The head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah told the United States on Friday that halting Israel’s bombardment on Gaza was necessary to avert a regional confrontation and that fighting on the Lebanese front might escalate into a full-scale war.
In his first statement since the Israel-Hamas conflict broke out on October 7, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah hinted that his Iran-backed force was prepared to take on American warships in the Mediterranean, posing a threat to Israel’s principal ally, the United States.
“You, the Americans, can stop the aggression against Gaza because it is your aggression. Whoever wants to prevent a regional war, and I am talking to the Americans, must quickly halt the aggression on Gaza,” Nasrallah said.
Since October 8, Hezbollah and Israeli forces have engaged in gunfire along the Lebanese-Israeli border, resulting in the deaths of around fifty-five of its militants. However, the fighting has mainly stayed inside the border, and Hezbollah has only deployed a small portion of the armament that Nasrallah has been threatening Israel with for a long time.
According to Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s recent border attacks “won’t be all” that it does. He also stated that further developments on that front will depend on what transpires in Gaza and what Israel does in Lebanon.
Established in 1982 by the Revolutionary Guards of Iran, the group serves as the head of an alliance opposed to both the United States and Israel, backed by Tehran.
Other parties who support Iran have also joined the fight; Houthis from Yemen have launched drones towards Israel, while Tehran-backed Shi’ite militias have opened fire on American forces in Syria and Iraq. Nasrallah praised what they had done.
“You, the Americans, know very well that if war breaks out in the region, your fleets will be of no use,” he said. “The one who will pay the price will be … your interests, your soldiers and your fleets,” he said.
The United States did not want the war to spread to Lebanon, the White House stated, and Hezbollah must not take advantage of the Hamas-Israel dispute.
Since the start of the war, the Pentagon has sent two aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean, claiming that this is done as a deterrent to prevent the fighting from getting worse.
Hezbollah was not scared of the warships, according to Nasrallah.
“We have prepared well for your fleets, with which you are threatening us,” said Nasrallah, whose group’s arsenal includes anti-ship missiles.
He referred to the 1983 suicide bombs that destroyed the U.S. Marine headquarters in Beirut, killing 241 troops, and the suicide attack on the U.S. embassy when he recalled attacks on U.S. interests in Lebanon in the early 1980s. The assaults are attributed by the US to Hezbollah.
Those “who defeated you in Lebanon … are still alive”, he said.
