Hizballah expands its attack on key bases and airfields, with Jon Elmer

we are going to go now to Lebanon and try to uh cover this fast moving story in Lebanon that Israel just appears like they're going for it and they believe that they're in an existential battle and they've spoken it into existence because this war is not going to go well uh for Israel if this uh trajectory takes place here so um I've shown you this map a couple times over the last few weeks to see where the strikes are we're mainly talking about in the South um although those strikes have been expanding and that's part of the nature of the growing war is to expand the distance that each group uh is targeting um 80% as I pointed out on a number of shows 80% of the attacks since October 8th are by the Israeli military uh Israeli civilian casualties are less than 10 in this entire time and it's difficult to to pinpoint exactly what a civilian is um because they were in villages that had been evacuated and we're and we saw that report that I showed you where the Mayors and some other uh people in the in the v in The Villages uh are you doing security work they're watching The Border they're in a underground bunker uh with a control pan in a control room with video all over and they're the line to the IDF they get on the phone and say there's a drone coming uh whatever so whether they're called civilians or counted as soldiers hasbalah has not been targeting civilians they target military bases um and this week at the Ramat David Airbase uh yev Galant who is the uh defense minister he said that the center of gravity is Shifting to the north by diverting resources and forces there we are at the onset of a new phase in the war and sure enough Tuesday was the pager attack Wednesday was the walkietalkie attack Thursday Nella gave a speech and more Rockets were fired uh by Hezbollah than at any point in the war and more were fired more air strikes by Israel than at any time in the War uh on Friday there was the assassination of the radwan commanders who were in a meeting in the dahia um I'll get into those details after I just want to give the timeline so people remember how quickly this all came about um and then Sunday was Sunday was the big Saturday night and Sunday was the big uh the major escalation that showed that Israel was going to war um full on in this case and then Monday they killed 500 people um 35 children that number is now doubled um and 2,000 wounded the Israeli Air Force said they struck 1600 Hezbollah targets using 2100 Munitions and that's just the Air Force the drones uh added a hundred uh added hundreds more strikes and Israel said they used 250 fighter jets which is double the number uh that they have been using previously we can go to the next map and look at just the strikes over the last um these are the this is the expanding of the strikes by Israel over these last few days and I just want to point out some things that nasala said about the walkie-talkie and pager events he said in his speech he said this was meant to kill 5,000 people instantly there was 5,000 pagers in the pager shipment um some of them weren't on the ones that weren't on didn't blow up um he said this is a significant and Powerful blow there is no doubt that we were subjected to a major blow both in terms of security and Personnel unprecedented in the history of the resistance in Lebanon um unprecedented in Lebanon and the conflict with uh the Zionist enemy he said and maybe on a global scale because we've never seen anything even close to that kind of operation to think about the criminality of that Israeli operation to uh secretly intercept a supply chain put them on an airplane with civilians who have no idea what these are all throughout the shipment of these pagers they have to come in trucks in the same way any other uh device would get shipped over the world so some plane was flying unbeknownst holding 5,000 exploding uh pagers and however many uh exploding walkie-talkies that would have downed the airplane killed all the crew um this this is a brutal crime that I think there'll be more uh time to digest and dig into the layers of um of the just the sick disposition that would let you uh think that that was a good operation uh but in any case he said that nasella said the Lebanon front is a key bargaining chip for the resistance in Gaza it's their way to push a ceasefire to up the stakes to climb the escalation ladder and get a ceas fire in Gaza and he said the enemy's attempt to separate the Lebanese front from the Gaza front in threatening war will not happen um he said you will he said to Netanyahu you will not be able to bring the northern settlers back to the north do whatever you want if you want to bring the settlers back the only way is to stop the aggression on Gaza no military escalation no killing no assassinations and not even a fullscale war can return turn your settlers to the borders at all um and then when he threatened about a ground Invasion he said we are searching for your Zionist soldiers and tanks we we look for them with lanterns and flashlights he said