In a televised speech yesterday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that “there is no place extending on the land of occupied Palestine that the resistance’s rockets cannot reach.”
The Times of Israel reports that Nasrallah made specific threats:
Hezbollah’s secretary-general also pledged that the Shiite organization’s rockets would force Israel to close its sea ports and main airport in the next conflict.
“Israelis are saying in the media that they would have to close down the Ben Gurion Airport and the Haifa port and yes, that’s true,” said Nasrallah, the Daily Star reported.
Today’s speech followed a rare public appearance by Nasrallah Monday in Beirut. It was just his sixth public appearance since Hezbollah’s war with Israel in 2006.
Nasrallah’s threat against Israel comes at a time that Hezbollah is experiencing internal dissent over its involvement in the Syrian civil war, leading to open criticism for harming Lebanon’s national interests.
In Don’t be Fooled. Hezbollah is Bigger and Badder Than Ever, which was published in the March 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine, Shai Oseran and Stéphane Cohen point out that Hezbollah’s military capabilities are growing, thanks in large part to Iranian support:
According to Brigadier General Itay Baron, head of the IDF Military Intelligence research section, Hezbollah now has around 65,000 rockets and missiles, many times the number they had on the eve of the 2006 war. Particularly worrisome is the Tishreen missile, which contains control and guidance systems that have given Hezbollah a precision-strike capability. The group also possesses Iranian-made rockets such as the Fajr-3 and Fajr-5, with respective ranges of 27 and 45 miles; and a huge quantity of simpler 107mm and 122mm rockets with ranges up to 12 miles. These rockets are capable of striking many cities in northern Israel, such as Haifa, Tiberias, Afula, Nahariya, and Safed. Hezbollah intends to use them in order to paralyze life in Israel through intense barrages of rocket and missile fire; something Hezbollah proved itself quite capable of doing already in 2006….
Israeli military officials are now beginning to view the Hezbollah threat as strategic rather than tactical; that is, they are preparing for a confrontation with a foreign army, rather than a terrorist group. But this army is not like others, because while it has the size and capacity of an army, it still fights like a terrorist organization. The tactics it has adopted would pose a growing challenge to any military, even one as experienced in asymmetric operations as the IDF.
[Photo: Ya Qaem Ahlulbayt / YouTube ]