The secretary-general of Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah says Israel has suffered ‘unprecedented’ losses at the hands of Palestinian resistance and has failed to achieve any of its goals after 100 days of its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah made the remarks in a televised speech on Sunday in commemoration of Wissam Hassan al-Tawil, a senior Hezbollah commander who was assassinated in an Israeli strike in the southern Lebanese village of Khirbet Selm on January 8th.
Nasrallah praised Tawil as one of the commanders in the war against the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in Syria and also one of the field commanders on the southern front since October 8th, 2023, when the Lebanese resistance movement engaged in fire exchanges with the Israeli occupation regime in support of the Palestinians in Gaza.
Nasrallah hailed as ‘legendary’ Palestinian resistance against the Israeli aggression after 100 days and said the Israeli regime had not succeeded in achieving any of its goals ‘neither the explicit nor the implicit ones.
‘One hundred days have passed and Gaza and its people remain steadfast in a legendary manner that history has never witnessed,’ the Hezbollah chief stated.
‘The implicit goals of the Israeli war are to occupy Gaza, displace the Gazans and to turn the territory into a beach for the Israeli settlers.
‘The Israeli enemy was neither able to eliminate the resistance in Gaza, nor able to eliminate Hamas.’
Underlining that the Lebanese front has been open since October, Nasrallah expressed Hezbollah’s readiness to fight and said Lebanon has no fear of war or United States and Israeli threats.
‘Those who should fear war and be scared of it are Israel and its settlers,’ Nasrallah said.
‘We have been ready for war for the past 99 days and we do not fear it. We will fight with no restrictions.’
Warning that the Americans must fear for their bases in the region, the Hezbollah leader said: ‘Our stance is that the Lebanese front has been for supporting and assisting Gaza, and its objective is halting the aggression against Gaza.
‘Let the aggression against Gaza stop and then talks related to Lebanon will be possible.’
Nasrallah said the resistance continues to inflict losses on the Israeli occupation but the regime has been keeping the real number of its casualties ‘under wraps’.
‘The greatest catastrophe will be when the war ends and the extent of the catastrophe that befell the entity, which the resistance in Gaza inflicted on it in the first place, is revealed,’ he underlined.
He said the extent of the occupation’s concealment of its losses ‘is reflected in its failure to acknowledge the targeting of the Mount Meron base,’ which was hit by the resistance in Lebanon earlier in the month as part of the initial response to the assassination of the deputy head of the political bureau of Hamas, Saleh al-Arouri.
The Lebanese resistance movement fired 62 missiles, including 40 Katyushas and 22 Kornet anti-tank guided missiles, at the base, Nasrallah said: ‘18 of the Kornet missiles hit it.’
Pointing to the various resistance fronts supporting Palestinians in Gaza, the Hezbollah chief said the Americans and many Western countries had worked over a period of 100 days to ‘silence, subjugate and thwart these fronts.’
But the continuation of resistance in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq will force the Israeli regime to ‘accept the conditions of resistance, and this will mean the promised victory,’ he said.
Commenting on the recent US-UK aggression on Yemen, Nasrallah said US President Joe Biden and his administration will soon find out that they have made a mistake.
‘Biden will quickly discover the extent of the foolishness he committed through his aggression against Yemen, and today more than ever before, it is the responsibility of every Arab, Muslim and free person to declare their support for the Yemeni people, leadership, supporters and resistance, and this is the decisive factor between the fronts of truth and falsehood.
‘If Biden and those with him think Yemen will stop supporting Gaza, then they are ignorant and know nothing,’ the aggression against Yemen is ‘American and British foolishness’.
The Hezbollah chief pointed to ‘what the Americans did in the Red Sea,’ and said: ‘It will harm all shipping traffic, and they did all of this in order to protect Israel.
‘What is happening in the Red Sea has dealt a major blow to the enemy’s economy,’ Nasrallah said, adding that Israel’s image ‘has been exposed to the world, and this is what was revealed in the International Court of Justice in The Hague.’
Referring to South Africa’s proceedings against Israel in The Hague, Nasrallah said: ‘Independent of the outcome of the trial, the spectacle of the occupying entity being accused, before the eyes of the world and based on irrefutable evidence, is unprecedented and has confounded the occupying entity, which relies on moral hypocrisy before the world, by denying that it is waging a genocidal war in Gaza.’
IRAN ISSUES WARNING OVER YEMEN TO US/UK
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has issued a stern warning to the United States and the United Kingdom, saying the aggression against Yemen must end.
‘Iran severely warns the US and Britain to stop the war against Yemen and also warns the US and Israel to end the war in Gaza,’ Amir-Abdollahian said in a joint press conference with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Tehran on Monday.
The US cannot talk about its intention to stop the war and at the same time take action against Yemen, he noted.
Amir-Abdollahian also cast doubt on US claims that it is fighting terrorism, saying the United States cannot claim to be fighting Daesh because it created the terrorist group itself.
He also said that Washington cannot call for restraint as tensions rise in the region while at the same time supporting Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
And he reminded the US and its Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the Gaza war cannot be ended by military means, advising US officials not to tie the security and national interests of the American people to the fate of the apartheid Israeli regime and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Amir-Abdollahian noted that Iran and India have consensus on the need to end genocide in Gaza and prevent the war from spilling over to other parts of the region.
Addressing the situation in the Red Sea, the top Iranian diplomat said Tehran fully supports maritime security in the strategic waterway, and Iran has had assurances from Yemen’s National Salvation Government that it would not disrupt maritime security, but it insists that it will not allow Israeli ships to pass through the strategic region as long as the war and genocide continue in Gaza.
The US and Britain, backed by Bahrain, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands, struck more than 60 targets at almost 30 locations in Yemen last Friday, killing five people and injuring six others.
A top Yemeni official then warned that his country would retaliate against the US-led military strikes ‘in a way that will bring an end to American hegemony.’
Then on Saturday, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said that a ‘follow-on action’ was conducted against a Yemeni radar facility by the Navy destroyer USS Carney using Tomahawk land attack missiles.
The illegal assaults prompted Yemen’s Supreme Political Council to issue a statement, saying ‘all American-British interests have become legitimate targets.’
Israel waged its brutal war on Gaza on October 7th following a historic operation by the Palestinian Hamas resistance group against the occupying entity.
In solidarity with the Palestinians in besieged Gaza, the Yemeni armed forces have targeted ships in the Red Sea with owners linked to Israel or those going to and from ports in the occupied territories.
In response, the US has formed a military coalition against Yemeni forces in the Red Sea and thus endangered maritime navigation in the strategic waterway.
