Laith Marouf: Hezbollah Wipes Out Israeli Plan as Iran Backs Lebanon Hard

Iran has fundamentally shifted its post-1979 revolution foreign policy by deciding to initiate attacks on adversaries to defend third-party allies, such as Lebanon, rather than solely retaliating for direct attacks on its own territory. This marks a new era of assertive regional power projection.

This is the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran since the revolution in 1979 that it takes a decision to attack an adversary before without it being attacked. It is also the first time that it attacks an adversary not to protect its own territory but to defend a third party, meaning Lebanon.

The '44-day war' and subsequent engagements have reportedly exposed severe limitations in US strategic weapon reserves and air defense capabilities, while Israel's military is portrayed as so weakened that it relies primarily on 'genocide and ethnic cleansing' tactics, having failed to achieve conventional military objectives.

US already lost and used 50% of its strategic weapons in the 44-day war and 75% of its air defenses cannot last for another 20-day war with Iran. Israel has defined a yellow line in southern part of Lebanon, but we've seen the Lebanese forces and I'm talking about Hezbollah going to the north infiltrating the northern part of Israel. This is an actually primary military strategy of Israel is genocide, the rape, pillaging, this and ethnic cleansing. That's the only thing that they have left.

Iran's strategic dominance has expanded beyond its immediate borders to encompass a 'triangle' of influence from Lebanon to Yemen, asserting control over critical maritime routes like the Strait of Hormuz and neutralizing the US's ability to project naval and air power in the region.

Iran already extended its sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and had already defeated the ability of the United States to project force through naval power and control of the airspaces. This is now extending the power space and dominance of Iran from being just the neighboring areas of the Persian Gulf to all of this triangle of the axis of resistance from Lebanon to Iran to Yemen.

US-allied states in the Arabian Peninsula and Jordan are experiencing growing public discontent and vulnerability. Their populations question the value of US defense agreements after their territories are attacked for hosting US bases or intercepting Iranian missiles, leading to a deterioration of the ruling elites' legitimacy.

The Kuwaiti, Iran, Yam, Bahini and military were the ones defending American positions and America didn't fire things to defend them. It was always only defending its positions and then the Kuwaiti military or the Bahini military firing missiles to defend American positions. In Jordan, 75% of the population can trace itself back to being Palestinians. They are watching their country fire to shoot down Iranian missiles and Iranian drones that are going there to defend their brothers and sisters in Palestine and now they're seeing their country bombarded because it's doing that.

Despite intense bombardment, Israeli forces are reportedly stalled in southern Lebanon, unable to capture key population centers like Tyre or Nabatieh. This tactical failure forces Israel to resort to indiscriminate air raids and mass destruction of civilian infrastructure as its primary response.

The Israelis have been now three months pushing and they've been stuck for the last month halfway through point in an area called Albayada and every day journalists and so on that were sitting in Tyre they can film the ambushes and the destruction of Israeli units and columns and positions. They need a victory somehow and they're unable to do it, which is they need to capture the major population center to say we've just ethnically cleansed Nabati or Tyre and Hezbollah is not letting them achieve that. So they're going on these rampages of bombardment by air.