Former Australian Ambassador to Lebanon discusses death of Hezbollah’s top military official by Israeli strike

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Israel has killed Hezbollah’s top military official in a strike in Beirut, with another four people also killed and dozens wounded. The attack on the outskirts of the Lebanese capital comes despite a ceasefire being in place. Hezbollah has confirmed the death and accused Israel of having crossed a red line. Ian Parmeter is a former Australian ambassador to Lebanon and research scholar with the Australian National University.

Transcript

00:00Well, we know he was a very senior member of Hezbollah.

00:06He was effectively number two and head of the military unit of Hezbollah.

00:12He joined Hezbollah in the 1980s, and he was about 57 years of age.

00:19And he had been a member of something called the Radwan force,

00:23which is Hezbollah's special forces elite unit.

00:29And he'd also fought in Lebanon, sorry, in Syria,

00:33on the side of the Assad regime during the Lebanese civil war, the Syrian civil war.

00:40So he was very experienced.

00:42In 2016, the United States nominate or designated him a global terrorist.

00:50So he was essentially a very senior target for Israel.

00:56Israel noted after killing him that they had tried three times already to kill him without success.

01:04But this time, they clearly were successful.

01:07And I think what the killing of this person, Tava Tabai, shows is that Israel has extraordinarily good intelligence in Lebanon,

01:17as it does in other parts of the countries adjacent to it,

01:21and that it can strike when it sees an opportunity to do so,

01:27and will continue to do so, even if there is normally a ceasefire in place.

01:31Well, in this strike, we know that five people in total were killed, 28 wounded.

01:38And there was no warning or notice, even notice to the United States, by Israel.

01:45Do we know why none of this happened, particularly when targeting a civilian area?

01:50We know that Israel does sometimes give warning when they are going to strike an area where there are civilians.

01:58Sometimes Israel does that.

02:00But in this case, if they had given warning, of course, they would have warned Haytham Ali Tabatabai,

02:07the Hezbollah target that they were trying to remove.

02:13So they didn't do it.

02:14I think it was also quite deliberate that they didn't tell the United States in advance of their action,

02:20because it meant that the United States was then not in a position of having condoned

02:27or in some way assisted the Israeli attack.

02:33So I think that was done deliberately.

02:36And it also, of course, serves the Israeli government's purposes of saying

02:40that they are responsible for their own defence

02:44and they will continue to take their own decisions on this.

02:48So it served a number of purposes.

02:50I mean, I think the Israeli military will say that this has been a very good day,

02:56although it does put back the whole question of whether Hezbollah might disarm.

03:01After this, they almost certainly will not.

03:03It raises also the question of whether Hezbollah might retaliate in some way.

03:09And at this stage, I tend to think that they weren't.

03:13Hezbollah has been weakened very much by the attacks that Israel has launched against it in the past year or so.

03:22You'll remember the exploding pages and the exploding walkie-talkies,

03:26which took out very senior people.

03:28I mean, essentially killed them or made them unable to operate because of the wounds that they suffered.

03:35But so Hezbollah is weakened and is not really in a position to take on another war with Israel.

03:43So I tend to think there may be some threats made,

03:47but I don't think there's going to be a strong Hezbollah response.

03:53Ian, as you talk about, I guess, the strength of Hezbollah,

03:58as part of the ceasefire agreement, I understand there was a vow and efforts sort of undertaken

04:06by the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah.

04:11Can you just explain to us where that is at and how that's going

04:17and whether they're likely to be successful in disarming Hezbollah?

04:21Well, I think the effort is between a rock and a hard place at the moment.

04:26But certainly the Lebanese president, President Aoun,

04:30has said that he's called on Hezbollah to disarm.

04:35And clearly the Lebanese president wants the temptations of Israel to strike Hezbollah

04:43to be eliminated because it clearly destabilises Lebanon,

04:47which historically is a very unstable country in any case.

04:51But Hezbollah refuses to disarm.

04:54And I think after this attack, it will continue to refuse.

04:58I can't see Hezbollah giving up its arms.

05:01But there's no doubt it's not nearly as strong as it was, say, at the start of 2024,

05:08when it was fighting a war with Israel.

05:12Hezbollah certainly lost that war.

05:14It lost it very, very demonstrably with the Israeli killing of Hassan Nasrallah,

05:23the long-serving leader of Hezbollah.

05:26But there are always new people who come up

05:28and Israel will continue to attempt to eliminate them when it can.

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