Top minister says ‘all of Lebanon will be struck’ if Hezbollah attacks Israel

Minister of Intelligence Yisrael Katz calls for sanctions against the Hezbollah terrorist organization and threatens attacks against Lebanese infrastructure, after the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah released a message threatening to attack Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor and ammonia tank in Haifa.

“The days of the Second Lebanon War, when Israel declines to target Lebanon’s infrastructure, are over. If Nasrallah dares to shoot at the Israeli home front or at national infrastructures, all of Lebanon will be struck,” says Katz, who chairs the security cabinet while Netanyahu is visiting the US.

“Nasrallah,” he added, “is a proxy and stooge of Iran, and is willing in [Iran’s] service to allow all of Lebanon to be destroyed.”

Katz, who is also transportation minister, calls for “paralyzing sanctions on Hezbollah,” and says there must be “heavy pressure on Iran to stop arming and funding the group.”

Earlier in the day, Nasrallah threatened to attack Israel’s ammonia storage facility in Haifa, as well as Israel’s nuclear facility in Dimona.

“The Israeli nuclear weapon that represents a threat to the entire region, we will turn it into a threat to Israel,” he says in a speech televised on the Hezbollah affiliate TV station al-Manar.

“You will be surprised with what we are hiding which could the course of any war,” he says.

— Judah Ari Gross