Broadcasting films of Hezbollah’s different operations from the mid-1990s to 2000 played a significant role in both strengthening the spirit of the Lebanese people and fighters and in undermining the morale of the Israeli soldiers and also in spreading fear among Israeli community.
Hezbollah Leader Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah had said that no operation should be carried out without documentation and filming since it is one Hezbollah’s superiority over the Zionist occupation.
From the beginning of the Saudi invasion of Yemen in March 2015, code-named Operation Decisive Storm, the Yemenis used the Hezbollah experience to filmed their massive military operations and their strikes against the Saudi-led coalition. There are numerous videos out there on the internet as well as some TV channels which show Yemeni forces’ blows to Saudi aggressors. However, these videos did not catch the eye of public opinion in the Saudi coalition and its supporters because operations had been carried out in Yemen or in borderlines.
On May 14, 2019, seven Yemeni drones managed to enter the Arabian Peninsula and cross some 1200 kilometers before attacking Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities in Afif and Dawadmi. This was a successful attack, which was not unprecedented, because they had previously carried out drone attacks on oil facilities in Riyadh, and in a record-breaking distance, they had recently successfully stormed Yanbu near the Red Sea.
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However, the drone attack on May 14 had one specific feature beside having successfully passed Saudi’s Todd and Patriot systems; this operation has been documented using other UAVs and related aerial videos were broadcasted from TV channels simultaneously with the release of the attack news.
The images clearly fueled fears by Saudis and Emirates. According to reports, the Saudi stock market suffered a $10 billion loss after the attack and the damage is still expected to rise.
During the 1990s, Lebanon's Hezbollah was able to overcome Israel’s psychological atmosphere and speed up the process of liberating south Lebanon and the freedom of the Palestinians through releasing videos of its operations on Al-Manar TV; and in the era of the Internet, social networks and satellite TVs, Saudi Arabia cannot stop the spread of news by filtering and censorship of the global media. It is clear that the continuation of broadcasting Yemeni drone attacks along the Saudi borders will have devastating consequences on the process of news censorship in Saudi Arabia.
It seems that the May 14 drone attack is a turning point that can be seen as a sign of a change in the Yemeni strategy of diversifying air operations and influencing the public opinion of the Saudi-UAE coalition. A change in strategy that leads to the fears of financial markets and public opinion in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and supporters of the Operation Decisive Storm.
Reporting by Seyyed Sadeq Hosseini, a journalist at Etemad Newspaper
MNA