I don’t know how shrewd he was. He may have been charismatic. He was also brutal and ruled with fear as much as “inspiration”. But on the scale of shrewdness he and his Iranian advisors were completely outwitted. Israel methodically took Hezbullah apart step by step going back years: infiltrating their ranks and developing human sources, taking out Syrian (Russian supplied) air defenses, cutting off the Iranian/Syrian supply lines by destroying routes and runways and caravans, destroying missile factories, blowing up rocket storage locations, targeting key figures with surgical strikes and bombs, knocking out 400 or more launchers which hindered their ability to launch a full scale barrage of rockets, blowing up 3000 pagers, blowing up 100s of radios… which forced the leaders to meet face to face to plan their next moves in an underground bunker, which Israel knew where when and who and was ready to use a dozen or so bunker buster bombs to take them all out at once. It seems like a plan that was well laid and well executed by Israeli intelligence. Very methodical. And this guy saw none of it coming. Hezbullah is now trapped, can’t get resupply, can’t recruit and more or less can’t retaliate. The only thing they can seemingly do is fight on the ground with small arms if Israel goes in.
Unless somehow they have some other unknown weapon of mass destruction, which I pray isn’t the case or isn’t used if they do.
The Lebanese, particularly the Christians,may not ever have a better time to get rid of Hezbollah and join Israel in defeating Iran.
Astute observations. After reading it I thought to myself, that read like a thoughtful FR post of days past and sure enough, with a sign up date of 1999, you’re an old time poster. Thanks again for your comments.