Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of the British military forces in Afghanistan, spoke to Israel National News - Arutz Sheva about the assassination of longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday.
"Israel’s rapid attrition against Hezbollah in the last two weeks is unprecedented in any military campaign that I know of. Certainly, no other Western country has achieved anything even remotely close in any modern war," Col. Kemp said.
"The damage done to Hezbollah’s leadership by precision airstrikes as well as the pager attacks must be added to repeated strikes by the IDF since Hezbollah began its unprovoked war of aggression nearly a year ago. Key leaders have been progressively eliminated throughout that time as well as destruction of significant quantities of Hezbollah’s weapons capability. Hezbollah still retains a large number of missiles and drones, as well as fighters to operate them and attempt to attack Israel on the ground. But any military or terrorist organization does depend heavily on a command structure and the elimination of so much of that will have seriously undermined the capability to launch large-scale coordinated attacks," he said.
Col. Kemp noted that "Nasrallah has probably already been replaced. But he has headed Hezbollah for over three decades and it will take his successor a long time to become anything like as effective — assuming even that he survived for very long himself. Lower-level leaders can also be replaced but the collective knowledge and experience that has been lost so rapidly represents an immense blow to Hezbollah. This is especially true when we consider that terrorist groups in the Middle East operate on the basis of personal networks and personal connections with their sponsors — in this case Iran. There is also a psychological element for those who might be thinking of stepping up. They were stunned by the pagers episode and are reeling daily from what is befalling their bosses. How many will want to step up to the plate against the fear that they will be next."... Read More: Arutz-7