TEHRAN — The secretary-general of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has called the large-scale Sunday operation of the movement against the Israeli regime “Operation Arbaeen Day.”
According to Al-Ahed news agency, Hassan Nasrallah detailed Hezbollah’s Sunday morning response to the assassination of Fuad Shukr, the movement’s senior commander. The response was conducted by firing hundreds of missiles and drones into the Israeli-occupied territories.
Hezbollah leader said that the enemy was the main cause of escalation by attacking Dahieh in southern Beirut and martyring Fuad Shukr and several civilians and that because of the simultaneousness of today’s attack with the day of Arbaeen, this retaliatory strike was also called “Operation Arbaeen Day.”
He further argued that it had been said earlier that the delay in responding was part of the punishment of the Zionist enemy, but the other factor was the Gaza ceasefire negotiations and the consensus on how to respond to the Zionists.
We have enough time to negotiate because the goal of this front and its sacrifices is to stop the war against Gaza, Nasrallah added.
Finally, it was decided that each group of the Axis of Resistance would act alone, and the timing of the attack was different, he said, noting that despite Israel’s targeting civilians in Lebanon, Hezbollah decided not to target infrastructure and civilians, and it attacked military sites.
According to the Hezbollah leader, Israel’s military intelligence organization and its air force were involved in the assassination of Fuad Shukr; therefore, Hezbollah targeted a place that was associated with assassination operations and targeted the Glilot base, which was home to military intelligence, the Unit 8200.
He cautioned that the distance from the Glilot base to the Lebanese border is 110 kilometers and its distance from Tel Aviv is 1,500 meters, and that resistance fighters also targeted several military bases in the occupied Golan Heights and the Galilee mountainous region.
Some 340 Katyusha rockets were fired to confuse the Iron Dome system so that the drones could reach their targets, he said, adding that all the drones that were launched from the Beqaa Valley crossed the Lebanese-Palestinian border safely towards the targets, and our specific military target was the military intelligence base, Unit 8200, near Tel Aviv.
Nasrallah also stated that the truth of what happened in these operations will be known, despite the enemy’s secrecy, and that data shows a number of drones hit their targets, but the enemy has remained silent. He added that the enemy’s narrative is full of lies, and Israel, which considers itself the strongest actor in the region, resorts to lies because of its weakness.
The casualties in Nahariya, Acre, and other areas, if any, were caused by Israeli interceptor missiles, Nasrallah said, adding that when Israel talked about destroying our strategic missiles, it lied because we did not use them, but we may use them in the future.
The secretary-general of Hezbollah also emphasized that every objective Hezbollah pursued according to the planned operation has been achieved and that not long ago, the group had cleared all the valleys of precision and ballistic missiles, and what the enemy bombarded today were empty valleys; therefore, the enemy’s claims of targeting ballistic missiles that were prepared to target Tel Aviv are baseless, and the launch pads of combat drones were not hit, and the Israeli attacks hit only two missile launchers.
He went on to say that after the rockets were launched, some platforms were targeted, which is normal. Nasrallah argued that Hezbollah has thousands of such platforms.
He noted that a half hour before the operation, the enemy was attacking. They were on full alert and all the technical powers of Israel and the West were at their disposal.
He further clarified that the targets that were attacked had nothing to do with our operations because they did not have information about it. What Israel did was a military aggression, not a pre-emptive strike.
Nasrallah added that no one was martyred in this operation, but after that, the enemy targeted places and three people were martyred. The enemy suffered an operational failure and Hezbollah’s operation was successful.
The enemy claims to have intelligence and knowledge of the timing of the operation, while the movements of Hezbollah fighters caused them to notice the attack, but they were not able to stop it.
Hezbollah operation was preliminary
The Hezbollah leader added: Today’s military operation was carried out carefully despite all the difficult circumstances, because we decided to respond and continued to carry it out despite all external and internal intimidation. All the land, air, and sea facilities of the United States, Israel, and the West were on alert, but they could not stop our attack.
Nasrallah said that we announced that our response today is preliminary, and if the result of the operation is not enough for us, we will decide what to do later. Our operation today may be very useful for the Palestinian and other Arab parties in the negotiations, and its message is clear to the enemy and to the Americans.
He also emphasized that any attempt to halt the resistance fronts’ support for Palestine are doomed to fail, and we will complete the work that we started 11 months ago without paying attention to intimidation and with adhering to self-sacrifice. We are the people who do not accept being oppressed and do not bow to anyone, and our blood triumphs over the sword.
He also said that the enemy must understand that the day when it could attack Lebanon with a music band is over, and the day may come when we can attack it with a music band.
IRNA