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Source: https://www.newsweek.com/killing-hezbollahs-nasrallah-key-step-more-needed-opinion-1961368
Killing Hizbullah's Nasrallah Is a Key Step. More Is Needed
(Newsweek) Dan Perry - Much of the media coverage and official reaction about Israel's killing of Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah has fixated reflexively on fears of "escalation." That is wrongheaded, because the criminal regime in Iran and its marauding proxies across the region have been tolerated for far too long. Sometimes there is no choice but to stare a bully down. In addition to violently brutalizing its own people, the Islamic Republic pursues nuclear weapons and has deployed proxy militias throughout the region, bringing ruin wherever they tread. Hizbullah terrorizes Lebanon, picks fights with Israel, helped the war criminal Bashar Assad retain power in Damascus, and has sown terrorism around the world. The Houthis have caused the deaths of almost a half million Yemenis and cost Egypt $6 billion by impeding maritime trade through the Suez Canal. Hizbullah began bombarding Israel on Oct. 8 - the day after Hamas invaded Israel from Gaza and massacred 1,200 people, sparking the current war. This was not about Israel's counterstrike, which had not even begun. It was about piling on in hopes of badly injuring the Jewish state - en route to its destruction. The world and Western media seem to fear "escalation" - which is another way of saying that the ayatollahs have deterrent power. Imagine how much more of it they'll have once armed with nukes. The West should read the riot act to the criminals in Tehran: No more nukes, no more proxies, and no more normalizing the abnormal and accepting the unacceptable. The writer is the former chief editor of the Associated Press in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.