joking right because they they're not there they move 10 kilometers back from the border months and months ago so that they would be out of range of anti-tank fire so the Israelis aren't even on the border so he made a joke about that he says um what you are about to do will further display Place those fleeing from the north and will push away any chance of their return what the enemy considers a threat we consider a historic opportunity and we welcome it that's how he views the ground war a historic opportunity and we welcome it um so that is well the last thing he said is the enemy's foolish narcissistic Reckless leadership will lead it to an abyss which is I think a standard uh com comment that probably most people that listen to the show agreed to just uh Israel is just on a uh on a self-destructive uh brutal crime binge that we're watching right now these last few days have been hard uh on everybody I the Lebanese primarily but also the war in Gaza carries on at the same pace so um let's look at number 20 because this is um this is Hezbollah admitted who died in the pager operations and they admitted it right away which was an interesting development for me um to release the full names and home Villages of everyone killed almost immediately surprisingly immediately we don't know the names of these commanders um their operational security is so tight that we don't know the names of their commanders in fact when Imad mugia their number one Commander was killed uh there was stories after that about how fighters in Hezbollah knew him from coming to meetings but they didn't know his name or they knew him at a different name um so they had anonymity even within in many cases their own organizations um and so to be able to hit these commanders those two that you're seeing right there are the two main commanders um of the radwan force I'll talk about those in a minute them in a minute um but these assassinations that started with fuad shuker uh in Lebanon and then carried on with the radwan forces Commander don't have any analogy in history uh for the Israelis they've never been able to get at these Hezbollah leaders inside Lebanon um you know kasm suani was assassinated in Iraq Imad Mia was assassinated in damasus Mustafa badine was also uh assassinated in Syria so these attacks in Lebanon are uh a big blow and they're um they're noteworthy for the fact that the pagers suggested a breach and then these assassinations that follow up have underscored that breach on Friday the assassination um the meeting of radwan commanders radwan forces named after Imad mugia Haj radwan um they were having a meeting there was at least eight senior commanders of of the radwan forces which are special forces Hezbollah Special Forces there their attack forces they're their crossborder raiding force that would go take the Galilee which is what Israel pointed out when they assassinated them they said that they were going to carry out a October 7th attack in uh the Galilee um which is not true in that framing but the idea that Hezbollah is going to come down the mountain and take the Galilee has been something that Israel's been paranoid about really since the years after the 2006 War um so they were able to kill um senior leaders in that operation top generals and you add that to uh fuad Sher and it looks like you have a significant breach uh within the organization so let's look at 20 because those two main guys that you see there um Ibrahim ail he is the number one here's who you're looking at here this is the first footage we've ever seen of them we did this with fuad shuker too because when they die we learn who they are we don't know who they are before um and so Ibraham ail Hajj Abdul kader um he was the number one commander of the radwan forces he was the founding commander of that unit Special Forces Unit um and he has been part part of the original founders of uh you can see them there eating with their troops they always talk about that that their commanders fight from the front um and they eat what their troops eat um and there these videos are interesting because we've never seen him interacting with his troops we've never seen him uh talk like this we've never seen these rooms so operational security uh only applies until their deaths uh and then this video was released by Hezbollah this week so he was a founder of Islamic Jihad that was the preh Hezbollah formation in the 1980s um and those were the guys that carried out um consistent operations against the Americans in the early 1990s he became the commander of central training so the overall training of Hezbollah Cadre um and became Chief of Staff of the resistance of the Islamic resistance in the 1990s in 1997 he became the commander of operations in South Lebanon uh which culmin ated in the 2000 Liberation and you saw him there in Syria he fought in Syria house to house in Syria um fighting that battle in Syria um in 2008 he took over uh as leader of the radwan force founding leader of the radwan uh Force um and he was also the Commander in South Lebanon during the July 2006 War so you're talking about