Israel has claimed that the successor to slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has likely been “eliminated,” while U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris called Tehran the greatest adversary of the United States.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on October 8 said that Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militant group and political party that controls much of southern Lebanon, was an “organization without a head.”
“Nasrallah was eliminated — his replacement was probably also eliminated,” Gallant told officers at the military’s northern command center without providing details.
“There’s no one to make decisions, no one to act,” he added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later echoed those comments, saying, “We’ve degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities.”
“We took out thousands of terrorists, including Nasrallah himself and Nasrallah’s replacement, and the replacement of the replacement,” Netanyahu said.
Hezbollah is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, while the European Union blacklists its armed wing but not its political party. Hezbollah’s political party has seats in the Lebanese parliament.
Hashem Safieddine, a top Hezbollah official and a cousin of Nasrallah, was widely expected to be named to the group’s top position, but his whereabouts and condition are a mystery since an Israeli strike hit a suspected Hezbollah leadership meeting on October 2.
Hezbollah has not commented on Safieddine’s fate, although unidentified members have told various media that the group had lost contact with him since the attack.
Safieddine has been declared a global terrorist by the United States.
Meanwhile, Harris told CBS TV’s 60 Minutes program in an interview that she considered Iran to be the greatest adversary of the United States.
“Iran has American blood on their hands,” she said. “And what we saw in terms of just this attack on Israel, 200 ballistic missiles, what we need to do to ensure that Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power — that is one of my highest priorities.”
Harris — the Democratic presidential nominee who will face Republican Donald Trump in the November 5 election — declined to speculate on whether the United States would take military action itself should proof be uncovered that Iran is building a nuclear weapon.
Tehran has denied it is building such weapons and says its nuclear program is for civilian purposes.
The comments came as the battered and bloodied leadership of Hezbollah suggested it might be ready to negotiate a cease-fire with Israel
Deputy leader Naim Qassem, in a televised speech, for the first time did not suggest that ending the war in Gaza was a precondition to reaching a truce with Israel in Lebanon.
Qassem said the group backed an effort by Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri, an ally of Hezbollah, to reach a deal to halt the fighting.
Late on October 8, the Syrian government said that seven civilians were killed in an Israeli air strike in Damascus. A war monitor said the strike targeted a building used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah.
Israel did not immediately comment and the reports could not be verified.
The Israeli military said earlier on October 8 that it had killed another senior Hezbollah commander, a day after marking the somber anniversary of a Hamas attack on Israel that killed some 1,200 people.
Suhail Husseini, who was responsible for overseeing the logistics, budget, and management of Hezbollah, was killed in a targeted attack on October 7, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement.
“Husseini played a crucial role in weapon transfers between Iran and Hezbollah,” the statement said, adding that he was also in charge of distributing advanced weapons to the group’s members and for its “most sensitive projects” that included operations against Israel.
The IDF said Husseini was also a member of the Jihad Council, the supreme military body of Hezbollah.
There was no immediate confirmation from Hezbollah.
The Israeli announcement came after Palestinian militants in Gaza fired a barrage of rockets on October 7 into Israel, where President Isaac Herzog led a national moment of silence to mark the start of last year’s Hamas attack, which started at Kibbutz Reim in the south of the country.
Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by both the United States and the European Union.
In Washington on October 7, President Joe Biden condemned Hamas on the anniversary, while also stating again the U.S. administration’s commitment to reaching cease-fire agreements to end fighting in both Gaza and Lebanon.
“On this solemn anniversary, let us bear witness to the unspeakable brutality of the October 7 attacks but also to the beauty of the lives that were stolen that day,” Biden said in a statement.
In Jerusalem, relatives of the some 100 hostages still in Hamas captivity, out of a total of 250, gathered outside Netanyahu’s residence and stood in silence as a siren wailed in a gesture of protest against what relatives say is the failure of the government to secure their loved ones’ release.
The conflict in Gaza is still raging while Israel is now fighting on a second front in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah.
Following the October 7 attack, Israel launched a military assault on Gaza that has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas. Some 90 percent of the population of Gaza has been displaced and large areas have been destroyed by Israeli bombardments.
The Israeli military said on October 7 that over the past year it has bombed more than 40,000 targets in Gaza, found 4,700 tunnel shafts and destroyed 1,000 rocket launcher sites.
Israel in recent weeks has been carrying out air strikes across Lebanon, including Beirut, and has staged a ground invasion into south Lebanon in its drive to wipe out Hezbollah’s capabilities and leadership.
In the attacks, Israel killed Hezbollah leader Nasrallah and dozens of other leaders of the group.
On October 6, two senior Iranian security officials told Reuters that Ismail Qaani, commander of the Quds Force — the overseas arm of the IRGC — had also not been heard from in recent days since traveling to Lebanon.
Tel Aviv’s campaign against Hezbollah prompted Iran to respond by attacking Israel with a large wave of rockets that were largely shot down by Israeli air defenses without causing substantial damage, but the attack renewed fears of a larger regional conflict.
Gallant on October 6 threatened Iran that it might eventually find itself looking like Beirut or Gaza — which has also been battered over the past year — if Tehran attempts to further harm Israel.
With reporting by CBS and AP
