hostilities.
People inspect the damage, in the aftermath of Israeli strikes in Choueifat, amid the ongoing hostilities.
Updated 23 min 26 sec ago
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Israel obstructing search for Hezbollah’s Safieddine, Hezbollah official says

People inspect the damage, in the aftermath of Israeli strikes in Choueifat, amid the ongoing hostilities.
  • Safieddine is seen as a likely successor to former leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah who was killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs

BEIRUT: Israel is not allowing a search for senior Hezbollah leader Hashem Safieddine to progress after it bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs on Thursday, a Hezbollah official said, noting the group would only announce his fate when the search concluded.
Safieddine is seen as a likely successor to former leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah who was killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, known as Dahiye, on Sept. 27.
His fate remains unclear.
Israel should “let rescue teams do their work” senior Hezbollah political official Mahmoud Qmati told Iraqi state television.
He said that Hezbollah was now being jointly led until it could pick a new leader, which would take time.
“What’s important is that joint command is in place,” he said.
“The method of choosing a replacement for the secretary-general takes time and requires appropriate circumstances, and for that reason we suffice today with temporary joint command,” he said.
Qmati said Nasrallah’s body remained in Lebanon and that he would be laid to rest in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah holds heavy influence, when conditions allowed.
Israel has killed much of Hezbollah’s military command and senior leadership in nearly a year of fighting that began when Hezbollah opened a front in solidarity with Palestinians the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
The conflict has rapidly expanded in the past couple of weeks, with Israel snubbing a US-backed push for a ceasefire, killing Nasrallah and launching a wide air campaign that has pummeled Lebanese towns and villages and left 1.2 million people displaced, according to Lebanese government figures.


With strong ties to Lebanon, Latin Americans suffer in the wake of Israeli attacks

Brazilians deplane after the Air Force evacuated them from Lebanon amid Israeli airstrikes, at the Air Force base in Guarulhos.
Brazilians deplane after the Air Force evacuated them from Lebanon amid Israeli airstrikes, at the Air Force base in Guarulhos.
Updated 06 October 2024
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With strong ties to Lebanon, Latin Americans suffer in the wake of Israeli attacks

Brazilians deplane after the Air Force evacuated them from Lebanon amid Israeli airstrikes, at the Air Force base in Guarulhos.
  • Brazil’s government estimates 21,000 Brazilian nationals living in Lebanon

BRASILIA: With millions of people of Lebanese descent living in Latin America — certain analysts think there are more people of Lebanese ancestry in Brazil alone than in Lebanon itself — the number of Latin Americans in Lebanon is equally high.

Since the Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon and on Beirut intensified, countries like Colombia and Brazil have sent planes to rescue groups of their citizens.

A massive evacuation from cities near the border with Israel has been ordered by the invading forces over the past few days. At least 70 towns have been included in the evacuation list by Israel. The strikes on Beirut led hundreds of thousands of people to move as well.

In many such locations, there are groups of Latin American families, many the sons and daughters of Lebanese immigrants to the New World who decided to go back to their parents’ homeland.

Cases of Latin American women, with or without Lebanese ancestry, who married Lebanese men in Latin America and decided to move with them to Lebanon are also pretty common.

That is the case with Leni Souza, a 48-year-old Brazilian woman from Parana state, which has one of the largest Lebanese communities in Brazil.

Souza spent her childhood in Foz do Iguacu, on the border with Ciudad del Este in Paraguay, and Puerto Iguazu, in Argentina, an area with hundreds of thousands of Lebanese nationals. She met her husband, a Lebanese-born man with dual (Lebanese and Brazilian) citizenship, in the city. Some 11 years ago, already with three daughters, the couple decided to move to a city in the south of Lebanon. The eldest is 20 and a university student; the other two are 13-year-old twins.

“Our region has been hardly hit. We finally managed to escape on Oct. 1, after a long time trying to put fuel in our cars. We spent nine hours stuck on the road. Everybody was trying to run away,” she told Arab News.

Souza said her daughters are traumatized by the sound of the bombs. The night before they escaped, there was a terrible strike on the area. They spent the night at their grandparents’ house, thinking it would be safer. Souza, who was also there, said it was a nightmare.

She added: “The bomb’s noise was so loud that we thought they were exploding the house. We had to touch ourselves to confirm we were alive.”

Her eldest daughter lost a college colleague that night. The building where she lived was destroyed and the young lady died.

The family left the city without a definite destination. Shelters were all full of displaced people. They eventually found a second-floor free space to rent, in a mountainous region. It has no furniture or any home appliances, but they feel better now that they have a place to stay.

Brazil’s government estimates at 21,000 the number of Brazilian nationals living in Lebanon. After sending questionnaires to the whole community, the Brazilian Embassy in Beirut learned that about 3,000 of them wished to be evacuated to the South American country.