top commander and after fuad sher's assassination he became the top commander of he B their overall leader um and here we're looking at Ahmed weby Hajj Abu Hassan Samir he is the number two in the radwan force so when uh Ibrahim Akil took over for fuad shukra um Ahmed weby became the head of the rad Juan forces so an a significant loss July 30th was when uh fuad shuker was lost um Ahmed weby was the field commander in the ansaria uh operation in 1996 7 this was a devastating operation that thwarted an Israeli Special Forces flotilla 13 Special Forces Naval Commandos under the command of yoav Galant uh invaded Lebanon in the secret uh in the dark of night attempting to carry out an assassination um and Counter Intelligence operation by Hezbollah met the fighters and wiped out the force 12 Special Forces um it's called the boat disaster in Israeli um in Israeli narrative um but these guys so key operations that he was responsible for Ahmed Wy um but all both of them are from the founding generation of Islamic Jihad They carried out the 1983 em US Embassy bombing which wiped out the CIA station uh in the Middle East and set back the CIA 20 years and set back uh intelligence in the Middle East uh more than 20 years remember the Iraq War when the intelligence was so terrible by the CIA in the Iraq War and what they thought would happen and whether there would be an Insurgency and all of those mistakes that were made um can be owed to the a removal of a generation of uh CIA officers that were killed in the bayroot uh station in the embassy um they were involved in the 1983 Marine Corps Barracks bombing which killed 241 American Marines um that were occupying uh Beirut at the time during the um the war with Israel and after 19 1982 um and they captured the CIA they bombed the embassy twice they bombed it a second time the US Embassy and they um quite famously captured the um CIA station Chief William Buckley was captured um and um so that they they caught the top intelligence official uh in that in that operation so these Islamic Jihad guys have been wanted all over uh the American and west World there was a$7 Million bounty on um on uh Ibrahim Akil for his role and they didn't know that Ahmed Wei was part of that operation because they had no idea who he was um which is part of the story so um it's important to note that these are the founding members the founding generation of Hezbollah they have prepared Hezbollah for this battle their assassinations do not uh they they're temporarily disrup but they do not dis uh derail the operations of Hezbollah because they have built a military organization that is able to re to uh replace its commanders um and put people in positions to uh to take over for any lost positions whether the lost on the battlefield lost by assassination uh they can be replaced and that is the story that this is a confronting this face Toof face this was a devastating week for Hezbollah there's no question about it that pager operation the assassination of the radwan commanders nasrala admitted it it's a blow there's no point in hiding that but the reality is the war that carried on for the three days after that was proof uh that these that these Fighters are able to replace their leadership and as was the case with abas mwi's assassination in 1990 uh what whatever it was 92 or 93 um he was more moderate than nasrala or not as skilled as nasrala all due respect to him uh but Nella came in after that assassination and changed the party uh in a way that um you know Israel couldn't predict and that's something that these assassinations always open the door uh to so this footage is the first the world has ever seen of these Fighters um and hasbalah puts those videos out and so I wanted to show you guys those because they Mark a significant moment and nesal always jokes in his speech um that uh he there's so much that he can't say about his Fighters and when he does that he's talking about these people he's talking about these commanders who have been part of the history of the Middle East for 40 plus years they've been hunted for years U but nobody knows who they are in some cases even in the organization they don't know who they are and so that operational security is part of the reason why this week's operations were such a blow uh to Hezbollah and such um you you know a blow that would be acknowledged by Nala as such um because these are the founding generation but they have like I said they were they led the training Bureau um within Hezbollah they are the ones who trained the generation of Fighters there's kasum suani with them with Ahmed Wei then showing you the uh the connection so there's one more guy there that was in that picture that has not been killed yet so the anytime you see the blur that's good tomorrow let's do 22 um because this the response to this was to upgrade the uh rocket Arsenal that was fired at uh Israel so these are this is the debut of a renamed uh F rocket this is a it's tier 2 the kusas are tier one this is a tier 2 rocket 83 kilograms of Warhead so a much heavier Warhead it's a 220 uh millimeter 220 