According to a report by the Saudi channel Al-Hadath, the U.S. envoy to Turkey, Tom Barrack, sent an explicit message to the Iraqi government warning of an “imminent Israeli operation in Lebanon,” stressing that the operation would persist “until the organization is stripped of its weapons.”
Barrack emphasized that Iraq must remain “outside any possible escalation in the region” and therefore the Iraqi government must take steps to avoid becoming involved.
In recent days, Hezbollah’s chief of staff, Ali Tabatabai, was killed in an airstrike - the first strike in Beirut’s Dahiyeh district, a Hezbollah stronghold, after five months of relative calm. Tabatabai was considered the second-most important figure in Hezbollah and was responsible for overseeing the terror group’s recovery efforts.