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Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said the battle between his militant group and Israel had “entered a new phase” with the killing of a senior commander in Beirut, adding that Israel had breached limits and should expect a “certain” response.
“To the Israeli enemy: laugh a little now, but you will cry a lot as you don’t know what red lines you have crossed,” Nasrallah said in some of his most combative comments since the October 7 attack on Israel sparked war in Gaza and raised fears of a wider regional conflagration.
He was speaking via video link before the funeral on Thursday of his adviser Fuad Shukr, who was killed in the air strike this week in the densely populated southern suburb of Beirut that is a Hizbollah stronghold.
“The enemy does not know where the response will come from,” Nasrallah added, an indication that other militias in Iran’s network of regional proxies or even Tehran itself, could join in the retaliation.
“We’ve moved beyond just a support front. This is an open battle on all fronts . . . a new phase,” Nasrallah said, although he added that escalation would “depend on the enemy’s reactions”.
Nasrallah repeated that the only way to stop hostilities between his militant group and Israel was a ceasefire in Gaza.
Diplomats are holding urgent discussions around the Middle East in a race to try to head off the threat of a full-blown regional war after the killings of Shukr and Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas who was killed in a separate targeted attack in Tehran.
Iran has blamed Israel for the Haniyeh assassination, although Israel has neither confirmed nor denied carrying out the attack. But it did claim responsibility for the assassination of Shukr.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday: “Israel is in a state of very high readiness for any scenario — on both defence and offence. We will exact a very high price for any act of aggression against us from any quarter whatsoever.”
Nasrallah’s comments came as a funeral procession for Haniyeh was held in Tehran, led by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Haniyeh’s body is expected to be transported to Qatar, where he resided, for burial on Friday.
Haniyeh was killed on Wednesday hours after attending the swearing-in ceremony of Iran’s new president Masoud Pezeshkian. Domestic media has speculated that the attack that killed the political leader of the militant group behind October 7 involved an aerial assault, although no details have been provided.
That a high-profile guest could be killed in Tehran while being hosted by the regime is a significant embarrassment for Iran’s security and intelligence apparatus.
Iranian leaders also said that Israel, which has carried out previous assassinations in Iran, including those of a number of nuclear scientists, had crossed a red line with the Haniyeh killing.
They said some form of retaliation by Iran and its allies, who are collectively known as the “axis of resistance”, is now inevitable.
Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf during the funeral accused the US of complicity in the assassination, saying: “Although they claim in statements and media that they were unaware, we know and are certain that all these events, whether overt or covert, are under their control and co-ordination.”
Nasrallah also linked Washington to Israel’s actions in his speech on Thursday. Hizbollah-aligned Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar had earlier said that US special envoy Amos Hochstein, who has been leading diplomatic efforts to de-escalate tensions between Lebanon and Israel, had “deceived” Lebanese officials by telling them Israel would not strike Beirut.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said the Haniyeh assassination was “something we were not aware of or involved in”.
Iran and Israel have already had one direct confrontation, which came after Israel attacked an Iranian consulate in Syria, killing several Iranian military commanders.
Tehran responded with missile launches, but it flagged the attack to Israel’s allies, and most of the projectiles were intercepted, preventing further escalation.
Hizbollah and Israel have exchanged fire almost daily since the October 7 attack, with the militants saying they are acting in “solidarity” with Hamas.
But this escalated when 12 people, mostly children, were killed by a suspected Hizbollah rocket that struck a football pitch in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday, which sparked the latest round of escalation.
