Hezbollah issues warning video to Israel: Attack and you will regret it
Clip that appears to show satellite imagery and locations of strategic Israeli sites comes a day after an alleged Israeli strike on Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria
The Hezbollah terror group on Friday issued a warning video to Israel apparently filled with satellite images and precise map locations of strategic sites in the Jewish state, with a message: “Attack and you will regret it.”
The video was posted after an alleged Israeli airstrike on Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria the night before.
The video, with Hebrew subtitles, opened with scenes of Hezbollah fighters preparing to launch rockets and leader Hassan Nasrallah warning that the Lebanese terror group would respond to any attack on Lebanon.
In recent years, Israel has acknowledged conducting hundreds of airstrikes in Syria, which it says are aimed at both preventing Iran from establishing a permanent military presence in Syria and blocking the transfer of advanced munitions to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel has designated these two issues as “red lines” that it will take military action to prevent.
But it has not attacked Lebanon, even though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disclosed the locations of missile sites near Beirut during his address to the United Nations earlier this year.
Reports in recent days have indicated that Iran is now flying weapons for Hezbollah directly to Beirut rather than via Syria.
Israel has repeatedly warned that Iran is trying to upgrade Hezbollah’s massive rocket arsenal and improve the accuracy of the missiles.
In an apparent reference to that, the Hezbollah video showed what appeared to be satellite imagery of several strategic Israeli sites, superimposed with targets and their coordinates. Among the sites in the video was the IDF military headquarters in Tel Aviv, several air force bases, an oil refinery and Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=32&v=-NPk32qZ41E
The video ended with the warning, “If you dare attack, you will regret it.”
Also on Friday, the Syria Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said it identified several of the sites hit in what it said was an Israeli bombardment late Thursday that lasted “for an hour.”
The Israeli military refused to comment on the raid, but denied a report in Russian media that an Israeli plane had been shot down. The Syrian military claimed its air defenses shot down all incoming “hostile targets” late Thursday. However, many security analysts believe Syria often falsely claims to have intercepted missiles that successfully penetrated its air defenses.
According to the director of the Syria Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman, the Israeli bombardment hit two positions in the south of Damascus province, including an area believed to be an Iranian weapons depot near the capital.
Once a regular occurrence, reports of Israeli airstrikes in Syria have become increasingly rare in the past two months, after Syria accidentally shot down a Russian spy plane during an Israeli raid, which Moscow blamed on Israel.
According to Abdel Rahmn, two Israeli missiles hit al-Kiswah, where he said there are “weapons depots belonging to the Lebanese Hezbollah [terrorist group] as well as Iranian forces.”
Another missile hit the area of Harfa, near the Israeli border, where there is a Syrian military base, the UK-based monitor said.
In Kisweh, “the depots that were targeted are used to temporarily store rockets until they are taken somewhere else,” Abdel Rahman said.
“It appears the Israelis had intelligence that weapons had arrived there recently,” he said.
Explosions were also reported in and around the Syrian capital of Damascus, near its international airport, which Israel claims has been used by Iran to supply terror groups with advanced weaponry.
According to the Kremlin-backed Sputnik new site, blasts were also heard near the town of al-Dimas, along the Damascus-Beirut highway, which may indicate that an arms shipment was targeted in the alleged Israeli strikes.
Thursday’s strike was the first time Syria’s air defenses had been called into action since they inadvertently shot down the Russian spy plane and the 15 people on board during an Israeli raid on September 17.
Despite the strained relationship with Russia, Israeli officials maintain that the IDF continues to operate in the country. However, many defense analysts suspect that Russia — with the advanced air defense systems it has in Syria — may be curbing Israel’s ability to rein its arch nemesis Iran’s military presence in the country.
Moscow blamed Israel for the incident and supplied Damascus with the advanced S-300 air defense system — something it had previously refrained from doing following requests from Jerusalem.
The S-300 systems were delivered to Syria last month, but they are not yet believed to be in use, as the Syrian air defense teams still need to be trained to operate them.
