After days of intensified clashes between Hezbollah and Israel, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese militia, warned on Wednesday that “there will be no place safe from our missiles and our drones” if all-out war breaks out. He also threatened Cyprus if it allows Israel to use its airports and bases in a full-scale conflict.
“The enemy knows very well that we have prepared ourselves for the most difficult days, and the enemy knows what it will face,” Mr. Nasrallah said. “If war is imposed, the resistance will fight without constraints, rules or limits.”
President Nikos Christodoulides of Cyprus responded to the threat by saying that his country was “absolutely not involved in any way,” according to remarks posted on social media.
In his first public remarks amid the recent flare-up of violence along Lebanon’s border with Israel, Mr. Nasrallah said that Hezbollah, which is tightly allied with Iran, did not want a wider conflict but emphasized that the group was ready for war and had so far used only a fraction of its weapons. If needed, Mr. Nasrallah said, Hezbollah could unleash them on “a bank of targets” in precision strikes.
“The enemy knows it must expect us on land, in the air, and at sea,” he said.
Ever since Hezbollah began trading fire with Israeli forces in the wake of the Hamas-led assault on Israel on Oct. 7, over 100 civilians in Israel and Lebanon have been killed, and more than 150,000 have been displaced from their homes. But the cross-border fighting in recent weeks has been among the fiercest yet, raising fears of another front in the war as Israel presses ahead with its offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Western diplomats have tried to lower the temperature, meeting with Lebanese and Israeli officials to head off a full-fledged war, but on Tuesday the Israeli military said it had approved operational plans for a potential offensive in Lebanon, without specifying when or if the plans would be used. Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978, 1982 and 2006, each time to push back militants who attacked across the border.
