Hizballah retaliates by striking key military bases in Israel, with Jon Elmer

Let's dig into this operation in Lebanon, from Lebanon, Hezbollah responded to the assassination of Fuad Shuker, the chief of staff of the Hezbollah of the Islamic resistance, who was assassinated 28 days ago in the Dahiya by the Israelis. And this operation is called Operation Arbaeen, a day of revenge. It's timed for the 40th day after the death of Imam Hussein and the Ashura celebrations. And it was a 5:50 a.m. operation. It began at 5:50 a.m. And I'll just frame the operation and then I'll show you the target maps after that. So at 5:15 a.m. Something around 340 rockets were fired, which is the most Hezbollah's fired in a in a single day. Possibly ever because the height of the 2006 war was 150 a day. They're firing 150 a day for the last week and a half with Israel on high alert. And so 340 rockets is the most significant since October 8th when Hezbollah joined the war. And it's a two-stage operation. Stage number one is to flood the north 11 military bases in the north. We can look at map number 19 here tomorrow. We can look at these 11 bases that were targeted. And you can see they're all along the upper Galilee and the upper Galilee panhandle and then along the occupied Golan Heights. And it was to saturate the Iron Dome. So the first stage was to fire these 340 rockets. The Israelis say 250 rockets. Um But of course there's a military sensor in Israel, so we don't we don't know. They can say whatever they want. Nasrallah said it was 340 rockets. And the goal of this first stage of this operation is to tie up the Iron Dome for the second stage. And the second stage was tens of drones. They didn't say the number. Tens of drones. The Israelis said more than 20 drones were launched. And those drones targeted the Ein Shemer base, which is a military airfield that goes back to the It was a a British airfield that went back to the British mandate. Today it hosts the Israeli aerial defense array. So they're their Arrow systems, their David's Sling, and their Iron Dome. They're based out of that base. And so that was a subtarget. Nasrallah called that a subtarget because it's targeting the base. It's also a drone base. And it was a drone assassination carried out on Fuad Shuker. So these are parts of the reason why they targeted is the link to the assassination of Shuker, Haj Mossin, and the the people responsible for it in the Israeli military branch cuz the main target was Glilot, which is an Aman base, the IDF military intelligence directorate and Unit 8200 is at that base as well as Mossad. So two-stage operation. So in this map here, there's no video of this operation. So I'm just going to show you the Hezbollah target cards that they released. So this is the first one. You can see the bases. If we go to number 20 here tomorrow, I can I can describe some of these bases to you. But these are basically just these maps that we're familiar with Hezbollah using these maps in great detail that show that they know where everything is on each of these bases. So we're looking at a barracks here, which is an IDF Beit Hillel IDF battalion headquarters, Zuara artillery position, Kiyala barracks is an aerial defense array base in the Golan. Yoav barracks is also So they target barracks and bases. Barracks are where the soldiers are stationed. They're sleeping quarters and and dining halls and whatnot. They targeted the Nafah base, which is a command headquarters of the 210 210th division, which is the Golan, which is the IDF division in charge of the Golan. Another barracks and artillery base in the Golan, Ramot Naftali barracks, which is a border company base. Ein Zeitim base, which is a northern which is the IDF northern command headquarters. Mount Meron, which we have seen be battered. And we're going to show you one of those later on in the show here. But that's their air traffic and surveillance base, their key base. And another artillery position and the newly established field headquarters of the 146th division command. So they're the Again, their new bases are being added. And and Hezbollah likes to add those to those details that they're new bases, new field headquarters. A field headquarters is less than a base. It's just like where you put a tent up. And Hezbollah always likes to point out that they know exactly what's under those tents. So So that was the rocket fire. So they saturate with the rocket fire, most rockets Hezbollah has fired in the war in order to tie up the air defense systems for number 21 here tomorrow. And this is the first target is the Israeli Air Force base at Ein Shemer. This is a drone base. It's 75 km from the Lebanese from the blue line. I was going to say Lebanese border, but there's no borders. Israel doesn't have borders. It's the only country in the world that doesn't have borders. It has a few tenuous armistice lines. And so let's say 75 km from the tenuous armistice line. And 40 km from Tel Aviv in the Ein Shemer control base is the control base for Heron drones. And it's also drone testing site and UAV base. UAV, those runways are for unmanned aerial vehicles. Again, who carried out the assassination. Ein Shemer is multi-layered aerial defense and air defense command base that has, as I said, Arrow the Arrow systems, David's Sling systems, Iron Dome systems. And that's where the batteries are positioned there. It's also the headquarters of the Menashe Brigade. And it's an airport that's used