Hezbollah warns of all-out war if IDF escalates in Lebanon
Supreme leader Hassan Nasrallah says the Iranian-backed lebanese group is ready for war ‘without limits’.
Hezbollah’s supreme leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has warned Israel not to take military action against Lebanon, saying it is ready for war “without limits” should Israel attack.
Nasrallah declared Israel’s enemies had become “bolder than before, more willing to wage war than before” after Hamas’s October 7 terror attack, which he celebrated as an act of resistance that had “brought down the idea of Israel as a safe haven for Jews”.
“Today I will not make any threats,” he said. “But if the enemy decides to wage war on Lebanon, our combat will have no ceiling, no limit.”
Painting Hezbollah as the protector of the Lebanese state, he declared: “If war is waged against Lebanon, the national interest will cause us to go to war without limit.
“We do not fear war. If we were afraid we would not have opened a new front,” he said, referring to the escalating exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel across the Lebanese border in recent days.
He mocked the US decision to pull back a carrier strike from the eastern Mediterranean, saying “the Americans are leaving without any results”, urging Israeli Jews to go with them. “If you want to feel secure, go back to the United States,” he said. “If you have a British passport go back to the UK.”
Nasrallah addressed supporters the day after a senior Hamas leader, Saleh al-Arouri, was assassinated in an Israeli strike on southern Beirut, killing him and six other Hamas figures he was meeting.
Arouri was one of the few Hamas figures outside Gaza with advance knowledge of the October 7 attack and the chief Hamas liaison with Hezbollah.
Iran, the state sponsor behind both Hamas and Hezbollah, called the airstrike a “cowardly terrorist operation”. Nasrallah called the strike “a serious assault on Lebanon that will not go unanswered or unpunished”, equating the attack on Arouri to an attack on the sovereign state.
Israel has not publicly claimed responsibility for the strike on Arouri, though it has made clear its intention to eliminate all figures associated with the October 7 attacks, in Gaza or abroad.
Middle Eastern intelligence sources told The Times the attack was authorised when Hamas members were alone in the targeted room. And a US Defence Department official told Agence France-Presse Israel carried out the strike.
David Barnea, Israel’s spy chief, all but admitted responsibility when he drew a comparison between Israel’s campaign to eradicate Hamas to Mossad’s deadly manhunt for the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich massacre targeting Israeli Olympic athletes.
Speaking at the funeral of Zvi Zamir, who masterminded the post-Munich assassination campaign, Mr Barnea warned that Israel would not hesitate to act against any of those involved in Hamas’s deadly attack.
Mossad “is committed to settling the score with the murderers who descended upon the Gaza envelope on October 7”, he warned. “It will take time, just like after the Munich massacre, but we will lay our hands on them wherever they will be. Every Arab mother ought know that if her son participated, directly or indirectly, in the slaughter of October 7, his blood shall be upon his own head.”
Earlier, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned Arouri’s killing, claiming it “aims to draw Lebanon” further into the conflict. Similar concerns were echoed by the UN peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon, which warned of “devastating consequences for people on both sides” should the conflict escalate.
Israel has repeatedly warned Hezbollah it is ready to take military action if the militia does not move assets and troops back from the border and halt its strikes. The brazen assassination of Arouri in Hezbollah’s Beirut stronghold, however, sent shockwaves through Lebanon. Arouri is one of several exiled Hamas leaders who have found refuge under Hezbollah’s protection in Lebanon.
Lebanese security officials said the strikes used guided missiles that were launched by an Israeli warplane. According to one official, the guided missiles used in the attack weigh around 100kg, making them too heavy to have been fired by a drone.
“A drone could not have carried out such a precise strike,” the official with knowledge of the official Lebanese investigation into Arouri’s killing told AFP.
Six missiles were used, four of which exploded, two after piercing through two floors and exploding in a room where Arouri was holding a meeting with six other Hamas officials, killing them all.
Nasrallah hinted that he too could be targeted by Israel, saying he would have more to say on the current conflict during a sermon planned for Friday “if God keeps me alive”.
The Times
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