TEL AVIV – Hezbollah is preparing a “calculated strike” against Israel in response to two drones that crashed in a Beirut suburb, Reuters reported, citing two sources close to the Iran-backed terror group.
However, the reprisal is not likely to spark an all-out conflict, the sources said.
It “is being arranged in a way which wouldn’t lead to a war that neither Hezbollah nor Israel wants,” one of the sources said. “The direction now is for a calculated strike, but how matters develop, that’s another thing.”
Since the weekend, Israel’s northern frontier has been on high alert with more IDF troops deployed to the area following Israeli strikes against Iran-affiliated targets in neighboring Syria and Lebanon.
According to a senior military source cited by Israel’s Channel 12, the IDF is preparing for the possibility that Hezbollah or another Iranian proxy militia will attack Israeli soldiers or a military base but not civilians.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday warned Hezbollah terror chief Hassan Nasrallah to “calm down” after the latter threatened to exact revenge on Israel.
“I heard what Nasrallah said. I suggest he calm down. He knows well that Israel knows how to defend itself and to pay back its enemies,” Netanyahu said during a ceremony in Jerusalem.
Nasrallah issued a warning a day earlier from his Beirut hideout that Israel had better “get ready” for a reprisal.
“I tell the Israeli army on the border,” he said, “wait for our response, which may take place at any time on the border and beyond the border. Be prepared and wait for us.”
On Saturday night, the IAF targeted a weapons storage facility in Syria, killing Hezbollah fighters.
Israel was also blamed for the crash of two drones in a Beirut suburb heavily dominated by the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group.
Hours after Nasrallah vowed to shoot down any Israeli aircraft violating Lebanese airspace, Israel was said to conduct another airstrike on a base deep inside Lebanon. The base were said to belong to the Palestinian faction the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), a Syria-based terrorist group allied with the Assad regime.
Israel said that Saturday’s Syria strike was to thwart an “imminent” attack on Israel by kamikaze-style UAV’s led by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and overseen by Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.
“[Nasrallah] knows full well that Israel knows how to defend itself well and pay back its enemies in kind. I want to tell him and Lebanon, which hosts this organization that is trying to destroy us, and I say this to Qassem Soleimani: Be careful what you say and be more careful what you do,” Netanyahu said Tuesday.
On Monday, Israel deployed more troops to its northern border in anticipation of a possible retaliation by Hezbollah.
According to a translation by the Times of Israel of the Lebanese Al-Akhbar daily, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has urged Lebanese officials to rein in Hezbollah.
The paper cited Pompeo as telling the pro-Hezbollah government that Israel “did not intend to change the rules of the game” with the attack on Soleimani’s men, saying that it “was necessary to prevent an expected offensive from the Iranian side and that the Israeli forces confirmed that the headquarters was emptied of humans before bombarding it and that it didn’t intend to cause human casualties from Hezbollah’s ranks.”
He was also reported as saying that the drone crashes in the Hezbollah-dominated Beirut suburb were the result of a malfunction.
The U.S. “acknowledges that what happened is a violation of international resolutions, but [holds] it is still possible to bring the situation back under control,” the report cited Pompeo as saying.
Pompeo also called on Beirut to “take a public position that prevents Hezbollah from carrying out military action against Israel,” the report said.
The report also quoted UN envoy to Lebanon Jan Kubis as telling Lebanese President Michel Aoun and parliament speaker Nabih Berri on Monday that Israel made a mistake, but “Lebanon should take advantage of the opportunity to go to the Security Council to receive a condemnation of all Israeli violations from the ground, air and sea.” He expressed “readiness to help Lebanon receive such a resolution.”
Aoun said the Israeli strikes were tantamount “to a declaration of war which allows us to resort to our right to defending [sic] our sovereignty,” Reuters reported.