Conflicted Community: Q&A – Hezbollah and Hamas Leaders Assassinated… What Next?
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Welcome back, dearest listeners. Thomas Small here with your friend and mine, Eamon Dean. Eamon, how are you doing? I think it's been a busy couple of weeks in your world of intelligence and security, hasn't it?

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Working on many different levels in order to gather intelligence, disseminate intelligence, analyze, and at the same time, helping some people getting out of sticky situations, whether it's in Lebanon or Yemen or wherever. So goodness, it's been non-stop rollercoaster.

Well, there's no shortage of sticky situations in the Middle East at the moment. And in light of all the events going on over the past couple of weeks, Conflicted is here to answer all of your questions, dearest listeners. Thank you for getting them in. They are as pertinent and erudite as we have come to expect from our dearest listeners. This week, we are focusing, as usual, on the geopolitics of the conflict.

from the hezbollah attack on the golan heights to the multiple assassinations israel has conducted in response to potential escalation and the looming regional war let's jump right in

Before we get into the listeners' questions, Eamon, the Israel-Gaza conflict is, of course, still ongoing. But the bigger story now is the wider escalation as a result of it, something that you have been predicting for so long. We are recording this on the afternoon of Monday, August 5th.

So by the time this episode airs, there may well have been even more movement. Retaliation from Iran is reportedly incoming. What do you wager, Eamon? Do you think by the time this episode drops in two days' time, the empire of Iran will have struck back? Well, anyway...

In my opinion, Iran's Ayatollahs have now backed themselves into a corner. Really, backed themselves into a corner by saying we have to retaliate because this time, this attack, or the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh happened on Iranian soil in an IRGC guesthouse.

very well protected, and it was a slap on the face of the Grand Ayatollah with a rotten, stinky dead fish. Seriously, it was a humiliating attack, and for them it was an honor. You know, Persians have this sense of honor that if I have a guest under my protection and you come and you kill him in this way...

under my nose, it is an affront to their dignity and honor and also to the prestige. So the Ayatollahs back themselves into a corner. They must retaliate. Before we go into any detail on the Haniyeh assassination, let's just get your guess, your best guess, your expert opinion up front. In two days, will Iran have made good on its threat to retaliate?

70% yes, they would have retaliated, though I don't know in what size, what shape, but it has to be bigger than the April 13 attack that took place earlier this year. This one needs to be more painful and this could be also more coordinated. Last time it was Iran alone, this could be the Ayatollahs of Iran backed by both Hezbollah

and the Houthis, and there is a possibility also that we could see the Iraqi militias joining in the fray. Don't forget their bases in Jarf al-Sakhr and in Basra also were attacked just recently by the U.S. coalition. Hodeidah and other places were attacked by both Israel recently as well as the U.K.-American coalition.

And we are now seeing a united front by Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, basically telling the Iranians, do not violate our airspace or we will shoot down whatever. It doesn't matter if it's going into Israel.

You know, we do not like our airspace being violated, whether by the Israelis or by the Iranians. Well, Eamon, hedging his bets there, dearest listener, but you have it on record. 70%, he thinks, there's a 70% chance that by Wednesday, the Ayatollahs will have retaliated.

My goodness, you've just laid out what is, you know, a pretty frightening scenario there. And all of this in the context of a Washington that's asleep at the wheel, from what I can tell, and a huge global financial and economic downturn that is happening as we speak. What a time to be alive. Eamon, I think it's worth doing a quick rundown of recent events.

Because, as I'm sure you know, dearest listeners, there's been a lot going on. The first real volley in the recent escalation could well have been the bombing of a school playing field on Saturday, July 27th in the Golan Heights. That's the disputed area in southwestern Syria, two-thirds of which have been occupied by Israel since 1967.

On the evening of that Saturday, 27 July, a blast hit a playing field in the town of Majdal Shams, killing 12 children and young people from the minority Druze community.

Very quickly, I mean one sentence, Ayman. Remind the dearest listeners who are the Druze. They are an offshoot of Shia Islam they developed roughly about 800 years ago, and they inhabit the Levant, in particular Palestine, southern Lebanon, as well as parts of Syria. Well, this was the deadliest incident in or around Israel's borders with Lebanon.

since the hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah escalated last October following the October 7th massacres. Israel says Hezbollah was behind the attack, Hezbollah have denied this. And then in the week following, Israel responded with a spree of assassinations.

I mean, wow, Eamon, I try to stay on the fence about things. You know, I want to be objective, but it was pretty entertaining, to put it bluntly, waking up one day to find out who Israel had knocked off the night before. Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr assassinated in Beirut on Tuesday, July 30th.

And then the next day, I mean, really amazing, as you mentioned earlier, the Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, assassinated on a visit to Tehran. That's Wednesday, July 31st. So let's talk about all of these events in greater detail, Eamon. Let's start with the attack on the Golan Heights before getting into the assassinations.

Tutgad on Discord asks us a question. What are your thoughts about the Medjel Sham's bombing in the Golan Heights given that they are mostly loyal to Syria? Why would Hezbollah bomb a Druze village and how are Druze inside of Lebanon reacting to it?

Well, I mean, I can answer that immediately, Eamon. I'd like to know what you think. I mean, I saw in the news that Walid Jumblat, the notorious Druze leader in Lebanon, has come out in support of Hezbollah in recent days. So...

Hezbollah's attack on those Druze children didn't seem to keep the Druze sectarian political scene in Lebanon from supporting their Shia rivals. Yeah, but we have to understand, first of all, was the attack intended? And the answer is no. In my analysis,

just about 1,300 meters away. You know, just if the Falak-1 missile, which Hezbollah used, it's an Iranian-made, and it has a range of 11 kilometers and a warhead of about 55 kg explosive, so it was a really big one. So what happened is they were firing it at just above Majd al-Shams. There is an Israeli radar base there.

And that was the intended target. But for whatever reason, you know, the missile malfunctioned at its terminal phase and fell into the middle of Majd al-Shams, where that playfield was. So it was a missile that malfunctioned.

By the way, just to let you know, missiles malfunctioning in the region is so common. In fact, Hamas's missiles, 25% of them malfunction.

So that's what happened in the hospital, Ashifa, and many other places like where Israel was blamed, but then it turns out later that it was actually a friendly fire, if we can call it this way. But in this case here, it was the hands of destiny handing Benjamin Netanyahu yet another saving grace in order to prolong the war. Yeah, the reaction inside Israel was immediate. They pounced on this error immediately.

this error by their enemy to take advantage of it. If you're hearing this message, it's because you are not signed up to our subscriber conflicted community feed. To hear the rest of this episode, gain access to future bonus episodes, join our Discord chat hub, and for ad-free listening, go to the link in our show notes and sign up now.