The powerful airstrikes took out Nasrallah along with multiple members of Hezbollah’s senior staff in a particularly bloody assault on multiple apartment buildings with hundreds of innocents also killed in the carnage.
After the strike, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) released a statement declaring it “eliminated” Nasrallah during a targeted attack on what it referred to as the organization’s “central headquarters”.
The IDF said they moved quickly to greenlight this mission after receiving intelligence reports that Nasrallah would be meeting there with senior staff members that day.
According to Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani, a senior spokesperson with the IDF, final details for the special military operation known as “New Order” were pulled together quickly soon after it was understood Nasrallah would soon be there.
"We had real time intelligence, an opportunity, an operational opportunity that allowed us to carry out this attack," Shoshani said in a Saturday briefing to reporters about the raid.
"We've been gathering intelligence on Nasrallah for a few years. For decades we've been gathering intelligence, understanding sometime he will try and initiate a war," Shoshani explained further. "We had real time information, and we carried out the strike."
For Israel the secrecy of the mission was paramount, since to them this was an opportunity to remove much of the senior leadership group within Hezbollah. Iran-backed Hezbollah has continued to attack Israel’s northern region on an ongoing basis since October 7, with the pledge that it would not back down until Israel ceases its genocidal war against Gaza and the Palestinian people. The knowledge of the meeting of those behind those ongoing strikes from Lebanon was an opportunity Israel’s government considered critical to disabling Hezbollah at a critical time.
Security was so tight that reportedly even the pilots in Israel’s air strike team were not informed of what they would be attacking until the very last minute.
"We exposed the teams to the target only a few hours before carrying it out and they understood what they were going for,” the senior military leader of air squadron told an Israeli radio interviewer on Saturday.
The U.S. also acknowledged not even being told by Israel about the planned strike until the aircraft involved were already in the air and just minutes away from their targets. Only hours before, the U.S. had been telling the world that Israel and Hezbollah were close to yet another ceasefire agreement, based on the then current set of lies Israeli officials were feeding it.
Though not confirmed, it is believed the airstrike dropped some of the most destructive and deadly of American-made bombs the U.S. has been supplying to Israel throughout the current phase of the war in Gaza, and despite that even an high-level investigatory board within the State Department knows are being used broadly to commit war crimes in Palestine. These are the BLU-117 series of bombs, which carry 2,000 pounds of explosive. They are referred to in military circles as “bunker busters” because they are designed to penetrate thick protective layers of steel and concrete before landing the full force of their explosive on their targets below.
According to numerous ground reports, these bombs, also known as Mark 84 munitions, are routinely being used to blow up buildings where innocent Palestinians have been sheltering in Gaza. The IDF justifies the use of these weapons because they enable killing possibly one or two Hamas individuals deep underneath, despite the vast collateral damage they create which often includes dozens of others killed and hundreds more seriously injured.
Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani of the IDF sidestepped questions to confirm whether these were the bombs used in this attack. Even if these were not the precise munitions, it is highly likely much of the funding for the mission and actual munitions used were American supplied.
The attack which killed Nasrallah came hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivery an angry speech at the United Nations General Assembly decrying what he called the growing “anti-Semitic swamp” the UN had become since his country carried out what he declared were the fully justified mass murders of now an estimated over 42,000 Palestinian people in Gaza alone, since October 7.
Netanyahu spoke to a mostly empty audience after a sizeable portion of the UN ambassadors and visitors who had sat through earlier speeches by other leaders walked out, just as he strode up to the podium. It was Netanyahu’s first speech to the General Assembly since the war with Gaza began.
The prime minister blasted the wide dissension against his country’s actions over the last year. He said the world had a choice to either support what he called “the blessing” of nations who he sees support Israel regarding its military actions in the Middle East, or “the curse” of those who stand against it.
To illustrate his perspective, he showed a map highlighting countries such as Saudi Arabia, India, Sudan, and Egypt as part of a group he considered part of the “blessing”. Those who he considers part of the “curse” included Yemen, Lebanon, and Iran.
