Iran says Israeli deterrence no longer exists after Hezbollah barrage

Iran says Israel’s deterrent power has been lost and the strategic balance in the region has now shifted against it, claiming that a Hezbollah attack Sunday caught Israel off-guard, despite what Jerusalem says was preemptive action that partially thwarted the assault.

“Despite the comprehensive support of states like the United States, Israel could not predict the time and place of a limited and managed response by the resistance. Israel has lost its deterrence power,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani wrote on X.

Kanaani added that Israel “now has to defend itself within its occupied territories” and that “strategic balances have undergone fundamental changes” to the detriment of Israel.

Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel early on Sunday, as Israel’s military said it had struck Lebanon with around 100 jets to stymie a larger attack, including plans to bomb a sensitive military site near Tel Aviv.

Most rockets and drones were intercepted by Israeli air defenses or landed in uninhabited areas, though a small number caused damage to homes, the IDF said. A navy soldier was killed during the attack, apparently by a misfiring interceptor rocket.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said the group’s barrage, a reprisal for the assassination of the terror group’s military commander Fuad Shukr last month, had been completed “as planned.” Israel killed Shukr in an airstrike in Beirut, days after a Hezbollah rocket killed 12 Israeli children in a village on the Golan Heights.