Holy smokes, the insanity of what is going on in the Middle East right now cannot be understated. Let’s put it this way: the United States is sending yet another U.S. carrier strike group and troops to the Middle East, just in case. At the same time, Iran is going, “We can talk, we can talk.” And at the same time, Israel is like, “Talk is cheap,” and now they have launched, apparently, strikes against over 1,000 targets just in the last 24 hours with fighter jets, missiles, you name it. This is insane.
Israel is even going as far as releasing little video clips like this one. Take a look at this, and we’re going to go through all this in detail, but take a look at this. This is where Israel is basically—this is an example, it’s a rendering, right? And obviously, we don’t know the accuracy of this, but this is what Israel is implying. Israel is suggesting that hidden in what are normal buildings or even homes are rockets or missiles, standing up, lying down, vehicles with missile launchers that could then be reloaded from these other facilities, which are disguised as homes or do service as homes while also masking these weapons that Hezbollah hides.
Take a look at this. They show this vehicle right here—pay attention to this vehicle coming out—and there you go. It’s essentially a launching vehicle for missiles. Here, they give you an example of a building. This is also a 3D construction here of how a missile could be hiding inside what looks like a normal home. And then when they rotate to what looks like actual satellite or drone footage here, you can see what looks like one section opening up or sort of a wall crumbling open here, almost like a hatch on the side of the building, potentially enabling the launching of missiles or rockets. And this is what Israel—whether it’s true or not—is ultimately up to everyone watching this information. Here’s what appears to be sort of a drone strike or some form of strike against this facility, and you can kind of see that double explosion there, right? First, the impact explosion, then the double explosion. Whether it’s true or not, this is what Israel is using to claim justification for their massive attack against Lebanese targets today, as they try to find Hezbollah munitions depots.
They also then release videos such as this one that—I just want to make sure it’s not too loud here—but when you see videos like this, you’re going to find these are buildings that are struck by Israel. And when you see these subsequent explosions after explosions, especially this sort of lighter color smoke, rather than dark smoke like, you know, the inside of a home burning or the inside of a car burning, instead when you see this sort of light, dusty kind of look, it might be more of a munition that’s exploding, suggesting that Israel struck and hit a building that was indeed hiding munitions, which the subsequent explosions should frankly give away.
But let’s listen to this. Let me make sure it’s not too loud.
Background sounds play
Sounds like fireworks, eh? Look at that. A lot of these are mortars or rockets that then—essentially, rather than, you know, exploding—although some of them will like we just saw there—the gunpowder, essentially, the munition can just burn out quickly. And so, that’s what you’re seeing in shots like this.
So then it’s no surprise that if stuff like this is happening, that Israel is finally fed up with their threat to the north. Now, to understand exactly the geography of this a little bit, I think it’s very useful to just look at a map and understand that, at least per Israel, they made and sent radio communications and telephone calls to potentially 80,000 residents in Lebanon—this is at least what they’re suggesting. And others in Lebanon are suggesting that they had been receiving these calls, urging the evacuation of everyone in the region. However, some in Lebanon are not entirely sure if they should believe these communications, as they could be a form of psychological warfare. So not everybody who got these evacuation warnings left. And unfortunately, Israel started striking within the last 24 hours, and now over 356 individuals are dead, many more wounded, in just the last 24 hours.
This is one of the bloodiest attacks by Israel against Lebanon—well, sites within Lebanon—because the attacks are not really against Lebanon or the Lebanese people; they’re against Hezbollah, since 2006. So this is some severe fighting that’s going on here. And there are reports that some folks were receiving these evacuation notices as far north as in Beirut, rather than just in southern Lebanon or in the eastern regions of Lebanon here on the border with Syria. And some folks heeded these warnings, others said, “You know what? We’re not going to heed these warnings because it’s just part of a psychological warfare game, and we’re going to stay.” Unfortunately, those who stayed were potentially more likely to be affected by attacks from Israel.
Now, one of the things you can do too here is you can see where the attacks are taking place. Take a look at this. This is a New York Times airstrikes map right here. You can see Israel here, the border, here’s Damascus and Syria, you’ve got Beirut all the way up here. And while there was a strike there on Monday targeted at one specific leader of the Hezbollah command, most of the attacks have been happening and occurring in southern Lebanon. Though there are now concerns that Israel might either invade and build a buffer zone by sort of turning this into nearly a Gaza 2.0 where they conduct a ground invasion next, or they continue to move their offensive up north even further to continue to fight against the Hezbollah threat.
