Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday warned that Israel “will regret it if it launches any war on Lebanon,” stressing that Hezbollah is “fully prepared for any war.”
“If they want war, they are welcome, and the Israelis know what war with Lebanon means,” Nasrallah said in an annual speech marking Quds Day.
“We have not used the main weapons nor the main forces and we have not called in the reserves,” Nasrallah noted, pointing out that Hezbollah “does not fear a war … but has so far managed its battle according to a vision and a strategy.”
“Our stance regarding the Lebanese front has not changed: when the war stops in Gaza it will stop here,” Nasrallah said.
“Lebanon's front will remain active and this is settled, seeing as it is linked to the Gaza front,” he stated.
Adding that “the axis of resistance is heading to a historic and major victory,” Nasrallah said Iran’s response to the deadly strike on its consulate in Damascus will “inevitably” come.
“Everyone must prepare themselves, arrange their matters and be careful when the Iranian side responds to the targeting of the Iranian consulate and to the Zionist enemy's possible response to the Iranian response,” Nasrallah said.
He also described the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus as “a pivotal incident that will have consequences.”
“The martyr Mohammad Reza Zahedi lived with us for long years and made huge services to the resistance in Lebanon,” Nasrallah said, referring to the top Iranian Revolutionary Guard general who was killed in the Israeli strike.
“The martyr Mohammad Reza Zahedi played a historic role in our path,” Nasrallah said.
Monday's strike in the Syrian capital leveled the five-story consular annex of the Iranian embassy and killed seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals.
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said Israel "will be punished" for the consulate strike.
Israel has not commented on the strike, but analysts saw it as an escalation of its campaign against Iran and its regional proxies that runs the risk of triggering a wider war beyond the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Gaza Strip.
Israel said Thursday it was strengthening its defenses and pausing leave for combat units following Iran's threats to retaliate.