for drone experimentation. So we're 72 km is the exact number that Hezbollah says from the border. And interesting to note on Ein Shemer is that We remember back to the Iranian missile attack. And in the days around that attack, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin attempted to identify where the geo the GPS spoofing was happening. People were talking about how their phones always kept telling them that they were at the Beirut Airport. And airplanes complained about how they had lost their GPS. And it was because of GPS spoofing. And that they located that GPS spoofing as coming from the Ein Shemer base. And so it's aerial defense, drones, and and the spoofing GPS spoofing that they use as a form of electronic warfare to try to get the to try to throw off the flight path of the drones that Hezbollah is firing. So that's why they picked that target. But this is the key target number 22 tomorrow. We can see this here. And this is Hezbollah's going to show this cuz responding to this operation, the assassination of Fuad Shuker, the expectation was, as Nasrallah has said many times, if you bomb if you bomb Beirut, we're going to bomb Tel Aviv. And so Fuad Shuker was in the Dahiya in Beirut. And people were expecting this operation to be targeting Tel Aviv, especially Israelis. They were on a state of high alert. But this was the main target. This is the main military intelligence base, Aman. The military intelligence is the top tier of intelligence in Israel. Shabak and Mossad are are distant seconds to military intelligence. They're the key organization in Israel is Aman, the military intelligence directorate. This also this base houses Unit 8200, which is the signals intelligence unit. That would have been what used to intercept calls and would have been part of the pinpointing of where Fuad Shuker was for the assassination. We're also seeing on this map here that it shows that there's a military intelligence division college. So for the study of military intelligence as well. And also the communications battalion of the military intelligence and also a key Mossad base. So this base is a super important base. This base is located just outside of Tel Aviv, 110 km from the Lebanese border. So the deepest strike of this war, the most rockets of this war targeting a key base for the first time in in Hezbollah's war with Israel. So these are very important distinctions of operational success of this mission. Although there was some expectations that there would be a greater response to the assassination of Fuad Shuker, Nasrallah did say that after this operation that they believed that they operation was successful and that everyone could relax. Which was sort of toning down the red red alert that everybody both in Lebanon and Israel were experiencing. And you can see there is a Unit 8200 base. And you can see the radar domes up there for their signals intelligence. And it's massive campus that you can see there. So significant targets. Of course, there's a military sensor in Israel. If anyone releases any information about targets, about the targeter, um any any information, military information, you go right to jail. Um you know, if you rape and murder prisoners in uh in a torture camp, you do not go to jail, you you get house arrest. Uh but if you talk about a Hezbollah strike on uh the military intelligence base, you'll go to jail immediately. So, we don't know all of these details. The Israeli details that we got from Israel said that they scrambled 100 jets for 275 air strikes on 40 launch pads uh after the fact that they hit cuz um the Israelis themselves admitted that they're that they didn't have intelligence on this operation. They didn't know what was coming. and what they did was they attacked they they Israelis say they preempted the attack because they sent fighter jets up uh about 15 minutes before the operation took place because they saw the movement of fighters. Um they didn't know where they were going or what they were doing. They saw the movement of fighters uh and Israel attacked. And so, uh Nasrallah pointed out in his speech after this operation um that the Israelis said that they preempted uh the operation, but they didn't. They struck after. It was an aggression. So, Nasrallah made the distinction between uh preemption and aggress and and just aggress uh aggression, attacking, just attacking uh platforms. And they got some of the platforms as is as is the case. You can you can hit the platforms after they launch cuz you can see where they launch from. Uh but they were just simple Katyusha rockets. Hezbollah did not use their strategic ballistic precision ballistic missiles. Um they're devastating arsenal that we saw last week on the show in their underground bunker. So, they didn't use a really important key strategic weapon for this attack. They used drones, dozens of drones, tens of drones was the word that Nasrallah said. Um and just to give you some sense from Nasrallah about the whys of this operation. So, some of the questions that he answered were why the delay? And he said cuz that it was 28 days after um the the Haj Mohsen assassination. And Nasrallah said it was because of target selection. They were trying to decide uh on the right targets. That it was also because of the state alert state of alert. Israel and the US were at maximum state of alert. Um and Nasrallah said if we hurried that we might fail in the operation. Um so, also this is something that we