A prominent general in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard died in an Israeli airstrike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, Iranian media reported Saturday.

The killing of Gen. Abbas Nilforushan marks the latest casualty suffered by Iran as the nearly yearlong Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Stripteeters on the edge of becoming a regional conflict. His death further ratchets up pressure on Iran to respond, even as Tehran has signaled in recent months that it wants to negotiate with the West over sanctions crushing its economy.

Nilforushan served as the deputy commander for operations in the Guard, a role overseeing its ground forces. What he was doing in Lebanon on Friday wasn’t immediately clear. The Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force for decades has armed, trained and relied on Hezbollah as part of its strategy to rely on regional militias as a counterbalance to Israel and the United States.

  • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Wow, so weird that Iranian officials somehow keep getting killed in these targeted attacks against people coordinating terrorist attacks.

    • pandapoo@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      Hezbollah is as much a terrorist organization as the Asov battalion is.

      That is to say, you may not like their politics, but they’re resistance groups formed to fight against an occupation.

      To that end, Iran is their sponsor, so of course their is coordination between the two, especially at the highest levels.

      The irony, is that you’re saying this not even two weeks after thousands of consumer electronics were turned into bombs, and detonated inside Lebanon, and then multiple residential buildings flattened via airstrikes, both actions taken by the Israelis.

      I guess to you, any civilians killed in those instances were just collateral damage, and definitely not victims of terrorism.

      • leisesprecher@feddit.org
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        2 months ago

        Wow, whataboutism and unfounded ad hominem in a single argument.

        Bold strategy, let’s see if it pays off!

        • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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          2 months ago

          Some people just aren’t worth engaging with. They get their entire world view from rich “leftist” tankies on twitch and think the israel vs everyone else in the middle east conflict started last fall.

          I mean… pretending nobody had any issues with azov (the ultranationalist movement that would likely have attacked ukraine if russia didn’t beat them to it…) is a giant red flag in and of itself.

          • pandapoo@sh.itjust.works
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            2 months ago

            I did not endorse Azov, or attribute any sense of morality to them.

            They were an apt analogy to Hezbollah e.g. militant resistant groups, but not terrorists.

            The fact that you all actually believe Hezbollah is akin to Al-Qaeda or ISIS is the real insanity here.

            But I get it, you’ve been told that your entire life from mainstream Western outlets, and it’s a hard to leave that propaganda bubble entirely.

            I did enjoy how you dismissed me as some “tankie” and Twitch viewer…? Given that I don’t use Twitch, am not a tankie, and have an academic background in related fields that give me at least a slightly above average insight and perspective into this subject.

              • pandapoo@sh.itjust.works
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                2 months ago

                What sources?

                Do I have to cite the Bill of Rights every time I mention the second amendment?

                Water is wet, the Earth is round, and Hezbollah was formed in response to Israel’s invasions of Lebanon in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

                More accurately, it was a consolidation of various militant Shia factions and groups.

                In case you’re unaware, modern Islamic terrorism is almost exclusively a Sunni phenomenon, or more accurately, more fundamental offshoots and subsets of Sunni Islam e.g. Wahhabism.

                But sure, that’s just my recollection of past readings and I’m not going to go find the books I read to provide a bibliography.

                If I got anything grossly wrong in there, please call me out and show everyone how misinformed I really am.

                • Doom@ttrpg.network
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                  2 months ago

                  Wow everything I already know condescending delivered by a complete asshole! How nice!

                  Get off the high horse

                  • pandapoo@sh.itjust.works
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                    2 months ago

                    That’s hilarious that you’re pretending you didn’t just spend the last 10 minutes Googling that shit.

                    Because if you did know all that, as you claim, you wouldn’t be conflating Hezbollah with a terrorist group.

                    So which is it? Do you have a basic grasp of the facts?

                    Or do you believe they are a radical Islamic terrorist organization, just like Al-Qaeda and ISIS?

        • pandapoo@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          That’s not even close to whataboutism…I explicitly stated that Hezbollah was not a terrorist organization, unlike the IDF and Israeli security state.

          Next time maybe ask ChatGPT before burping out the first thought that pops in your head, it might save you from future embarrassment.

      • BMTea@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        “Terrorist” is the worst defined, most expansive and arbitrary applied legal term. It essentially means “non-state actor hostile to us or our friends.”