— 🇱🇧 Naim Qassem: 'Hezbollah's front will continue, everyone on the battlefield is ready, and despite the losing of our leader and commanders, we will not move aside nor will we forsake our duty in support of Gaza and in defense of Lebanon'

— ❗️🇱🇧 Naim Qassem: 'What we are doing on the battlefield is still the minimum of our capabilities'

— ❗️🇱🇧 Naim Qassem: 'If the Zionists enter Lebanon, we are ready and prepared for a ground battle, and we will be victorious'

— ❗️🇱🇧 Naim Qassem: 'The vast majority of Hezbollah's medium and long range weapons capabilities are fully intact, despite Israeli lies'

— ❗️🇱🇧 Naim Qassem: 'The new Secretary General will be chosen soon, and the choice is very easy for us, because all of us in Hezbollah have one unified heart'

— 🇱🇧 Naim Qassem: 'You are the pride of Lebanon, the Lebanese people, who remain unified despite all the difficulties'

— ❗️🇱🇧 Naim Qassem: 'Some patience is needed, but we have prepared all what we have, and we will fight, and we will be victorious'

— 🇱🇧 🇮🇷 The will of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah: 'I advise you all, for the good of this world and the hereafter, to have firm and strong faith in the leadership of Imam Khamenei, may God protect him'

@Middle_East_Spectator

— ❗️🇮🇱/🇱🇧/ 🇱🇧 BREAKING: An Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon is 'imminent', and could begin as early as TONIGHT – U.S. Sources

@Middle_East_Spectator

— ❗️🇮🇱/🇱🇧/ 🇱🇧 BREAKING: Israel has notified the U.S. that it intends to launch a limited ground incursion into Lebanon which could begin within hours – U.S. Officials to CBS News

@Middle_East_Spectator

— 🇱🇧/🇮🇱 A short paragraph about Israel's upcoming ground offensive into Lebanon:

Everything the Israeli leadership is saying now, regarding the elimination of Hezbollah's capabilities, they also said in 2006 (quote above), and they still ended up losing the war.

Although a significant portion of Hezbollah's leadership has been eliminated, all of those high-ranking commanders have already been replaced. Hezbollah always knew that their commanders were at risk of assassination, and it's extremely naive to assume they would not have contingency plans for situations like these.

Besides this, Hezbollah is an assymetrical military force, its units operate mostly independently based on the initiatives of local field commanders. Even if there is no active central leadership (which isn't the case currently), the resistance will continue on the ground.

When it comes to Hezbollah's missile arsenal, Israel claims it destroyed more than half of the group's capabilities within the past week. However, this is likely exaggerated, as most of the airstrike targets were part of a pre-planned databank based on old or obsolete intelligence. Hezbollah is dynamic, it can move launchers around very quickly.

It's likely that Hezbollah's long-range and medium-range missile capabilities were affected to some extent by the recent strikes, but not enough for its missile threat to be fully neutralized. It should be noted that Hezbollah's strategic assets, such as ballistic missiles, are stored in hardened bases underground. Many of them are located in Syria and the Beqaa. When it comes to short range missiles, that's another matter; Hezbollah will simply never run out, they just have too much stuff.

Hezbollah's main disadvantage currently is Israel's superior air power and surveillance. They likely still have the weapons systems to carry out major missile attacks against Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv, but such large-scale attacks would require extensive planning and staging, and during the staging phase Israel would likely detect the accumulation of launchers beforehand and strike Hezbollah's launcher formations pre-emptively. This means Hezbollah currently has to resort to 'shoot-and-run' tactics, sporadically launching missiles from blind spots and immediately relocating to a different location.

Hezbollah's real strength lies in its ground combat in the South. Hezbollah is intertwined with the local population, almost every southern Lebanese village has a Hezbollah garrison of a few hundred to a few thousand fighters, which are commanded independently and are well-armed. Most importantly, they possess an advantage that Hamas does not; modern Iranian-made ATGMs, in extremely large quantities.

In 2006 we saw the villages of Bint Jbeil and Ayta al-Sha'ab resisting against the IDF for multiple weeks with only their local Hezbollah garrisons, in some cases only dozens of fighters against thousands of Israeli forces. The IDF was forced to leave both of these cities, taking a huge amount of losses. Hezbollah is much stronger now than in 2006, and it is better organized and better supplied. Israel is in for a hard battle.

@Middle_East_Spectator

— 🇵🇸 🇵🇸 🇱🇧 NEW: The 'Al-Quds Brigades', the armed branch of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, launched a mortar attack against IDF forces in Gaza in honor of martyred Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah

@Middle_East_Spectator