An Israeli military official says killing Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement, would be a “decisive victory” in the regime’s future war against the Arab country.
“If we manage to kill Nasrallah in the next war, I would see that as reaching a decisive victory,” Major General Yaakov Barak said on Wednesday, Haaretz reported.
Barak claimed that any future war is expected to be very different from previous ones, and that Israeli ground forces are “ready and prepared” to be sent into the Lebanese territory more quickly, widely and deeply than before.
He said that “the next war will not be a war of several days, but it won’t last several months either.”
Barak’s comments echoed remarks by Israel’s military’s chief spokesperson Brigadier General Ronen Manelis, who had said in November that Hezbollah will be a target of assassination in Tel Aviv’s next act of aggression against Lebanon.
“There won’t be a clear victory picture in the next war, though it’s clear that Nasrallah is a target,” Manelis threatened.
Israel launched two wars on Lebanon in 2000 and 2006, in both of which the Hezbollah resistance fighters inflicted heavy losses on the regime’s army.
Nasrallah has repeatedly warned the regime in Tel Aviv against going for another act of aggression against his country, vowing that Lebanese armed forces would give a crushing response to the regime in any future war.
Tensions have been rising between Israel and Lebanon in recent weeks over Tel Aviv’s building of a border wall and its threats against Lebanon’s offshore oil and gas exploration projects in disputed Mediterranean waters.
Earlier this week, President Michel Aoun said Beirut was prepared to counter any potential threat from the Tel Aviv regime.
Last month, Lebanese army chief General Joseph Aoun warned Israel against staging a new war on the country, vowing that it would use every available means to deter an act of aggression.
“The army will not spare any method available to confront any Israeli aggression, whatever that costs,” he wrote.
Hezbollah, the country’s de facto military power, has vowed to defend the rights of its homeland in oil and gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean region against any new Israeli aggression.