Hezbollah LeaderWarns Israel About a “War With No Red Lines”

It would be pretty cool if Israel could just take this Nasrallah fellow out.  He’s been threatening Israel for years.  While today there is no declared war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the missiles and targeted attacks back and forth sure make it seem like war has already started.

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 The leader of Hezbollah has vowed a fight with “no rules and with no red lines” if full-out war erupts between the Lebanese militant group and Israel, warning Cyprus against getting mired in the conflict.

Lebanon and Israel have regularly traded cross-border fire since the start of the Jewish state’s war against Palestinian militant group Hamas — which, like Hezbollah, is backed by Iran — in the Gaza Strip. Fire exchanges have intensified since an Israeli airstrike last week killed a senior Hezbollah commander, Taleb Sami Abdullah, along with three other group operatives.

In a televised speech at the official’s memorial service on Wednesday, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said: “Israel knows very well that no place will be safe from our missiles and drones” in the event of a war between the neighboring states, according to comments carried by the Hezbollah-aligned al-Manar TV news outlet.

He added that Hezbollah has now “obtained new weapons,” but did not share any more details. The group often uses rockets, anti-tank missiles and Burkan heavy warhead rockets, which are modeled off the Iranian Ababil drones, according to Seth Frantzman, adjunct fellow at the U.S.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.

Nasrallah declared that Hezbollah’s numbers have now “far exceeded 100,000 fighters,” after first saying they’d hit that threshold in 2021, according to the Associated Press. The secretive nature of the group — which wields considerable political, military and social influence in Lebanon — makes it challenging to verify the figures. Lebanon’s formal military forces are estimated to have around 80,000 personnel, according to data portal IndexMundi.

The Hezbollah leader also threatened war against the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, if the European Union member permits Israel to launch military operations from its territory. Nasrallah accused Israel of “conducting maneuvers in preparation for the Lebanon war” in Cyprus, without disclosing his sources.

“I say that the Cypriot government must be careful because opening airports for the enemy to attack Lebanon means that Cyprus is part of the war and we will deal with it as part of the war,” al-Manar quoted Nasrallah as saying, according to a Google translation.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/20/hezbollah-leader-warns-israel-of-war-with-no-red-lines-threatens-cyprus-.html