Proxy Israel Liquified Hezbollah Leadership For US?

 (Based on staff articles from the ABC NEWS AUS and The DAILY MAIL UK.)

On October 23, 1983, Hezbollah killed 241 U.S. military personnel, including 220 Marines, 18 sailors, and three soldiers in a terrorist bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon.  Minutes later, a second suicide bomber killed 58 French paratroopers.  Six innocent Lebanese civilians also lost their lives. 

The abhorrent and shocking attack on the Beirut barracks remains to this day the single deadliest day for the U.S. Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima. On October-23 last year United States Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in the press statement that “Today, forty years later, we mourn those service members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon lost in both attacks and we honor their legacy.  We think of their families and friends, who continue to feel the painful absence of loved ones.”

Almost a year later on 27 September this year, US-Proxy Israel, with the use of more than 80 American-made 2,000-pound bombs widely known as the Bunker-Busters provided free-and-abundant by the US to Israel, blew up (or liquified) a multi-storied apartment building 60 ft above the massive underground bunker being used as the Hezbollah Command-and-Control Centre in the Suburb of Dahiyeh in Beirut the Capital City of Lebanon.

Israeli Military the IDF said it took just several minutes to drop the JDAM bombs and kill Hezbollah leadership including Hassan Nasrallah the Hezbollah's leader, Ali Karaki the commander of Hezbollah’s southern front, and Abbas Nilforoushan the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' deputy commander.

1983 Beirut barracks bombings

On October 23, 1983, two truck bombs were detonated at buildings in Beirut, Lebanon, housing American and French service members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon (MNF), a military peacekeeping operation during the Lebanese Civil War. 

Early that Sunday morning, the first suicide bomber detonated a truck bomb at the building serving as a barracks for the 1st Battalion 8th Marines (Battalion Landing Team – BLT 1/8) of the 2nd Marine Division, killing 220 marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers, making this incident the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II and the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Armed Forces since the first day of the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War. Another 128 Americans were wounded in the blast. 13 later died of their injuries. Explosives used were later estimated to be equivalent to as much as 12,000 pounds (5,400 kg) of TNT.

Minutes later, a second suicide bomber struck the nine-story Drakkar building, a few kilometers away, where the French contingent was stationed. 55 paratroopers from the 1st Parachute Chasseur Regiment and three paratroopers of the 9th Parachute Chasseur Regiment were killed and 15 injured. It was the single worst French military loss since the end of the Algerian War.

The Death of Fuad Shukr

In response to the July 27 Hezbollah rocket attack that killed twelve children in Majdal Shams, Israel carried out a precision airstrike at an apartment building in the Haret Hreik neighborhood of Beirut, one of the group’s strongholds. The target of the July 30 operation was Fuad Shukr, a senior commander whom Israeli officials blamed for the Majdal Shams attack and described as the “right-hand man” to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

In the immediate term, his death removes one of the group’s most capable military figures, who had the ear of both Nasrallah and the top brass of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF). It also sends a stark message: if Hezbollah kills Israelis, then Israel will no longer be deterred from carrying out sensitive operations deep inside Lebanon, even against the group’s leaders in the capital.

Born in 1961 or 1962, Fuad Shukr (aka Hajj Muhsin Chakar) spent his entire adult life moving up Hezbollah’s ranks as a terrorist operative, soldier, and commander. He was a founding member of the Islamic Jihad Organization, the group’s foreign operations element.

In that capacity, Shukr played a central role in early terrorist attacks, including against Americans. In October 1983—two years before Hezbollah formally announced its existence in an “open letter” pledging support for Iran’s Supreme Leader and threatening violence against the West—he helped plan and launch suicide truck bombings targeting U.S., French, and Italian peacekeepers, killing 241 personnel at the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut along with 58 French personnel and 6 civilians (the Italian attack failed).

US-made bombs appear in IDF videos

The IDF released videos and photos following the Nasrallah attacks it said showed the warplanes that took part in the strike. The fighter jets were carrying multiple 2,000-pound-class bombs, some of which were US-made BLU-109s. The planes were equipped with Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kits, which convert "dumb bombs" into precision-guided munitions that can attack a specific target.

Over the weekend, Senator Mark Kelly, chair of the Senate Armed Services Airland Subcommittee, said Israel had used a US 2,000-pound Mark 84 series bomb in the strikes that killed Nasrallah.

"We see more use of guided munitions, JDAMs, and we continue to provide those weapons," Mr Kelly said in an interview with NBC. "That 2,000-pound bomb that was used, that's a Mark 84 series bomb, to take out Nasrallah." Mr Biden acknowledged that the bombs, which military experts say turn "earth into liquid", had killed civilians.

The US is Israel's longtime ally and biggest arms supplier, but neither the Israeli military nor the Pentagon have commented on the weapons used in the attack. Although the US announced that it had halted shipments of heavy bombs to Israel, Israel would likely have a large stockpile.

Bombs designed to explode underground

The Mark 84, or BLU-117, is the largest in the Mark 80 series of weapons known as "bunker busters". It has a lethal fragmentation that can extend for up to 365 metres. Malcolm Davies, senior analyst in defence capability at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), said there were different variations of the heavy bombs.

But he was confident Friday's strikes in the Dahiyeh neighbourhood used bunker busters. "The high-yield, 2,000-pound weapons were designed to penetrate deep underground where Nasrallah was hiding with his cronies," he told the ABC. "So I think that that's how the Israelis did this."

The bombs slice through concrete, then explode underground. The explosions then create shock waves that immediately collapse structures above. "Anyone who's not killed by the explosion on the ground is then killed by the rubble falling on them," Dr Davis said.

