Ayatollah Ali Khamenei insists that Lebanon’s Hezbollah still stands strong despite losing some of its top commanders to Israeli strikes.
Speaking at a meeting with military personnel on Wednesday, as Israel’s bombardment targeting the Shia armed group continued for the third straight day, Iran’s supreme leader said that while Hezbollah has been weakened, it will survive.
“Some of the effective and valuable forces of Hezbollah were martyred, which undoubtedly caused damage to Hezbollah, but this was not the sort of damage that could bring the group to its knees,” said Khamenei.
“The organisational strength and human resources of Hezbollah is very strong and will not be critically hit by the killing of a senior commander, even if that is clearly a loss,” the Iranian leader added.
He finished by declaring that the “Palestinian and Lebanese resistance will have the final victory”.
‘No de-escalation’
Hezbollah has exchanged near-daily fire with Israel’s military across the Lebanon-Israel border since the war in Gaza broke out in October.
However, the violence between the pair escalated dramatically last week when a series of coordinated attacks caused electronic devices used by Hezbollah to explode throughout Lebanon and Syria.
The remotely triggered sabotage, widely blamed on Israel, killed at least 39 people and wounded almost 3,000. Analysts branded it a new, dangerous turn in cyber-warfare.
On Wednesday, Israeli warplanes bombed Lebanon for a third day. Air raids earlier this week killed at least 558 people, marking the deadliest wave of violence in Lebanon since the 1975-1990 civil war, and sent tens of thousands fleeing from the south of the country.
Numerous senior Hezbollah figures have been killed in the latest bout of violence, including senior commanders Ibrahim Aqil and Ibrahim Muhammad Qubaisi.
In retaliation, Hezbollah said it had fired a ballistic missile at Israel’s Mossad headquarters near Tel Aviv on Wednesday, an attack the Israeli military described as unprecedented.
Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan, reporting from the southern Lebanese city of Marjayoun, said the Israel-Hezbollah attacks seemed set to intensify.
“There is no de-escalation. There is no diplomacy. Just Hezbollah and the Israeli army attacking each other,” he reported.
“The Israeli army say they are continuing to strike Hezbollah targets. And Hezbollah is actually ramping things up slightly and we are seeing a lot more outgoing rocket attacks than we’ve seen perhaps in the last 24 hours.”
