The success of Israel’s operation stands in sharp contrast to its misjudgment of Hamas’s intentions before 7 October
A hundred munitions – including, it is believed, US-made 2,000lb bombs – were used by the Israeli air force in Friday evening’s overwhelming air raid that killed the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in an underground complex hidden in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahieh.
Nasrallah, who was careful to the point of paranoia about his security arrangements and only rarely appeared in public, would have given little notice of his plan to undertake the fateful trip to the meeting.
But the intelligence penetration of Hezbollah was so deep that Israel knew Nasrallah and other surviving members of Hezbollah’s already decimated leadership would be meeting at the supposedly secret location – and that an order to bomb them could be given.
Benjamin Netanyahu was required to give permission to undertake the attack from New York, where the Israeli prime minister had given a bellicose speech at the UN general assembly. There was, presumably, felt to be little time to wait.
According to an unsubstantiated report in the French newspaper Le Parisien, the mole who informed the Israelis that Nasrallah was on his way to the bunker was Iranian. If true, it would be eye-catching, given that Iran is Hezbollah’s principal backer.
The reports of the planning behind the attack indicate that Israel had an eye on the location for some time. The commander of the 69th Squadron of F-15I jets that carried out the attack, named in Israeli media only as Lt Col M, said the aircrews involved were preparing for “several days”, though they were told of the intended target only a few hours before. The F-15I jets were armed to strike and destroy below ground, requiring a large amount of explosive, capable also of eliminating the buildings above.
