AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): In the aftermath of the Zionist regime’s latest assassination in Lebanon, the assassination of Haitham Ali al-Tabatabai, a senior commander of Lebanese Hezbollah, the debate over the strategic aims of these strikes has intensified. The operation is part of a long-standing Zionist policy aimed at systematically eliminating leaders of the resistance, a campaign that has continued for years.
In an interview with ABNA News Agency, Ahmad Alwan, head of the Lebanese Al-Wafaa Party and a researcher of strategic affairs, said that the Israeli calculation is fundamentally flawed. “The Zionist enemy believes that by removing commanders it can paralyze the resistance,” he noted. But Hezbollah, he argued, is built on collective, systematized work and an institutionalized structure of succession. For every fallen commander, he said, there are trained and fully prepared replacements. “These assassinations have not weakened the will of the resistance,” he added. “They have strengthened Resistance’s resolve.”
Strategic Aims Behind the Recent Assassinations
According to Alwan, Israel’s recent operations inside Lebanon are designed to undermine the country’s presidency and cast Beirut as a state that is failing to uphold its commitments, an argument, he said, that would enable Israel to justify ongoing occupation, instability, and even broader military intervention. The long-term objective, he asserted, aligns with what he described as the expansionist aspiration of “Greater Israel” and the destruction of the resistance across the region.
Effect on the Deterrence Equation
Alwan insisted that the assassination would not alter Lebanon’s strategic deterrence equation. The structure of the resistance, he said, ensures that every martyr has a successor with equivalent security and military capabilities.
In his assessment, terms like “international community” and “human rights” have lost substantive meaning. Global legal mechanisms, he argued, have been rendered ineffective under U.S. and Israeli influence. “There is no one left to answer the cries of the oppressed people of Lebanon,” he said.
Resistance’s Response: Force and Fire
Referring to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 and the ceasefire framework that followed, Alwan maintained that Hezbollah has remained committed to the agreement while Israel has violated it more than five thousand times. The Resistance initially tested diplomatic avenues, he said, but when diplomacy failed to yield results, it deferred its response to “the appropriate time and manner.” The most effective language for confronting Israel, he argued, is “the language of force and fire,” and Hezbollah will determine the timing, location, and scale of its response.
The Role of the Lebanese State and the Risks of Disarmament
Alwan said that Lebanon’s government, constrained by diplomatic limits and deprivation of a truly equipped national army, a condition he attributed to U.S. obstruction, cannot effectively defend the country militarily. Proposals to disarm the Resistance, he warned, would constitute a grave strategic error. Instead, he argued, the state should exert maximum pressure on Israel to secure full withdrawal from Lebanese territory, the release of prisoners, and an end to ongoing violations.
Lebanon’s president, he added, is striving to keep the country away from war. But Israel “is not seeking peace.”
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