caliber um rocket so larger than the grad Rockets a double the grad rocket size um and their range is 70 kilometers so double the the range of the katusa Rockets um that are being fired and they're named after uh fatty toil fatty toil was a commander a founding commander and his brother was Sam toil he was assassinated earlier in the war we reported on that he's a radwan commander as well um so these are named after fat tail um and there's two there's a fatty one and a fatty 2 the fatty 2 is 170 kilogram of explosives 32 millimeter um rocket size and 100 kilometer range you could see their truck launched um and is and the uh Hezbollah uh press pointed out Hezbollah um military media pointed out in their field report that the attacks yesterday were fired some of them were fired from the emad for underground facility that we showed on the show a few weeks ago that crazy underground bunker where they drove all those trucks with missiles on the back that's what we're looking at being used and hasola fired 300 rockets on Monday 300 rockets on Tuesday so they doubled the number of rockets that had been fired as their Peak that's double the highest number of the 2006 war and double the number that had been fired at any point since October 8th and the targets were the guu Airfield west of uh aula the northern base uh Northern command the base of the headquarters of the northern command who's responsible for uh the Lebanon border they took a hundred Rockets um the athlete Naval Base where the flotilla 13 Special Forces they're the same ones that I said that were captured in the and killed in that 1997 andaria raid um so they were targeted their facilities were targeted um so they're picking military targets symbolic significant military targets representative not symbolic representative uh targets um and so that is a uh qualitative upgrade in the way hbal is fighting if we look at 23 we can see the way these Rockets were deployed so now that you've seen those weapons you can see here they're showing the Raphael base um rafhael defense Industries um and they're showing Ramat David Airbase so this is the Raphael uh facility um and the Airfield and then the there's the third which is the um there there's two bases the Raphael bases as two bases and those both of those sites if you'll remember um both of those sites are for um were subjected to Drone footage um the the Hezbollah Drone footage that I took you through a couple months ago he um that that was released to show that they have intelligence over all of these sites that are being hit so yev Galant or yev Galant this week goes up to this Ramat David airbase and says this is where we're going to start the war and immediately Hezbollah hits that base so they're talking they're communicating with missiles uh communicating with rockets these are Rockets these are unguided uh Rockets these are not Precision guided missiles those are still in the quiver to be used later although it appears one may have been used uh today uh earlier today to fire on the mosad headquarters outside of Tel Aviv but we're seeing these Rockets uh be used and you can tell a little bit by the launch of them that they're qualitative upgrades from the smaller katucha Rockets there's 80,000 katas at least in hasala control there's 880,000 of these F uh Rockets they just introduced a f 32 yesterday um so yeah they're hitting uh the Ramat David Airbase which is uh has all the most important it's the largest Airbase in the north that has all the most important uh aerial Wing formations uh that fight from uh right from the North and the David facility of the Raphael ba uh Raphael defense Industries uh they're the ones who make the Iron Dome and David sling and the Raphael headquarters is in hia that's what we saw on the coast there in the map um and so we've seen Drone footage detailing all of this and the David facility is the headquarters of land and Naval division it's their Technologies and ordinance division um and the leam facility of Raphael in the Galilee which we've also shown and the Drone flew over um is for air superiority systems air and c4isr systems that's surveillance uh cland control and surveillance systems but mostly what they're talking about is Iron Dome and David sling that are made in those uh sites so we see here and then Hezbollah attached this footage which was um because the military censor in Israel doesn't allow any uh reporting on any of this we have to rely on um we have to rely on these occasional settler camera footage to show that anything happened at all um but those bases were targeted and the they guided Rockets but you can aim them you can aim them they're just unguided when they're in the air so the rocket strikes hit those bases and I guess we'll have to wait for satellite footage over those to see um if see what kind of damage there was on those air bases because those air bases took more than a hundred Rockets um in in doing that uh in doing that operation so um if uh yeah that's the that's the the that's the Hy the base and you can see it's got the testing ground um you can see there too the