Hezbollah’s Nasrallah on Delayed Attack: Military Focus, Strategic Timing
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah delivered a televised address on Sunday explaining the group’s delayed retaliation for the July 30 assassination of its military commander, Fuad Shukr. His remarks came after Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah earlier that morning, thwarting what was believed to be a large-scale attack planned by the Iran-backed group.
The delay, he said, was partly due to the significant Israeli and US military mobilization in the region and strategic considerations within the “Axis of Resistance,” which includes Iran and its allies. He also explained that the delay in carrying out the retaliation served as a psychological tactic, keeping Israel in a state of heightened alert for nearly a month. Nasrallah reiterated that each member of the Axis of Resistance would determine its own timing and method of response, with Iran and the Houthis expected to act following Hezbollah’s strike.
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In executing the attack, Nasrallah detailed that Hezbollah launched 300 Katyusha rockets to overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome and other defense systems, thereby allowing drones, launched from deep within Lebanon’s Bekaa region, to enter Israeli airspace. Nasrallah claimed that Hezbollah’s precision and strategic missiles were not damaged in Israel’s preemptive strikes and were not used in this operation, though they may be deployed in the near future.
The Hezbollah chief revealed that the group identified a central Israeli intelligence base, located 110 kilometers from the Lebanon border and just 1.5 kilometers from Tel Aviv, as their primary target. Nasrallah asserted that there were no plans to target civilian sites in Tel Aviv, including Ben Gurion Airport and the Israeli Defense Ministry, emphasizing that Hezbollah’s response was carefully calculated to avoid civilian casualties, even though, he claimed, Israel had targeted civilians in its assassination attempt. “We decided that the goal should be military, not civilian or infrastructure, and that it would be related to the elimination of Fuad Shukr and close to Tel Aviv,” Nasrallah stated.