Take a peek at this here. You could see a screenshot of supposedly the military chain of command for Hezbollah. You’ve got Hassan Nasrallah still here at the top as the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, as well as Ali Karaki. This individual supposedly was targeted, but according to Hezbollah, in a statement released really just minutes ago, this individual is alive and well and has not been taken out. Who knows? In the fog of war, it’s always very difficult to know exactly what’s going on. But what is very clear is that a lot of people are fleeing parts of Lebanon now, and mostly many of them are driving north towards Beirut, in areas essentially away from the southern portions of Lebanon and of course, the northern portions of Israel.
But apparently, there’s non-stop traffic just to be able to flee to the north here. People loading up their families. Universities are canceled, by the way; school is canceled at the moment. There are traffic jams everywhere for people just essentially to get out of the region. And it makes sense because you’re in a war zone.
Here’s another view from what looks like a—you know, some form of a building, maybe eight stories up, seven stories up. Let’s take a look at—hey, just filming a video right now. Take a look at this shot right here. Let’s give this one a play. Look at that, look at that traffic jam. I mean, this is all allegedly traffic that’s moving out of the southern region here in Lebanon and trying to get up north to flee. I mean, all the traffic’s moving in one direction here. Well, I shouldn’t even say moving—it’s not moving.
But anyway, let’s go through some details about what’s going on here and what’s going on with the carrier strike group from the United States, as well as some other reactions that we have going on. So let’s get through some of these details here so you have as much of this as possible.
Israel is calling these strikes preemptive, though a lot of folks see these as reactive to the Haifa attacks where Hezbollah was launching missiles pretty deep into Israel. And, you know, a lot of folks see this as retaliation by Israel against those attacks. And then of course, Hezbollah is arguing, “Well, we attacked Haifa because you blew up 3,000 of our pagers and 800 of our walkie-talkies and you killed, you know, over 20 people, but you also injured like thousands of people by doing that.”
Of course, this whole tit-for-tat stuff just goes back, like, 70 years. So it’s like somebody always did the first tit, and the other one did the first tat. It’s just crazy. The concern now though is, is this going to lead to a full-blown land war or potentially an escalation of problems with Iran? Iran says that Israel is trying to tap them into a wider war here. And Iran at the moment—and I find this very sort of sus, dare I say—but allegedly, Iran is suggesting that they are open to nuclear negotiations with the United States in New York, renegotiating and reopening those negotiations. And they’re suggesting that they’re looking for cooler tensions in the Middle East.
Call me jaded here, but while Israel and Hezbollah are having some of the most substantial attacks that we’ve seen since 2006, I don’t really believe that Iran is actually looking for cooler tensions here. And I’m a little bit concerned that Iran might actually be trying to pretend that they’re looking for cooler tensions, but on the flip side, what they’re actually doing is potentially ramping up and preparing to enter a larger-scale conflict here. I hope not because that would certainly broaden out some of the problems that we’re potentially facing here.
Iran says… okay, we talked about that already, we talked about the death toll: 356, 1,246 injured since Monday morning—that’s again within the last 24 hours here. Apparently, 1,100 Hezbollah targets have been struck. Israel claims that half of Hezbollah’s munitions have been destroyed today—again, worst fighting that we have seen since October 7, 2023, but also some of the worst and greatest death toll that we have seen since 2006.
The IDF is also claiming that they are preparing to move into the next phases of taking out Hezbollah infrastructure and that Israel’s mission to the United Nations said that Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu is delaying his trip to the United Nations General Assembly in New York because of these clashes that are taking place right now. You’ve also got Israel announcing that—well, the following quote: “To all residents of villages in Lebanon, soon we will attack terrorist targets in Lebanon. We call on everyone who is near properties or inside of houses where Hezbollah is hiding ammunition to stay away from them immediately.”
I showed you an example of what it looks like when a weapons depot is hit. Carrier Strike Group 8, led by the USS Harry S. Truman, is now en route to the Mediterranean. This is, quote-unquote, “in light of the increased tensions in the Middle East and out of an abundance of caution, we are sending a small number of additional U.S. military personnel forward to augment our forces that are already in the region.” Okay, this is coming from the official United States point of view, but a lot of people look at this and go, “Uh-huh, okay, so you had two carrier strike groups there, you pulled one away, now you’re sending another one in. So you really want two carrier strike groups to stay there because the other one was kind of at the end of its tour of duty anyway, and so you’re just repositioning all your assets kind of around that Middle East there.” It just doesn’t seem good, right?