Souza said: “I confirmed that we want to be taken to Sao Paulo. But it will not be easy for us. Our whole life is in Beirut. We’ll begin our lives from scratch in Brazil.”

The region’s Brazilian women keep a group on social media and stand by each other in difficult situations. Souza said many people are facing serious health problems now and need to be immediately taken from Lebanon.

She said: “I would be happy to give my place to those people, if my name appears on the next list. I feel safer now on the mountains and don’t care if we have to wait a little longer in order to go to Brazil.”

Brazil’s first plane had to wait longer than had been planned in Portugal due to security reasons, but it finally landed in Beirut on Oct. 5, rescuing 229 Brazilians and three pets. Operation Cedar Roots, as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s administration called it, may take several weeks until it is finally concluded.

Up until now, two Brazilians have died as a result of Israeli aggression, 15-year-old Kamal Abdallah and 16-year-old Mirna Raef Nasser.

Another significant Latin American community in Lebanon is the one formed by Argentines. There are no reliable estimates of their number and President Javier Milei’s administration still has not announced an evacuation plan.

“I called the Argentine Embassy and I was told that the government is not taking anyone out of Lebanon,” an Argentine woman, who preferred to remain anonymous due to safety concerns, told Arab News. The embassy directed her to leave Lebanon through Syria.

On Oct. 5, however, Said Chaya, the secretary-general of the Lebanese-Argentine Culture Union, known as the UCAL, told Arab News that the government had begun to ask Lebanon’s residents if they wanted to be rescued and taken to Argentina.

Chaya told Arab News: “People who can’t leave endangered areas are being consulted. But, as far as I know, most of them don’t want to escape from Lebanon. They prefer to remain there on the mountains and wait to see what will happen.”

The Argentine woman who talked to Arab News has been feeling those contradictory sentiments. On the one hand, she has thought about fleeing the region after the strikes on Beirut, where she lives, had led her and her family to leave the capital, but, on the other, she said her husband’s extended family cannot be left behind.

“We can’t flee the country and leave them here. Either we all go or no one goes,” she said, adding they are a group of 20 people who are all together now in a small house with only one bathroom.

An Argentine woman with no Arab ancestry, she has been living in Lebanon since 2003 and has three children: two of them, aged 20 and 25, are with her now.

She said: “We came in order to live a safer life with our kids, for their education, for religion. Except for the 2006 attacks, it used to be a safe country.”

Her two children now get extremely anxious when they hear the sound of bombs exploding.

She added: “Israel wants to create a second Gaza here. I’m terribly sad, because most of the world pretends that nothing is happening. They don’t care about us.”

She said that her family is tired and that she fears for her relatives’ safety.

She said: “The truth is that I don’t want to go anywhere else. I just want this to end tomorrow and to go back to my house.”

Lebanese families in Latin America follow the events in the Middle East and their country’s rescue plans with anguish. Lawyer Hanna Mtaneos Hanna Jr., an honorary consul of Lebanon in Goiania, Brazil, told Arab News the atmosphere among Lebanese Brazilians is tense.

“The Lebanese community is saddened and disgusted with the situation. Things have been escalating and the world keeps watching without doing anything,” he told Arab News.

Hanna Jr. himself has relatives in the northern part of Lebanon. Despite the fact that his four cousins are relatively safe now, he has been worried like everybody else.

He said: “A friend of mine has two sons living in Beirut. He has been extremely concerned. They’ve been trying to come back, but all commercial flights are constantly canceled.”

He thinks that the Brazilian government has been acting with the necessary haste since the crisis began, despite the difficulties involved in an operation during war.

That is not the case with Argentina, where Milei’s own particular views concerning Israel — he is very interested in Judaism and even promised, during the campaign, that he would move the Argentine Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — have reportedly been affecting his work with the Lebanese community.

Chaya said: “He keeps, for instance, a distant relationship with Muslims, who are part of the Lebanese community. Maybe that’s why it took so long for the government to organize the rescue.”

The UCAL and dozens of other Lebanese organizations published a letter last week in which they repudiated Israeli aggression. Protests against the attacks have been promoted in cities like Rosario and Cordoba.

The Islamic Center of the Argentine Republic, known as CIRA and founded mainly by Lebanese and Syrian immigrants decades ago, has been directly impacted by the attacks, said Hassan El-Bacha, its secretary-general.

“Israel is destroying the cities from which our ancestors came,” he told Arab News.

He said the community is appalled by the strikes, adding: “The Zionist occupation will not be detained unless the international community takes the matters in its hands.”

Other countries in Latin America are also involved in the crisis. A flight carrying 116 Colombian nationals and a few foreigners arrived in Bogota last week. New flights have already been scheduled and Peru’s government has also been helping a group of Peruvian nationals sheltering in the north.