hear from other resistance axis uh powers waiting to attack is that the delay is part of the operation. The delay this uh is a psychological punishment. It's a financial punishment cuz as they say they have 100 fighter jets in the air. Um so, it's a financial punishment. It's a burden on society waiting to see what's going to happen. So, that's part of it. Um the other reason he said Nasrallah said was that the axis um of resistance discussed amongst themselves because the Ansar Allah movement was going is going to respond for the bombing of the Hodeidah port um that Israel carried out. Um and Iran still is going to respond for the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in a government guesthouse in Tehran. Um and so, the other reason Nasrallah said was that they gave the ceasefire talks that were happening a chance. They weren't going to put a missile through the ceasefire talks and be blamed for breaking down the ceasefire talks when as Nasrallah pointed out they're a farce and Netanyahu shows they're a farce. So, they wanted to give time for Netanyahu to show himself to be a farce and then they carried out this operation. And again, the considerations that went into it, they attacked military bases. Israelis expected attacks on civilians cuz that's how Israel would do it. Um but they didn't. They they attacked military positions. They attacked Tel Aviv cuz that Aman base is just on the outside of Tel Aviv. And they attacked deeper than Haifa. The other base was uh south of Hadera. So, um deeper than they've struck before. So, these are operational successes. I I went over the targets. Uh the weapons, I went over those. 340 Katyushas. So, cheap, easy to fire, easy to replace launchers and rockets. Um And they did not use their strategic uh ballistic missiles which Nasrallah pointed out. Um and the timing of it, he said that it was after the Arbaeen prayer, after the Fajr prayer at 5:15 a.m. that all the launch pads were ready before the launch. Um and that he noted Nasrallah noted that this was the first time they've ever fired drones from the Bekaa Valley. Um and Nasrallah said every single one of the drones crossed the border uh into Israel. The Israeli version of the story is that they preempted what was supposed to be 500 rockets. So, they cut something like 40% of the rockets. Although, at the beginning they had ludicrous um numbers saying that they smashed 6,000 rocket launchers. Um Nasrallah pointed out that those launch tubes were 8 to 10,000 dollars and they're not worth the lives of their fighters which the Palestinians show as well. You set them on timers and then you're out of the area by the time the anti the by the time the anti-battery counter-battery fire comes back on you, your fighters are gone. So, um Nasrallah said in his speech, "Does that mean the case is closed for the Fuad Shukr assassination?" And he seemed to indicate it was. He told people to relax. He straight up said people can relax. That they would see what went it they would check the damage assessments. Um again, military sensor makes it difficult to do that. It would be interesting to see how they if Hezbollah can have drone footage of their strikes. But as for now, all we have is these targeting cards that we're showing you uh here on the screen. So, an operational success for sure. Deeper than ever into Israel. More rockets than ever. Um but far less I think than many people expected. Israelis uh themselves. And I think that there's reasons for that. Nasrallah basically has been saying it for months um that they're not trying to throw the world into World War III. They're escalating rungs up the escalation ladder. And this is clearly a rung. This is a two-rung uh climb up the escalation ladder. And it's possible for a war to start based on climbing the escalation ladder. But that Hezbollah wasn't going to give Netanyahu what he wants which is just an open war that protects his government and protects his failures um because as soon as he's out of power, he's going to go to jail for corruption and then he's going to be uh framed as the worst prime minister in Israeli history for the attack on October 7th and the failure of this war. So, that's the Arbaeen operation day of revenge. And I'm just going to show you one quick uh 23 tomorrow. I just wanted to show you one quick uh Hezbollah operation cuz I always like to pull point these out. Um this is uh a Mount Meron. Again, this is the uh air traffic control base. Just look at when it when this this is an Almas uh top attack anti-tank missile. And watch as it flies in. Just look at the tattered uh radar domes on this site cuz the Mount Meron site's been pummeled. And as I always point out, uh it's important to remember in these wars that the Almas is a reversed engineered uh IDF Spike system uh anti-tank guided missile system that was captured in its entirety by Hezbollah. Look at that how tat how tattered that dome is. It's been hit so many times. Um but Hezbollah captured the Spike system um and they sent it to Iran. It was reverse engineered and appears in battle uh with devastating effect as you can see there. Um so, it's be interesting to see what weapons um Palestinians capture in Gaza um that we'll see in 20 years from now in the upcoming battles. So, that is the uh summary. That is the resistance report. It is the summary of the uh operation Arbaeen day of revenge and also the consistent and steady resistance in the Gaza Strip that is continuing apace.