Hizbullah Terror Chief Warns of Reprisals to Israeli Strikes in Syria

Hizbullah boss Hassan Nasrallah warned that his organization could start responding militarily to Israeli strikes in Syria by targeting Iranian assets, including advanced weaponry destined for Tehran’s terror proxy in neighboring Lebanon. “At any moment the Syrian leadership and the axis of resistance can take a decision to deal with the Israeli aggression in a different manner,” Nasrallah asserted in a wide-ranging television interview, adding that such an eventuality likely would lead to the outbreak of war. Israel has over the past years carried out thousands of strikes in Syria—most recently last week when it destroyed more than three dozen sites, many of them manned by Iranian troops—with a view to preventing the Islamic Republic from establishing a permanent presence across its northern frontier. The large-scale operation came after Tehran’s elite Quds Force retaliated to a rare day-time Israeli strike by firing a powerful missile towards the Jewish state which was intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system. It marked the second time Iranian troops directly attacked Israel, following the launch last May of a barrage of about 20 projectiles that caused no injuries or damages. Nasrallah also claimed that the Israeli army’s recently-completed “Operation Northern Shield” had uncovered and neutralized only a fraction of Hizbullah’s cross-border attack tunnels, through which the terror group plans to invade Israeli towns and villages in a future conflict. Finally, Nasrallah alleged that in spite of Israeli efforts Hizbullah had acquired a “sufficient” number of precision-guided missiles that can reach “all of occupied Palestine,” a reference to pre-1967 geographical Israel.