(Telegraph-UK) Col. Richard Kemp - Hizbullah's solidarity with its jihadist brothers in Gaza was the pretext for launching its war of aggression against Israel the day after Hamas's Oct. 7 orgy of murder, rape, kidnapping and torture. Yet their leaders have been taken out by the dozen, huge numbers of fighters cut down, rockets and launchers blown to smithereens, and all of their village strongholds in southern Lebanon razed to the ground. The blow that this ceasefire represents to the Iranian regime is every bit as great. Hizbullah, painstakingly built up at enormous expense over 40 years, was their flagship, the most important part of the "ring of fire" put in place to burn Israel to death. A ceasefire was seen by the ayatollahs as the best way of salvaging something from the wreckage. Tehran is on the cusp of achieving a nuclear capability to threaten Israel, the Middle East and the world. But Iran is now exposed more than ever before. The primary purpose of Hizbullah's massive arsenal of rocketry was to deter against an Israeli or U.S. military assault on Tehran's nuclear weapons program. That deterrent is largely gone and the IDF substantially destroyed Iran's air defenses in its retaliatory strikes in October. That means Israel is in an unprecedented position to put a stop to the Iranian menace. The writer, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, was chairman of the UK's national crisis management committee, COBRA.
2024-11-28 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive