Hizbullah's secretary general Hassan Nasrallah threatened Monday to target vital, "non-military" targets in Israel if Lebanon was attacked, and characterized the changes in the region as part of a greater trend of a fragmentation of international power.
“If an Israeli airstrike destroys a number of Hizbullah's military targets, [our] rockets will be able to turn the lives of hundreds of thousands of Israelis into hell, so do not bet on a first strike,” said Nasrallah.
"We have a target list, including many with coordinates that our rockets can reach. This makes a real deterrent force. When Israel talks of destroying Lebanon, out targets will not exclude military targets. When the Israeli [military] says that it will destroy our country, we will destroy everything."
Nasrallah said that one of Israel’s weaknesses is their economic, industrial, electric and nuclear targets. “If the Israeli [military] knows no boundaries in aggression, we too will know no boundaries,” he continued.
Nasrallah denied that Hizbullah possesses chemical weapons.
"We do not need such weapons,” he said. “We have rockets for [specific] Israeli targets."
Any target on the occupied land of Israel could be a target for the rockets of the revolution, he said. “We define the targets, either military or non-military, and the Israelis know that. Today there is deterrence,” he continued.
"Resistance has a defense dimension. When the Israeli [military] wants to destroy our country, I will do what I can do. We in the Arab world may not be used to this level of challenge, but we have reached this level. Israel has power stations. If they are shelled, it will have massive economic effects."
Nasrallah also characterized the events in Syria as a distraction away attention from the Palestinian cause, after he said the uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain gave hope to "the resistance," adding that Israel was in a state of mourning after the fall of Mubarak.
“We are on the verge of a stage where major world and regional transformations will take place,” he said, adding that a new regional and international order could take shape.
"It is enough that we listen to Russia and China. They both say that what happens in Syria is no longer an internal affair. We are no longer under dual-pole system of the US and Russia. A multi-polar system is being formed,” he continued. “In the region, decades-old regimes have collapsed and new coalitions are being formed. We are facing a new regional situation."
Nasrallah added that any regional developments notwithstanding, Palestine and Jerusalem remained moral and religious responsibilities.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
