Will Hezbollah Retaliate After Its Chief of Staff Is Killed?

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00:00I was just thinking about this because, you know, this is Hezbollah's chief of staff.

00:05This is second in command to Hezbollah.

00:07They have been weakened significantly over the last few years.

00:12And is there likely to be any retaliation at all from Hezbollah?

00:16Because I must admit, as of late, they've been pretty quiet.

00:21They have, because as you said, they have been majorly weakened.

00:25But this is definitely, this assassination of Atab Taba'i is a big, hard blow for Hezbollah.

00:32Even when they announced his martyrism, as they call it, they hailed him as the greatest jihadist commander

00:40that has faced what they described as the Israeli enemy till the last breath.

00:47So he is very significant, especially after Hezbollah has lost most of its top commanders, if not all.

00:54I think we might see a response, but I highly doubt it's going to be a big retaliation.

01:01It will probably be a measured response, probably even delayed.

01:06We won't see anything now.

01:09Also, sources close to Hezbollah have been saying that apparently there are two opinions,

01:14or there's a conflict inside the group.

01:16There are two opinions.

01:17There are those who want to, you know, send a signal and a response for this assassination.

01:25And there are those who believe that it is not the right time and we should refrain,

01:30the group should refrain from responding to the assassination.

01:33We should not forget that, as you said, Hezbollah has been very, very weakened in the past couple of years,

01:40especially, you know, in the summer of 2024, after the Israeli bombings and Israel targeted the top tier.

01:50The top pages, that was...

01:52After the pages and then targeting the same area that was targeted,

01:56Harta Hreik, inside the southern suburb of Beirut, which is the stronghold of Hezbollah there.

02:03And that's at the time when Nasrallah was killed and so many other commanders.

02:08And now, you know, they've lost almost all high-ranking commanders.

02:13They also lost their supply routes from Syria after the ousting of the Assad's regime.

02:21And I think Hezbollah knows very well that at this stage, if they retaliate, Israel is going to hit and they're going to hit hard.

02:27I don't think Israel is going to stop targeting who they believe are, you know, Hamas...

02:33Sorry, Hezbollah operatives or terrorists in southern Lebanon or all over Lebanon.

02:39I'm not sure that it's going to develop into another war or, you know, a big-scale military confrontation,

02:47given the state of Hezbollah militarily right now.