Tehran and Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah warn of cataclysmic retaliation against an Israeli attack, threatening to make the country “a living hell.” The statements come amidst reports of that Israel is preparing a unilateral strike on Iran.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said his party had already fixed targets in Israel and would be able to hit them with a small number of rockets if Tel Aviv decides to attack first.
“If we are forced to use them to protect our people and our country, we will not hesitate to do so… and that will turn the lives of hundreds of thousands of Zionists into a living hell,” Nasrallah warned in a speech on Quds Day, an annual event to show solidarity with Palestinians under occupation using the Arabic name for Jerusalem.
Nasrallah also predicted that an Israeli strike on Iran would bring an “enormous response” from the Islamic Republic, giving it “the opportunity it has been dreaming of” since 1979.
Israeli military leaders have been signaling that they may attack the Lebanese group’s militant factions in the near future if rocket strikes against Israeli targets continue.
“If we get to another war, Israel will hit Hezbollah decisively, quickly, as fast as we can in order to stop the fire from Lebanon,” Brig. General Herzi Halevi, the commander of the Israeli Defense Forces’ northern division, said last month, also warning that South Lebanese towns used by Hezbollah as launching pads would be “destroyed.”
The leader’s diatribe against Israel was not dissimilar to a speech given by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday.
“The Zionist regime and the Zionists are a cancerous tumor,” he declared in remarks at Tehran University. “The nations of the region will soon finish off the usurper Zionists in the Palestinian land.”
