Hezbollah supporters raise their fists and cheer as they watch a speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah during a memorial service for a senior Hezbollah commander in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, Lebanon, on Wednesday.
Bilal Hussein/AP
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Bilal Hussein/AP
BEIRUT – As fighting along the Lebanon-Israel border escalates, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is warning Israel that if the conflict turns to war, Israeli forces will face a far more powerful enemy than before.
Nasrallah said for more than an hour Wednesday in a televised speech praising onesenior battlefield commander killed in an Israeli airstrike last week. His comments on the conflict were the harshest since Iran-backed Hezbollah began attacking Israel October last year across the border with Lebanon to support Hamas in Gaza.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military said It approved a plan for an offensive to push Hezbollah back from the border, but still hoping for a diplomatic solution. Nasrallah also reiterated that Hezbollah does not want war, but the current fighting risks turning into a much broader battle.
Nasrallah said that in previous wars with Israel, Hezbollah only hoped to attack Israel’s Meron air base – the command center for operations in northern Israel. Since the conflict began, Hezbollah said it has fired dozens of rockets and missiles at the base. The group was established with Iranian help after Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Hezbollah fought another war with Israel in 2006.
“Everything you see, we can see and everything we can attack, we will spare no expense on this front,” Nasrallah said at an undisclosed location. “And it won’t be random bombardment. Each drone will have a target. Each missile will have a target.”
He noted that Hezbollah has a large stockpile of drones, which he called a surplus of fighters, and that new weapons will be introduced. He did not specify what they were.
He said Hezbollah had continued to receive weapons from Iran even after the alleged attacks. convoy carrying weapons in Syria. He said Hezbollah is also producing weapons in Lebanon.
This week, Hezbollah released a nine-minute video it said it shot with an Iranian-made drone, showing high-resolution images of the Israeli port of Haifa as well as buildings and specific vessels. It also pinpointed other potential target cities in Israel.
Nasrallah gloated Wednesday that the drones had overcome Israel’s extensive air defense system.
He also warned that the Mediterranean would also become a target in any war.
“Now they are preoccupied in the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea. Our brothers in Yemen are trying,” he said.attacks on ships and tankers linked to Israel.“If they open war in Lebanon, the situation in the Mediterranean Sea will become completely different. All the coast, all the ships, all the ports,” he said, hinting that Iran would target those locations as well.
Analyst Lina Khatib, contributor at Chatham House London-based think tank, said Nasrallah’s comments and recent threats from Israel may be aimed at avoiding escalation on both sides.
“This is part of the psychological war that both Hezbollah and Israel are engaged in, each side wants to show the other that they have the upper hand in terms of information and this serves as a measure,” she said. prevent”.
Nasrallah also threatened Cyprus, saying the European Union member was hosting Israeli military exercises in the country’s mountains, like those of Lebanon, and allowing Israel to use air bases mine.
Cyprus and Israel have a mutual defense agreement and conducted joint military exercises in the past. Nasrallah said Cyprus allowing its bases to be used to target Lebanon would make it “part of the war and the resistance will see it as part of the war.”
Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides responded by saying his country was not involved in the war in Gaza but in the humanitarian response.
Nasrallah said the only way for Israel to end the conflict on the Lebanese border – as well as with Iraqi and Yemeni groups supporting Hamas – is to end the war in Gaza. He said there was little incentive for Hamas to accept a deal backed by the US offered a limited ceasefire in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages.
“They want us to talk to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and our Palestinian brothers to accept,” he said. “Accept what? Accept this solution that pauses the war for six months and takes away one of the strongest elements they have?”
