TEL AVIV — The head of the terror organization Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, said in an internal meeting Tuesday that he was not in a hurry to retaliate for recent Israeli strikes against his group, the Lebanese Al-Akhbar daily reported.
The comments contradict public statements Nasrallah made Monday in a video filmed from his Beirut bunker, warning Israel to “get ready” for a reprisal.
According to the report, Nasrallah told other Hezbollah officials that “we are in no hurry … let’s leave the Israelis on alert [but] they can sleep comfortably” that a retaliation would not be forthcoming in the immediate future.
Overnight between Saturday and Sunday, two drones flew into the Dahiyeh neighborhood in southern Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold. Nasrallah said one of the drones, carrying explosives, was brought down by “youths throwing stones” while the other exploded in the air, sparking a fire and causing damage to an adjacent building belonging to the terror group.
According to Al-Akhbar, Hezbollah’s eventual response will have the goal of “establishing a new status quo” in which Israel would be blocked from violating Lebanese sovereignty by land, air or sea.
Also on Tuesday, the Reuters news agency cited two sources close to the Iran-backed terror group as saying that the terror group is planning a calculated strike against Israel but not one that would spark a war.
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.”
In an interview with Russia’s RT, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general, Naim Qassem, said that his group’s reprisal would be an “appropriate surprise” to Israel but declined to give further details.
Qassem said that while the Israeli strikes are being taken very seriously by the group, “the atmosphere is one of a response to an attack, not an atmosphere of war.”
“Everything will be decided when the time comes,” he added.
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.
Several analysts have asserted that the drones in the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahiyeh were likely Iranian, not Israeli.
Despite Hezbollah’s claims that the damaged structure was a media building, the British Times newspaper cited western intelligence officials as saying that the building contained a high-end “industrial planetary mixer” for mixing high-grade solid propellant to turn standard projectiles into precision missiles.
The images published in The Times also show that the planetary mixer’s control box was completely destroyed. According to Channel 13 news, without this component, long-range solid fuel missiles cannot be produced, effectively delaying Hezbollah’s project for at least a year.
Lebanese President Michel 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,” the Reuters news agency reported.
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