Iranian moles and 2000lb bunker busters

Israel's assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah with US-made bunker-busting bombs on Friday came as the result of a critical intelligence breach amid decades of infiltration of Iranian and Lebanese militant command structures, it is claimed.

Nasrallah died in a brutal assault that saw Israeli F-15I fighter jets drop dozens of munitions on the Hezbollah HQ in Beirut - a rapid succession of strikes dubbed 'Operation New Order' that eliminated half of Hezbollah's leadership council and decimated its top military command.

Expert analysts said the F-151s delivered 2000lb Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) that are designed to penetrate deep into their targets before exploding, allowing Israel's air force to eliminate Nasrallah even as he hid in an underground bunker some 60 feet beneath Beirut's Dahiyeh suburb.

The F-151 fighter jets of the IAF's 69th Squadron took off from the Hatzerim Airbase in southern Israel to carry out a strike in Beirut against Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, September 27, 2024.

That attack came barely a week after the deadly detonation of thousands of booby-trapped Hezbollah pagers and hundreds of radios which killed dozens of people and left thousands injured.

A Lebanese security source informed Le Parisien that an Iranian mole was responsible for leaking the information to Israel. Though this is yet to be corroborated, it would constitute a devastating intelligence breach for Hezbollah and its backers in the Islamic Republic.

Both Hezbollah and Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) now face the enormous challenge of plugging the infiltration in its ranks that allowed its arch-enemy to destroy weapons sites, booby-trap its communications and assassinate the veteran leader.

'Israel clearly infiltrated Hezbollah at highly sensitive and consequential levels, killing senior command networks with airstrikes, paralysing its communication and coordination capacity, and grinding the organisation down, denying it time to recover and regroup thus far,' RUSI's Senior Research Fellow for Middle East Security, Dr Burcu Ozcelik said. 'This has been the culmination of years of complex, synchronised intelligence-gathering in the Israeli security establishment since before 2006.'

The setup and the 'betrayal'

A source told French press that Nasrallah's arrival at Hezbollah HQ was leaked to the IDF by an Iranian mole, suggesting the Lebanese militant chief was compromised by his own backers. Security-conscious Nasrallah had long avoided public appearances for fear of assassination, remaining largely hidden from view since Israel and Hezbollah fought a month-long war in 2006.

His movements were heavily restricted and only known to a select few members of his trusted military commanders, while the circle of people he saw in person was very small, according to a source familiar with Nasrallah's security arrangements.

Since the September 17 pager blasts that injured thousands of his fighters, the Hezbollah chief had become even more vigilant. Nasrallah chose to skip the funeral of one of his trusted commanders and began releasing pre-recorded speeches rather than going live on air.

But no amount of security precautions would have prevented Israel's air force from wiping their adversary out in his own backyard after IDF chiefs received 'real-time intelligence that Nasrallah was gathering with many senior terrorists', Israeli military spokesman Nadav Shoshani said.

Several security sources in Lebanon declared Nasrallah's assassination meant Israel must have successfully penetrated the upper echelons of Hezbollah's command structure with covert operatives and informants that were able to leak details of his movements to the IDF.

Military historian and analyst Michel Goya posited that the pager and radio attack was an instrumental step in the hunt for Nasrallah. By crippling the group's means of secure communication, several members of Hezbollah's leadership were 'forced to meet in person' in the group's headquarters, he said - something that security concerns would typically never permit.

But once the senior members were confirmed to be in the same location, someone had to alert the Israeli military so Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could authorise the strike. 'This is a massive blow and intelligence failure for Hezbollah,' Magnus Ranstorp, a veteran Hezbollah expert at the Swedish Defence University.

'They knew that he was meeting. He was meeting with other commanders. And they just went for him.'

Inside Israel's monumental strike

A picture emerged on social media last week that showed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holding a telephone to his ear, flanked by a pair of military officials. It is said that image depicts the moment that Netanyahu gave IDF officials the green light to launch the fateful strike on Hezbollah HQ.

The attack unfolded while Netanyahu was in New York to speak at the UN General Assembly, with two Israeli intelligence officials confirming to Reuters that the Prime Minister authorised the attack on the sidelines of the assembly.

Upon Netanyahu's order, a flight of F-15I fighter jets from the 69th Squadron of the IAF took off from the Hatzerim Airbase in southern Israel, completing the cross-country flight in a matter of minutes before soaring over the Lebanese border and bearing down on Beirut.

Images and videos of their take-off released by the IAF enabled military aviation experts to determine the kinds of munitions that were able to successfully target Nasrallah in his underground HQ.

The F-15s appeared to deploy devastating 2000lb US-made 'bunker buster' munitions - the GBU-31(V)3/B JDAM - which are designed to penetrate deep into hardened targets before detonating their high explosives for maximum effect.

The precision-guided bombs find their target with pinpoint accuracy, while the sheer weight of the weapon, reinforced with a thick steel casing, sees it smash through layers of earth and concrete. Once inside, the delayed fuse triggers the explosion, leaving its helpless targets with no escape.

Brigadier General Amichai Levin, commander of Israel's Hatzerim Airbase, said that all the bombs hit the target in a matter of seconds, and shocking videos and images from the blast site served as a testament to the fearsome power of the JDAMS.

The munitions destroyed three of four buildings that were located above the Hezbollah HQ in Dahiyeh and left enormous craters in the reddish-brown earth. 'Dozens of munitions hit the target within seconds with very high precision, and this is part of what is required to hit underground sites at this depth,' Levin declared.

Twisted metal rods were seen poking out of the remnants of reinforced concrete structures as rescuers pulled out bodies from the rubble with winches, such was the depth of the craters. Nasrallah's body was reportedly recovered intact this weekend, suggesting that he may have died from the sheer force of the blasts, or suffocated after being trapped underground.