Hezbollah supporters raise their fists and cheer as they watch Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah deliver a speech during a ceremony to commemorate the death of a senior Hezbollah commander in Dahiya, a suburb south of Beirut, Lebanon, on Wednesday.
Bilal Hussain/AP
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Bilal Hussain/AP
BEIRUT – As fighting escalates along the Lebanese-Israeli border, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has warned Israel that if the conflict turns into war, its forces will face a more powerful enemy than in the past.
Nasrallah spoke for more than an hour in a televised address on Wednesday, praising a senior field commander who was killed in an Israeli airstrike last week. His remarks on the conflict were his harshest since Iran-backed Hezbollah began attacking Israel across the Lebanese border last October in support of Hamas in Gaza.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military said it had approved an offensive plan to push Hezbollah away from the border, but it still hoped for a diplomatic solution. Nasrallah also reiterated that Hezbollah does not want war, but the current fighting has the potential to evolve into a wider battle.
Nasrallah said that in previous wars with Israel, Hezbollah only wanted to be able to attack Israel’s Meron air base, which is the center of its northern operations. Since the conflict began, Hezbollah says it has fired dozens of rockets and missiles at the base. The group was created with help from Iran in 1982 after Israel invaded Lebanon. In 2006, war broke out again between Hezbollah and Israel.
“On this front, we will not spare everything you can see, everything we can strike,” Nasrallah said in a speech from an undisclosed location. “And it won’t be random bombings. Every unmanned aircraft Every aircraft has a target. Every missile has a target.”
He noted that Hezbollah has a large inventory of drones, what he called a surplus of fighter jets and new weapons on the horizon. He did not specify what they were.
He said Hezbollah continued to obtain weapons from Iran even after attacks on convoys allegedly carrying weapons in Syria. He said Hezbollah also produces weapons in Lebanon.
This week, Hezbollah released a nine-minute video it said was shot with an Iranian-made drone showing high-resolution images of the Israeli port of Haifa and specific buildings and ships. It also identified other potential target cities in Israel.
Nasrallah gloated on Wednesday that the drone had breached Israel’s extensive air defense system.
He also warned that the Mediterranean would also be a target of any war.
“Now they are focused on the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. The brothers in Yemen are working hard,” he said, referring to attacks by Yemen’s Houthis on ships and oil tankers linked to Israel.
If they started a war in Lebanon, the situation in the Mediterranean would be completely different. All coastlines, all ships, all ports,” he said, indicating that Iran would target those locations as well.
Lina Khatib, an associate research associate at London’s Chatham House think tank, said Nasrallah’s comments and Israel’s recent threats may be an attempt to avoid escalation on both sides.
“This is part of an ongoing psychological war between Hezbollah and Israel, where each side wants to demonstrate to the other that it has the upper hand in terms of information, thereby acting as a deterrent,” she said.
Nasrallah also threatened Cyprus, saying that the EU member state was hosting Israeli military exercises in its mountains, similar to those in Lebanon, and allowing Israel to use its air bases.
Cyprus and Israel have a joint defense agreement and have held joint military exercises in the past. Nasrallah said Cyprus would allow its bases to be used to attack Lebanon, which would make it “part of the war and the resistance will deal with it as part of the war”.
Cyprus President Nicos Christodoulides responded that Cyprus was not involved in the Gaza war but was involved in humanitarian relief.
Nasrallah said the only way for Israel to end the conflict on the Lebanese border and with Iraqi and Yemeni groups that support Hamas is to end the war in Gaza. He said Hamas had no incentive to accept a U.S.-backed deal that offered a limited ceasefire in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages.
“They want us to negotiate with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, our Palestinian brothers to accept it,” he said. “Accept what? Accept this solution that allows the fighting to be suspended for six months and takes away one of the most powerful elements they possess?”
