“Death to America” chanted on Sunday thousands of people in Dahie, a neighborhood south of the lebanese capital and fief of the party-militia, a shi’a Hezbollah. What they did with the fist, during a ceremony in tribute to general Qasem Soleimani, leader of the elite force, The al-Quds, which belongs to the iranian Revolutionary Guards, who died last Friday in an attack by the united STATES in Baghdad.

“The Army of USA has killed Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, and you will pay the price,” said the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasralá, during a televised speech. “The just punishment is to remove the u.s. military presence in our region”, he added, after to specify that the target soldiers and military bases and not civilian americans. Has left in the air who, where and when they will carry out the retaliation. Nasralá predicted the beginning of a “new era” in the middle East.

Nasralá praised Soleimani, with whom he had a friendship and that shared to be one of the main enemies of both the USA as of Israel. He addressed his supporters who gathered in Dahie through a screen and from some bunker in the basement of Dahie, where he stood western intelligence services. After nearly three months of protests that are shaking Lebanon and demanding the fall block of the political class, the scenario of a possible regional war, it captures the conversations in the cafes and squares now driving the debate about an imminent economic collapse of this country.

Architect of the so-called axis of resistance —an alliance is not official between Iran, Syria and Hezbollah—, Soleimani oversaw and devised the strategies of the militias proiraníes operating in the various countries of the region such as Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Without doubt, Hezbollah has become the prototype of a more advanced and in your model to export in the area. It is the most powerful militia in the middle East, with an army of, according to experts, about 30,000 fighters and an arsenal estimated at 100,000 rockets and missiles of short range.

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Soleimani established the strategy of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon against Israel, along with Imad Mughníe, who was the highest military leader of the armed wing, killed in a targeted killing by israel in Damascus in 2008. It was also Soleimani, who oversaw the troops of Hezbollah deployed since 2012 in neighboring Syria to train the local militias proiraníes. Some 10,000 of their fighters have fought alongside the troops of syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. At least a quarter of them died in combat. Their faces paper today the streets of Dahie.

The armed wing of Hezbollah, listed as a terrorist group by both Washington as the European Union, has undergone a metamorphosis since it began its intervention in Syria, and acquired a decisive role in the struggle between the shiite Iran and sunni Saudi Arabia for regional dominance. There his men have acquired new offensive techniques, have been co-ordinated with aviations regular Armies such as the Russian or the syrian, and have incorporated new technologies such as drones to the time that have been powered as a regional actor transcending its role as a “resistance against Israel”.

Transformation

These same techniques retorted Hezbollah in the summer of 2017 fighting alongside the lebanese Army against the jihadists of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, which had penetrated from Syria in Lebanon. Like the militia, the party has also undergone an intense transformation in the last decade in the domestic sphere with its entry in the Executive lebanese. Today are part of the political bloc a majority in an alliance with the main christian party lebanese, even if it is in a fragile Government functions are paralyzed from the start of the mobilizations last October 17.

Nasralá said that the death of Soleimani is not “just a murder”, but that “the U.S. has launched a new war of a different nature are” marking “the beginning of a new era in the entire region.” “The arab people and the iranian don’t want war, but it is clear that Trump looking for a that allows you to escape the impeachment and doing election campaign”, writes Ali Surud, trader of 60 years that he has been stuck in front of a portrait of Soleimani.

“When the coffins of the soldiers and officers americans begin to return to the U.S., the Management of Trump will realise that he has lost the region and the elections,” settled Nasralá. The threats are ahead of Washington with the sending of 300 soldiers, according to the count that makes the local press, in order to strengthen an already fortified Embassy in Beirut. In 1983, killed 241 u.s. soldiers in an attack Hezbollah truck bomb against the embassy in the country.