MEF Chief Editor Jim Hanson spoke with FOX News Saturday morning 28 September, 2024 about the impact the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah will have on the region. Hanson believes it can help spur an understanding that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the cause of the chaos and perhaps this should signal it has “reached its expiration date.”
Transcript from the segment below.
FOX: Just give us your thoughts on what you see happening, what you expect to unfold in the next coming days.
Hanson: Yeah, it’s decision time for the Ayatollahs in Tehran. They started this war. These are all their proxies who have been involved in the seven front attack on Israel.
Israel has now decided that they’re not going to allow these terrorist groups to attack them and not face massive consequences.
But also they’re not going to leave them in a functional state directly on their border. So they’ve been basically dismantling Hamas. Now they have done some tremendous damage to Hezbollah and the the Islamic Republic in Iran is going to have to decide, are they going to step this up?
And I have a feeling they’ve seen a little more than they wanted and I don’t think they can internally. Stand to go ahead and start a regional war with the problems they have with their own populace.
FOX: Yeah, based on that, Jim, is your sense that Iran would want to deescalate is probably the wrong word because they’re going to have to respond at some level. But is it,
is it performative or is it substantive? Are they prepared to to back off? Does this, I guess the larger question is, does this make a wider war more likely or less likely what they’ve done to Hassan Nasrallah?
Hanson: I got to say, if you look at the organizational chart for Hezbollah, there’s some fun ones running around online. It’s nothing but red X’s. They’ve got no leadership left. So I I think the the idea that Iran can use their proxies to do this has been disproven. And there there’s also been some, if you look at cargo planes leaving Tehran and heading toward Beirut, which ostensibly would have been resupplying Hezbollah, a lot of them made a U-turn. and headed back to Tehran due to the fact that I don’t think they they took the Israelis seriously uh when the Israelis said they would knock them out of the air.
I don’t think the Iranians are going to start a bigger war because I truly believe that they are are now in hiding themselves. I’m sure Khamenei is deep inside the deepest bunker that they have. And the problem is they are probably wondering whether Israel knows the grid coordinates to that bunker as well. I think they will do what they have to do to save face. I don’t think they want a piece of this.
FOX: That’s a great point. We were talking this morning about what Iran’s offensive response can possibly be. But to your point, they’re very much on their heels as well. Now looking for a defensive defensive posture because they can be next for Israel. You know, if we rewind the clock about a year to October 7th, one of the working theories was Iran backing Hamas. Hope to provoke a regional war, a wider war to get to get the larger Arab world upset at Israel. We’ve passed a year now. Israel is on the front foot here when it comes to Hezbollah. And it doesn’t look like that plan, if it was the plan of Iran, has unfolded in terms of the entire Muslim world turning against Israel.
Hanson: No, I think you’re absolutely right. They wanted that. They wanted a couple things. First of all, I think they wanted to derail. any possibility of a deal between the Saudis and Israel for normalization of relations. Uh They also wanted, as you said, to stir things up and cause trouble trying to isolate Israel and and to embarrass them.
And And they succeeded in embarrassing them initially. The thing is, Israel is quite capable, and while they were on their back feet on October 7th, they have been leaning far forward. And I I think the pager operation to take out all of those Hezbollah folks was one of the most incredible asymmetric warfare operations in modern history.
So I don’t think anybody now is looking at Israel as the soft one in the region. And I think this may backfire for Iran and actually incent some of the Gulf Arab states to say,
maybe it’s time to say the Islamic Republic of Iran has reached its expiration date and nobody wants them causing trouble in the region.
FOX: Jim, what kind of impact has you talked about this this pager explosion attack being so successful and opening up this this front in in this war from Gaza now into Lebanon and being on the offense. Has that helped Benjamin Netanyahu domestically? I know he was having trouble before, but are these successes helping him?
Hanson: Oh, absolutely. It was It was a tremendous and horrendous embarrassment for Hamas to be able to waltz into Israel proper and slaughter, rape Israeli citizens with with no real repercussions immediately, and to bring all the hostages back into Gaza. So now, having shown that Israel actually is the more powerful, the more competent, the more professional military, They have taken. Hamas out of control of Gaza. They are doing operations in limited ways in the West Bank to ensure
that nothing bad happens there. And now they have really dealt a tremendous blow to Hezbollah. All of those things, you know, including just the the amazing complexity of an operation like below the belt, that all shows that Israel is no one to be messed with. And and I think has given Netanyahu some breathing room and some control over domestic sentiment in his own country.
FOX: Jim, real quick exit question. It, you know, the ground war in Gaza has been a challenge. Just as guys like you and I know, it’s not an easy thing to do. What happens next with Hezbollah in the north of Israel? They have 10s of thousands of early Israelis displaced right now. If you want to create a real buffer zone, you probably have to do more than just an air campaign. Do you think that comes next? What’s Israel contemplating in the north?
Hanson: You know, there is a UN resolution that says Hezbollah is not allowed to be within, you know, basically 20 miles of the Israeli border, that they’ve been flagrantly violating. Consequently, all of those Israelis who were within range of Hezbollah rockets and missiles, et cetera, have been moved out. I think Israel needs to ensure that that resolution is followed and consequently, if that requires ground troops to push them out of that area, good.
I think this might be the place where the international community, the vaunted international community, which thus far has been telling and accepting lies about there being a Gaza genocide, needs to actually do the right thing. Enforce that and say, look, Hezbollah, you started your part of this. Get back to the line you’re supposed to be above.
Let those Israeli citizens back in and let’s not turn this into a regional war. We’ll see. I don’t know how to hold out a lot of hope, but that’s what ought to happen.
FOX: All right. Jim Hanson,
editor of the Middle East Forum, thank you very much for your time.
Good to see you.
Hanson: Good to be with you.