testing ground around it we saw the facilities they have warehouses um and all um and all the weapons testing facilities they had the the jet uh tester uh the wind um what's it called like the wind channel for testing uh in the they're testing all of these products so hasala knows where the weapons that are being used to counter their War Ali will talk more about this later um but they know where the weapons and the systems and the people the Personnel are based uh who are carrying out this war and that's who they target they're not reigning missiles down on hia and Tel Aviv which they could do in numbers of thousands they could do that but Hezbollah is not doing that they don't want an open War they don't want to Massacre civilians they want to defend Lebanon they want to defend Gaza and they added defending Lebanon to defending Gaza just yesterday they they said that our war is expanding to the objectives of this war expanding to protecting Lebanon and its people as well as protecting Gaza and being a second front uh in the war in in Gaza so important qualitative upgrades in the way that this battle is being fought um and the number of rockets uh more than doubling uh which is an interesting uh development for sure and if maybe tomorrow we do number 30 because just wanted to show you one last one here is that um we over the course of the last four three or four days um we we saw the introduction of the Iraqi resistance joining the battle so these are uh long range cruise missiles being launched um from Iraq these are Iranian sumar family missiles the long range uh heavy payload heavier payload cruise missiles that are launched uh rocket launched um and Israel had to say that they intercepted these they intercepted at least one of these was intercepted and they used a fighter jet to do it so again these cheap um cheaper uh missiles being used and having to be intercepted by billion dooll jets flying at you know $50,000 an hour or whatever um you know probably more when you consider the repair time um and that's that's their only defense against these and so the Iraqi resistance interesting to to note because if they were to join the war um from the east in a concerted Way by carrying out these drone and cruise missile attacks you can see there they're noting the date of the taxes these are fresh uh fresh operations and the Israelis have had to comment multiple times on uh the fact that they were getting fired they uh they say that they're targeting military bases in the Jordan Valley uh military positions in the Jordan Valley and that has been their primary target um over these last four or five days so you can see a number of drone launches um coming from Iraq and you know we the the Americans are in the region Norah said 40,000 troops uh also the 101st Airborne is apparently landed in Cyprus to be uh deployed to Central Command which is the middle east's um name uh and the Americans are trying to to keep the regional War element out of it um because a regional War would mean Islamic Fighters that are organized trained and battle tested fighting uh you know and Syrian Fighters battle tested joining that front we have aner Allah we saw last week their ballistic missile capabilities and their drone capabilities um you could have a Forefront uh war against Israel on top of the Gaza and the West Bank fronts and at some point a war of attrition defined this way uh is not going to be a war that Israel can win and we're starting to see even just in these first days that Israel is qualifying is trying to say this this might be a short operation we want this to be a short operation but uh my instinct tells me that um under these circumstances cedus perab all things being equal air strikes versus hezbollah's Rocket Arsenal especially with the north emptied of civilians and the South emptied of civilians this war can go on for a long time there's a lot of resources to carry out that war if the targeting is not of Civilian Targets in Israel but uh of uh military bases that are used with the Iron Dome interceptions which Ali's going to talk about in a minute here um the the fight of rockets on emptied settlements and air strikes on hasbalah positions or houses that are emptied in the South could go on for a long time they both have a lot of resources to carry out that war and if this war by Netanyahu is a way of getting out of the war in Gaza or uh putting that to the back burner I don't you I you'd be very surprised to see Hezbollah leave uh the Gaza to to break off from the Gaza from the Gaza front hasbalah has said all along the war in Gaza ends uh our Rockets will stop um and people can go back to their homes uh presumably when those Rockets stop and the same answer Allah has said the same thing in Yemen if you stop blockading the Gaza Strip they'll stop blockading the Red Sea these have been known for the entire War so it looks like we we have been covering Hezbollah for the last uh number of months but it looks to be uh a permanent fixture on the live stream to be covering this war as well so that's the resistance report from Lebanon this week [Music]