Top Iranian officials warned Saturday that the militant group Hezbollah is poised to join the fight against Israel, vowing that a “huge earthquake” will result from the outfit joining forces with Hamas to open a two-front war.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told reporters he met with Hezbollah leaders and heard firsthand about the group’s readiness to fight against Israel if necessary. He urged Israel to halt its military operations in Gaza immediately.
“I know about the scenarios that Hezbollah has put in place,” the Iranian foreign minister said, according to English-language media accounts of his remarks. “Any step the resistance will take will cause a huge earthquake in the Zionist entity.”
“I want to warn the war criminals and those who support this entity before it’s too late to stop the crimes against civilians in Gaza, because it might be too late in a few hours,” he said.
The warnings come as Israel ramps up its military strikes in Gaza, home to the militant Hamas, which on Oct. 7 launched a massive terrorist assault that killed more than 1,300 Israelis and at least 27 Americans. About 150 people have also been taken hostage by the group, including some U.S. citizens.
Hamas surprised most military and foreign policy analysts with the scope and precision of its well-coordinated surprise attack last weekend. But the group’s strength as a legitimate fighting force pales in comparison to Hezbollah.
“The Israeli nightmare scenario is that the first punch is from Gaza and then the uppercut comes from Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is much more powerful by orders of magnitude,” Michael Doran, senior fellow and director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute, told The Washington Times earlier this week.
Should it join the fight, Hezbollah would bring considerable capabilities. The group boasts that it has more than 100,000 trained fighters, though most outside estimates put the true number between 25,000 and 50,000. Hezbollah receives significant funding and material backing from Iran, as Hamas does, but most analysts say its fighters are better trained, have more effective weapons and far more rockets, and are more battle-tested as a major ground fighting force.
Thousands of Hezbollah militants, for example, have spent years fighting on the ground in the Syrian civil war, among other battlefield experience.
So far, Hezbollah has not indicated it will fully commit the bulk of its forces and open up a second front against Israel to the north. But clashes between Hezbollah and Israel are still a regular occurrence.
On Saturday, the Israeli military struck Hezbollah positions after the group claimed responsibility for a mortar attack aimed at Israeli military posts near the Lebanon border, the Times of Israel reported. The outlet also said that Israeli troops killed three terrorists attempting to cross into Israel from Lebanon on Saturday morning.
For its part, Iran seems to be launching a concerted effort to rally other Muslim nations and groups, presumably including Hezbollah, into a full-blown, multi-front war against Israel.
“All (countries) in the Muslim world have a duty to support Palestine,” Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saturday, according to Iranian state-controlled media.
The Biden administration has warned Iran, Hezbollah and all other actors to stay out of the conflict.
“For any country, for any group or anyone thinking about trying to take advantage of this atrocity to try to widen the conflict or to spill more blood, we have just one word: Don’t,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Friday during a visit to Israel. “The world is watching and so are we, and we aren’t going anywhere.”
