Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel against waging war on Lebanon in a televised address Wednesday, a day after a strike blamed on Israel killed Hamas’s political number two in a Hezbollah stronghold in the southern Beirut suburbs.
“If the enemy thinks of waging a war on Lebanon, we will fight without restraint, without rules, without limits and without restrictions,” Nasrallah said in his address, which had been pre-planned to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the death of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp general Qassem Soleimani.
“We are not afraid of war,” he said, adding that “for now, we are fighting on the frontline following meticulous calculations.”
Both the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group and Hamas have accused Israel of killing Salah al-Arouri in Dahiyeh, Beirut on Tuesday night, with Nasrallah describing the attack as a “major and dangerous crime” that “will not go unanswered and unpunished” — repeating a threat made by the group itself on Tuesday.
The strike that killed al-Arouri marked “the first time they target the southern suburbs in this way since 2006,” Nasrallah said, in reference to that year’s Second Lebanon War which saw Beirut’s southern suburbs bombed.
Israel had sent “messages” to indicate it “did not intend to target Lebanon or Hezbollah,” but was rather “settling scores” with Hamas leaders, the Hezbollah leader added.
Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari did not directly comment on al-Arouri’s killing Wednesday, but said the military was “highly prepared for any scenario” in its aftermath.
The attack on al-Arouri has sparked fears of a broader conflagration because he is the most high-profile figure to be killed since the October 7 Hamas massacres in southern Israel and because his death came in the first strike on the Lebanese capital since hostilities started.
Since the deadly Hamas onslaught of October 7, in which some 1,200 people were slaughtered, mostly civilians, and around 240 were taken hostage, Hezbollah and allied Palestinian terror factions have engaged in daily cross-border clashes with Israeli troops along the Lebanon border.
The fighting along the border has resulted in four civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of nine IDF soldiers.
Hezbollah has named 143 members who have been killed by Israel in the same period, five of them in the last day. Another 19 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and at least 19 civilians, three of whom were journalists, have also been killed.
In his speech, Nasrallah claimed that “Israel has been weakened” by Hamas, and added that the country was “now on the path to extinction.”
Saying that the Lebanese shelling of Israeli troops has prevented a broader bombing campaign in Gaza, Nasrallah claimed falsely that Israel is hiding thousands of casualties from Hezbollah attacks on the northern border, and that “hundreds of thousands” have left the country since October.
Addressing Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the Hezbollah leader warned that Israel “will not succeed in achieving the war’s goals.”
“Whoever thinks of war with us — in one word, he will regret it,” he added.