This is a tinderbox, and unfortunately, it feels like the tinderbox—it’s not exploding, although literally it is in certain areas—but it’s just like the fire is spreading faster and faster and faster. It’s like a wildfire that’s out of control and just keeps widening and widening. Because now we’re no longer talking about Gaza, you know, now we’re on to frankly just different parts of the Middle East.
And we look at this situation compared to what we had back, you know, before the October 7th attack. We were in a situation where we could actually trade through the Red Sea. I mean, consider that for a moment. You know, it wasn’t long ago, just last October, we were actually able to trade through the Red Sea. And the Biden administration sent our military to the region but was not enough to actually deal with the Houthis in Yemen to secure a trade route through the Red Sea, which is insane to me that the U.S. military was incapable of securing the Red Sea, probably because they weren’t given enough assets, you know, from our administration for whatever reason.
Now, obviously, you know, we have a flotilla in the Gulf of Oman and the Mediterranean. We’re sending more to the Mediterranean now, which obviously, you know, borders over here on Israel. But now what we have is not just a situation where we’re dealing with the Houthis here or dealing with Iran’s threat here, but now we’re also in this position where Israel has essentially fully chomped away at the Gaza Strip right here. Israel, and this is to deal with the Hamas terror group.
But then, of course, you’ve got millions of people in the region who believe that this is Israeli genocide against Palestinian people. And of course, the Israelis argue, “No, no, no, this is us trying to remove a terrorist threat, and y’all are hiding bombs and weapons and bad people in civilian homes and shelters, and this is your fault.” Everybody’s finger-pointing. I mean, that’s just the nature of war, and it’s absolutely terrible.
But here’s Haifa, and what’s scary for Israel about this is, this is pretty deep down here. A lot of folks thought that Hezbollah wouldn’t actually be able to launch rockets into suburbs over here. But I’ll show you some rockets that landed here in just a moment. And now what you’re finding is the war is spreading all the way up, certainly here in the southern portions of Lebanon, but might actually move even further. You’re not too far from Damascus here, and you’re certainly not too far from Iran further, but Iran usually, when they try to come in, they try to sneak in right across these borders over here. At least that’s what they tried to do when they attacked Israel.
You know, Jordan and Syria don’t like their airspace being used, so they have to be a little sneaky with how they pull it off. But anyway, okay, let’s get a few more facts going here, and I want you to see some of the rockets as well that are hitting Israeli towns as well as Lebanese towns. So here’s an example, just east of what I just showed you—the suburbs in Israel that were hit by Hezbollah rockets. Serious damage but no casualties here. But obviously, you could see it’s a residential neighborhood in Israel that was hit. You have plenty of residential neighborhoods in Lebanon getting hit as well, just like the warnings we’ve seen.
Here’s a clip that was shared by the IDF of what the Iron Dome looks like in the Haifa region, which honestly, I mean, it looks pretty impressive. And it’s probably not because it’s an Israeli munition—it’s probably American money right there. But, you know, that’s already been pretty dang clear during this conflict. We’ve seen other examples of these missiles landing.
Here’s another example of an Israeli airstrike just outside of what looks like a residential area in—boy, this person’s filming at 60 frames per second, that was a pretty good shot. But anyway, I mean, there are just explosions everywhere, and it’s a terrible, terrible and unfortunate environment that we’re in now with tensions in the Middle East.
But let’s keep going here. This Lebanese telecom company said they detected 880,000 automated calls on Monday from numbers that masked the true location. This was potentially to warn about these attacks against residences potentially with bombs in them. Just a quick reminder, Israel carried out their intelligence operation against Hezbollah by exploding thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies. This goes back to what Israel did back in 1996, where they killed a Hamas bomb-maker when he went to use his cell phone—they blew it up. So this has been done before. Hezbollah perceives this as crossing a red line and escalating tensions to a wider confrontation. Analysts are speculating that Israel was doing this to try to deter further violence from Hezbollah, but it seems like it just sort of encouraged more violence from Hezbollah, which Israel is now both reactively and preemptively reacting to.
You’ve got markings on the devices that blew up that suggest a manufacturer in Taiwan was involved, and a Hungarian shell company was involved to potentially inject these pagers and radios, walkie-talkies with bomb equipment like a PN or some form of explosive that could be remotely detonated. The Hungarian shell company, at least the one suspected, is known as BAC Consulting, and there’s supposedly a Hungarian company working in book publishing, motion picture distribution, imitation jewelry, and 115 other activities. Yeah, wild.
