Fears Hezbollah is set to declare war with Israel and light the touch paper for a larger regional conflict as terror group chief makes major speech today

Fears are growing today that Hezbollah is set to declare war with Israel and light the touch paper for a larger conflict in the Middle East.

The terror group’s chief Hassan Nasrallah will break weeks of silence since war broke out between Hamas and Israel in a speech today, that some fear could signal Hezbollah’s intention to wade deeper into the on-going conflict.

After Hamas militants launched an unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip, Lebanon’s southern border has seen escalating tit-for-tat exchanges, mainly between Israel and Hezbollah.

The terror group, like Hamas, is backed by Iran, and clashes across Israel’s northern border are stoking fears of a broader conflagration of the on-going war.

The cross-border attacks heated up Thursday, as Israel responded with a ‘broad assault’ after Hezbollah said it attacked 19 Israeli positions simultaneously.

Rockets also hit the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona near the border in a barrage claimed by the Lebanese section of Hamas’s armed wing.

Nasrallah’s highly anticipated speech will be broadcast as part of an event in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, at 3.00pm (1300 GMT) on Friday.

The speech will be in memory of fighters killed in Israeli attacks, but will be watched keenly for any signal from the group that it may wade deeper into the conflict on the side of Hamas.

On the Lebanese side, more than 70 people have been killed – at least 50 of them Hezbollah fighters but also other combatants and civilians, one a Reuters journalist.

On the Israeli side, nine people have died – eight soldiers and one civilian, according to the Israel Defence Force (IDF).

Some analysts believe that Hezbollah has little interest in becoming fully embroiled in a conflict that Israeli officials have threatened could destroy Lebanon.

But others say the decision lies with Iran, which leads the regional ‘axis of resistance’ against Israel, which alongside Hezbollah includes armed groups from Syria, Iraq and Yemen, some of which have attacked Israel and US interests in recent weeks.

The grouping of Iran and terror groups has been described by the Jewish state as an ‘axis of evil hell-bent’ on destroying Israel.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has warned that ‘the region is like a powder keg’ and that ‘anything is possible’ if Israel does not stop attacking Gaza. 

But Amal Saad, a Hezbollah expert at Cardiff University, said: ‘Hezbollah is not a proxy of Iran, it’s an ally of Iran.

‘Hezbollah doesn’t need anyone’s permission to intervene.’

‘Hezbollah has much more experience obviously fighting Israel than Iran does – Iran has not had a direct confrontation with Israel,’ Saad added.

On Wednesday, Hezbollah published a letter from its fighters addressed to Palestinian groups in Gaza, saying they had their ‘finger with you on the trigger… to support Al-Aqsa mosque and our oppressed brothers in Palestine’.

The Shiite Muslim group has mainly restricted itself to targeting Israeli observation posts, military positions and vehicles near the border as well as drones, using what it says have been anti-tank missiles, guided missiles and even surface-to-air missiles.

Israel has responded by bombing sites along the border, while drones have targeted fighters near the frontier.

US President Joe Biden, meanwhile, has sent two aircraft carrier groups to the eastern Mediterranean and warned Hezbollah and others to stay out of the conflict.

Reports in October suggested that the White House and US military officials have discussed the possibility of using military forces if Hezbollah joins the war.

And according to a CNN report on Thursday, the US has intelligence that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has agreed to provide Hezbollah with a Russian-made missile defence system, with the Russian Wagner Group tasked with delivering.

CNN said in its report that the hardware is a surface-to-air SA-22 missile system (also known as a Pantsir). It said it was not clear if it had already been delivered.

The Wall Street Journal had previously reported that Wagner – which has been heavily involved in fighting in Ukraine, operates in Syria and has significant interests in Africa – would provide the system to the terror group.

However, ‘Assad’s role has not been previously reported,’ CNN said.

One unidentified US official quoted by the Journal said that Washington had not confirmed that the system had been sent. But U.S. officials are monitoring discussions involving Wagner and Hezbollah, the Journal said.

The Journal said that the Pantsir system – known by NATO as the SA-22 – would be provided to Hezbollah via Syria, where Russia propped up al-Assad by entering the civil war there in 2015.

Wagner Group, which was funded by the Russian state and has been brought firmly under Kremlin control since an aborted mutiny by its former leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in June, did not reply to a request for comment from Reuters.

The US remains sceptical that Hezbollah will get involved in the Israel-Gaza war.

‘We’ve got significant national security interests at play here,’ US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

‘I don’t believe we’ve seen any indication yet specifically that Hezbollah is ready to go in full force. So we’ll see what he has to say.’ 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken touched down in Tel Aviv ahead of the speech, in a trip focused on easing tensions in the wider region. 

Hezbollah, or the ‘Party of God’ in Arabic, is a Shiite Islamist political and military organisation that was founded in the 1980s during the Lebanese Civil War with the support of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. 

Its dual political and military setup echoes that of Hamas, but while both groups are backed by Iran, Hezbollah has evolved into a far graver military threat. 

In fact, it is said to be ten times stronger than Hamas, with 200,000 missiles, rockets and mortars in its arsenal, all ready to be fired at Israel.

While Hamas is still highly dangerous – with tens of thousands of soldiers and extensive rocket stockpiles – it has no air defence capabilities and almost no heavy armour. By contrast, Hezbollah’s military wing is extremely well-equipped.

In addition to the small arms, machine guns and rocket stockpiles used by Hamas, Hezbollah boasts a range of anti-tank and anti-air systems, a fleet of thousands of drones, and dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles.

It also boasts of having many more fighters.

Like Hamas, Hezbollah also has an extensive tunnel network along the Lebanese-Israeli border which serves as a strategic asset for clandestine movement, storage, and surprise attacks.

In 2021, the group claimed to have 100,000 active fighters – though Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) says the number is half that.

INSS says the group’s arsenal counts 150,000 to 200,000 rockets and missiles, including ‘hundreds’ of precision rockets.

The overwhelming majority of Hezbollah’s military hardware is Soviet or Iranian made, and the group has either purchased or received donations of weapons and munitions from their Iranian backers, or from the government of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. 

Both Iran and Syria have proved to be key sources of financial and material support, viewing Hezbollah as a strategic ally and an instrument of influence in the region. 

The border tensions of the past three weeks have revived memories of Hezbollah’s devastating 2006 war with Israel that killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 in Israel, largely soldiers.

Since then, the group – which receives financial support as well as weapons and equipment from Iran – has built up its powerful arsenal.

For years, Nasrallah has boasted that his group’s weapons could reach deep into Israeli territory.

‘Each side is carefully measuring its actions and reactions to avoid a situation that may spin out of control and spread to the region,’ said Michael Young from the Carnegie Middle East Center.

But if Hezbollah fully entered the war, ‘Lebanon’s devastation would turn most communities, perhaps even large segments of the Shiite community’, against it, he warned last week.

In Lebanon, those both for and against expanding the war are holding their breath for Nasrallah’s speech.

‘We are waiting impatiently… We hope he will announce war on the Israeli enemy and the Western countries that support it,’ said Ahed Madi, 43, from the border town of Shebaa, speaking to France’s AFP news agency.

Rabih Awad, 41, from the southern town of Rashaya al-Fokhar, said a new war between Hezbollah and Israel ‘would be a death blow for Lebanon’, which is grappling with a crushing economic crisis.

‘I am against the war of extermination on the Palestinians in Gaza,’ he said. ‘But the decision to go to war must be taken by the Lebanese state, not a party or a militia.’