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.
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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.
The thread really is amazing. The average American (and Westerner’s) understanding of and utilization if the term “terrorist” is probably the greatest feats of social engineering, legal warfare and propaganda in the 21st century. It’s an essential rhetorical tool to legitimize monstrous violence against civilians by one side, and delegitimize all “violence” (decontextualized of course) by the other.
Commit a genocide in Gaza? Counter-terrorism.
Attack Israel with the demand that it stops the genocide? Terrorism.
It’s gotten to the point where Americans refer to the Beirut barracks bombings as “terrorism.” Here’s a logical exercise: who gets stationed in barracks, civilians or on-duty soldiers?