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Anyway, so the Wall Street Journal argued that Israel and Hezbollah have escalated cross-border attacks, nearing a quote, “full-out war.” I’m personally concerned that if it looks like Hezbollah starts losing, then Iran might be compelled to ramp up their support for Hezbollah, despite them saying they’re looking for relaxed tensions because they don’t want to lose their ally. See, Hezbollah is kind of like the proxy fighter fighting Israel for Iran, kind of like the Ukrainians are fighting Russia for the United States. And if your proxy fighter starts losing, you send them bigger bombs and weapons—it just escalates death and damage, and I don’t see it as good.
John Kirby says, “No, we don’t need a full-scale war. Israel, please don’t attack more, there are better ways to secure Israel.” This is what John Kirby said over the weekend. And today, Israel struck 1,100 sites in Lebanon. So obviously, you know, the U.S. government isn’t really being respected in terms of their desires. The U.S. government also had no idea about the pagers or radios supposedly, whatever.
Hezbollah says the attacks were retaliation here for the device attack. Netanyahu threatens further action. Hezbollah launched 115 projectiles into Israel. Four were injured in the attacks. There is a potential that an Israeli ground invasion into Lebanon here could trigger a substantially larger, wide-scale breakout of this war, which isn’t great. And you’re getting a lot more of this hybrid warfare, which is, you know, jets versus drones and rockets, and then potentially on-the-ground movement, which is not good because this is all a prelude to essentially a World War III.
And it also doesn’t help that you have Israel shutting down an Al Jazeera office in the West Bank for 45 days. This just happened this weekend. They raided Al Jazeera, seized computers and cameras, claiming that Al Jazeera is inciting terror and supporting terrorist activities. Al Jazeera, kind of in my opinion, provides news on both sides of the aisle—it just doesn’t have the pure Israeli spin on it that some of the U.S. media and obviously a lot more of the Israeli media have. Not saying one is definitely always right. I imagine both of them make substantial mistakes, but I always get nervous because this feels very 1984-ish when you start shutting down media organizations, and Al Jazeera just got raided and shut down. So, not a big fan of that sort of censorship.
Hezbollah obviously blames Israel here. Israel still has not even confirmed that they were the ones behind the radio or pager attack. It’s also worth noting that Foreign Affairs has an opinion on the support of Lebanese people for Hezbollah. In a survey, first of all, we find—this is by the Arab Barometer—80% of Lebanese people say that food availability and affordability is a problem. 68% say they run out of food before they can afford more. The economy is collapsing in Lebanon—just type in “Lebanon GDP” into Google and you’ll see it’s just like 2018 peak, and then it’s down like more than half since then. It’s scary, terrible for the country.
Despite Hezbollah’s influence, only about 30% of Lebanese have a great deal of trust in the group, with 55% expressing no trust at all in the group. However, this does come down to sectarian characteristics as well, with 85% of Shia trusting Hezbollah, compared to just 9% of Sunnis and Druze and 6% of Christians—that’s D-R-U-Z-E, not to be confused with Jewish individuals. Lebanese overwhelmingly condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza, with 36% describing Israel’s operations as genocide, and 78% viewing Israel’s bombings in Gaza as a terrorist act. And now those bombings are beginning to occur in Lebanon itself.
The Lebanese Armed Forces are considered the most trusted institution in Lebanon, with 85% of those in Lebanon supporting the institution. This is just remarkably bad, and it’s so sad to see the loss of life as well that occurs in the area, especially when it’s children. It’s terrible. Same is true in Gaza. It would just be nice to end the geopolitical tensions that we have here.
Here are just some clips from the New York Times showcasing some of the footage that they found, and boy, it is certainly reminiscent of a substantial war. Anyway, let me know what you think in the comments down below. If you have any questions, always—first of all, remember, don’t sue me, bro. But second of all, if you want to get that wealth plan, check it out. See what it’s like to have a financial consult on your side—somebody that you can text at any point who’s a licensed financial adviser on the Meet Kevin plan in my office, and we can work together to help make sure that you’re on the right path to wealth. Thank you so much, check that out over at stockhack.com, folks.
I love you all, I wish you the best, and please stay safe out there. It’s a crazy world and a crazy time. Goodbye and good luck.
