Through the voice of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah did not announce Wednesday any change in its wait-and-see strategy adopted in its war against Israel, twenty-four hours after the assassination of Hamas number two in the southern neighborhoods of Beirut , stronghold of the pro-Iranian Shiite party.
The powerful Shiite militia does not seem ready for a military escalation against the IDF, even if Nasrallah has clearly warned the Jewish state. “Until now, our posture has been calculated. However, if the enemy decides to launch a war against us, our men, our missiles are ready. There will be no more rules, no more limits,” he said.
He added that the “crime” against Saleh al-Arouri would not go unpunished, without giving further details. Already in the past, targeted assassinations of certain senior Hezbollah leaders attributed to Israel were ultimately not followed by visible reprisals, with the Party of God and its Iranian sponsor preferring to opt for attacks against Israeli interests, in Europe or in Asia.
For almost three months, Hezbollah and the Hebrew State have been clashing, but within limits that seem commonly accepted on both sides. As soon as the “liquidation” of al-Arouri became known on Tuesday, Israeli spokespersons refrained from declaring that Hezbollah and Lebanon were targeted, affirming that only Hamas was the enemy of the Jewish state.
In his last forty-five minute intervention, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah appeared to be content with the “results” achieved so far by the Palestinian groups confronting the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip. “On October 7 and 8, Israelis became mad with rage, they feared for their survival,” said the leader of the powerful pro-Iranian Shiite militia.
Nasrallah returned to the posture of his movement since the start of the war in Gaza. Hezbollah demonstrates its solidarity with Hamas and Palestinian groups by having launched 700 operations against Israel, its leader underlined. But at the same time, the Shiite formation seems to maintain its priorities, namely “protecting Lebanon” and its national interests, repeated the leader of the Party of God. He seems satisfied to see Israel engaged in a long war in the Gaza Strip. A conflict which weakens it, he welcomed, recalling the divisions within Israeli society, critical of its “political elite”. “Israel is on the path to destruction,” according to him.
If he paid tribute to the Palestinian “resistance”, Hassan Nasrallah above all recalled the memory of his friend, Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, assassinated four years ago, to the day, by an American drone strike in Baghdad alongside of Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, his deputy for Iraq. A tribute all the more relevant since two explosions at the cemetery in Kerman, in Iran, where he is buried, killed more than a hundred people on Wednesday. A “terrorist” act immediately denounced by the highest dignitaries of the Islamic Republic.
Qassim Soleimani was the leader of the al-Quds Brigade, the elite unit in charge of the Iranian regime’s external actions. Among these is aid to Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Hassan Nasrallah recalled the “logistical support” provided by Soleimani to Palestinian Islamist groups, in the form of training and arms deliveries in particular.
The leader of Hezbollah plans to deliver a new speech on Friday in order to deepen the position of his formation. “Of course, we support the right of Hamas and the Palestinians so that they liberate their lands from occupation and resist the occupation,” confided a Hezbollah executive two weeks ago. “Are we in line with or required to participate in everything Hamas does? No, neither on our side nor theirs,” he added. “The observer who follows the situation closely notes that there are sometimes differences between us, but we have a common interest which unites us and a single enemy”, Israel.
In fact, the Party of God was surprised by the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7. Hassan Nasrallah reaffirmed Wednesday that his team had not been warned. This is how the “axis of resistance” to Israel and the United States, established in recent years by General Soleimani, works, said the Shiite leader. “We do not give orders, each party (of this axis, Editor’s note) makes its own decisions,” he said, citing the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who attack commercial ships in the Red Sea, and Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, which attack the last American positions in these two countries.
