On champagne – The Economist:

‘Hizbullah fired dozens of rockets at northern Israel the morning after Mr Nasrallah was killed, but that was no different from its tactics in previous days. The group is in disarray. It is premature to speculate about how it might try to retaliate, because even its surviving leaders probably do not know the answer yet. But it is not too early to conclude that Mr Nasrallah’s death will reshape Lebanon, and the region, in ways that would have been unthinkable a year ago.’

(…)

‘The unwritten rules of engagement lasted until July 27th, when a Hizbullah rocket, aimed at an Israeli army base, overshot its target and killed 12 children on a football pitch.
By then Israel’s operations in Gaza were winding down, and Binyamin Netanyahu’s government took the opportunity to change the rules with Hizbullah. It assassinated Fuad Shukr, the group’s military chief, three days later. The strike was not a one-off, but rather the prelude to a series of attacks in September, including the detonation of thousands of booby-trapped pagers and a campaign of air strikes against Hizbullah’s rocket-and-missile arsenal.’

(…)

‘For years Hizbullah has been a loyal servant of Iran. The group played a crucial role in propping up Bashar al-Assad’s bloody regime in Syria, and it provides training and guidance to other Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Yemen. No surprise, then, that some Arabs reacted with glee to Mr Nasrallah’s death. In Idlib, a rebel-held pocket of Syria, people handed out sweets to celebrate: Syrians will remember Mr Nasrallah as a butcher whose men starved and killed them. The Gulf states have kept mum, but it is a safe bet that champagne corks popped in palaces in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.’

(…)

‘Mr Khamenei has long preferred to stay just below the nuclear threshold. Recent events may change his mind. Even if they do not, he is 85; the decision will not always be his to make. Yet such a move would put Iran in something of a catch-22. It once relied on Hizbullah to shield its nuclear facilities from attack; if it dashes for a bomb because it can no longer rely on Hizbullah, those facilities will be exposed.
Watching the news in the wee hours of Saturday morning, one Arab official saw a parallel with the Six Day War in 1967. It was not just because Israel had dealt Hizbullah a fast, fierce blow, but also because both conflicts seemed to shatter illusions that had long governed the region.’

(…)

‘Hizbullah is not about to disappear: it has thousands of armed partisans, an arsenal of long-range missiles and a base of popular support. But the militia that emerges from this war will be very different from the one that entered it.’

Read the article here.

Different, but how different?

Neither Hizbullah nor Hamas are about to disappear.

And the champagne corks in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi? Probably true. The sunni-Israel coalition does exist, not on the street. But the autocrats in these countries understand that the enemies of your enemies might be your friends.

In the meantime, Israel is moving closer to a theocracy/autocracy, one of the many autocracies in the region. Not very liberal, not very European, not very tasteful.