The map showed Gaza and the West Bank as part of Israel. Netanyahu made no reference to the July ruling by the UN’s International Court of Justice which unanimously declared they belong to the Palestinian people and which Israel is illegally occupying. He also ignored any reference to the motion by the General Assembly less than two weeks ago which ordered Israel to pull out of both areas within the next year.
After doing what he called setting the record straight about who were the good guys in the region and who were the bad ones, Netanyahu then took straight aim at Hezbollah and Iran.
“As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice, and Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their homes safely," Netanyahu announced defiantly. "Israel has been tolerating this intolerable situation for nearly a year. Well, I've come here today to say enough is enough."
Regarding Iran, Netanyahu told the few in the forum that "There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach. And that's true of the entire Middle East.”
“Far from being lambs led to the slaughter, Israel soldiers have fought back with incredible courage," Netanyahu continued. "I have another message for this assembly and for the world outside this hall: We are winning,"
After Hezbollah leader Nasrollah was killed, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to the Israeli people and the world late Saturday with pride over the latest bloodshed his nation had let loose on Lebanon.
“Israel is on the rise,” he said.
“These are big days,” he added with clear pride not just for over the killings of Hezbollah’s senior leadership, but also for its success in multiple recent missions into southern Lebanon. “We are at what appears to be a historic turning point.”
In a statement released just before the televised speech that day, Netanyahu said Nasrallah was not just “a” terrorist but was in fact “the” terrorist which led much of the damage to Israel in the northern part of his country over the last year.
“Nasrallah’s killing was a necessary step toward achieving the goals we have set, returning residents of the north safely to their homes and changing the balance of power in the region for years to come,” he added.
The death of Nasrollah, coupled with Israel’s continued defiance of UN authority over virtually every aspect of its expanding military attacks throughout the Middle East, has raised tensions to the point where Iran seems now ready to take whatever final steps it needs to launch a wide and destructive full-blown military attack on Israel.
That was summed up succinctly in a televised speech by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei late on September 28.
In that speech he first confirmed the death of Hezbollah’s internally revered leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah during Israel’s airstrike on September 27. He called for a 7-day period of mourning across his nation for this “veteran” leader his country supported and looked up to as a loyal partner of Iran.
Khamenei vowed Nasrallah’s assassination would “not go unavenged”.
In preparation for whatever Iran might be about to do next, Khamanei also called for an emergency meeting of the full Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the 57 members who are part of it.
In Washington, where once again the U.S. was made to look like fools as they continued to maintain that a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah was possible, as Netanyahu openly lied to them about his intentions every step of the way, Joe Biden issued a statement his own congratulating Israel and its prime minister for having carried out the Friday mission which killed Nasrallah.
Biden referred to the assassination as finally delivering “a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis and Lebanese civilians”.
“[The U.S.] fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself against Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and any other Iranian-supported terrorist groups,” he added for emphasis.
Then Biden went on to claim that ceasefires in Gaza and with Hezbollah in Lebanon were near at hand once again, despite the many comments from Netanyahu which totally contradict that.
“In Gaza, we have been pursuing a deal backed by the UN security council for a ceasefire and the release of hostages. In Lebanon, we have been negotiating a deal that would return people safely to their homes in Israel and southern Lebanon,” Biden insisted. “It is time for these deals to close, for the threats to Israel to be removed, and for the broader Middle East region to gain greater stability.”
Yesterday, September 30, Netanyahu’s military demonstrated precisely how big the gap is between what the White House is publicly saying about possibilities for peace between Israel and Lebanon and the reality. Early that morning it ran a deadly airstrike near the popular Kola intersection, located in central Beirut, where people daily wait for public transport such as buses and taxis. At least one entire apartment building was destroyed in the attack. Bodies splintered into fragments were tossed about by the force of the bombing and wreckage was extensive.
A full body count from Monday’s attacks is still being tallied, but the toll could be in the hundreds.
It is unclear who or what Israel was targeting for this set of bombing runs.
While Biden persists in his delusions that these ceasefires will become reality soon, it is clear Israel, the ultimate aggressor determining the future of peace in the Middle East, is not about to order its military to stand down for any reason.