Hezbollah deputy leader vows terror group ready for potential IDF ground operation

In the first speech by a Hezbollah official since the killing of the terror group’s leader, Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem vows that the terror group is ready for any potential ground operation by Israeli troops.

“We will face any possibility and we are ready if the Israelis decide to enter by land and the resistance forces are ready for a ground engagement,” he says.

“Despite the losses of its commanders, the attacks against civilians throughout Lebanon, and great sacrifices, we will not budge from our position,” says Qassem in a speech from an undisclosed location in Beirut. “We will continue to support Gaza and to defend Lebanon.”

Qassem says Hezbollah will continue in the footsteps of the terror group’s chief Hassan Nasrallah, killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Friday.

He says the terror group is continuing its operations, working according to plans already laid out, and described its attacks on Israel thus far as the “minimum.”

He adds that while the battle could be long, Hezbollah is confident that Israel will not achieve its aims.

Qassem eulogizes Nasrallah for his leadership, and his popularity with the masses, and says that the Shiite group has already proven its determination to continue fighting, by firing rockets on Haifa and on the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim, an attack that Hezbollah has previously not claimed and that according to Qassem, sent a million people into bomb shelters.

Qassem also says that the terror group will elect a new secretary-general as soon as possible, using an internal process, highlighting that for every commander and every official, there are replacements.