Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem threatened the Lebanese state on Friday, in his starkest warning since the government started its push to disarm the terror group.
Qassem warned that Lebanon would have “no life” if it were to attempt to disarm his Hezbollah, during an aggressive speech following a meeting with Ali Larijani, the Iranian Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.
Earlier this week, Lebanon’s president and prime minister sharply rejected Iranian meddling in Lebanese affairs.
“The government is implementing an American-Israeli order to end the resistance, even if it leads to civil war and internal strife,” Qassem warned.
The new leader, who took over after Israel killed his predecessor Hassan Nasrallah, as well as his designated successor within the span of weeks last year, vowed that Hezbollah would not cooperate with the government’s plan to enforce the state monopoly on arms, including the disarmament of the Iran-backed terror group.
“The resistance will not surrender its weapons while aggression continues, occupation persists, and we will fight it… if necessary to confront this American-Israeli project, no matter the cost,” Qassem declared.
Noting early Islamic history, Qassem vowed that Hezbollah would “wage a Karbala-style battle if necessary.”
Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, was killed in the battle of Karbala in the year 680, which Shiite Muslims interpret as an intentional martyrdom for the sake of the Muslim community, and which they mourn every year in the Ashura festival.
Qassem further urged the government “not to hand over the country to an insatiable Israeli aggressor or an American tyrant with limitless greed.”
After years of Hezbollah blocking the presidential election, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun was elected in 2024, following IDF operations that significantly weakened the group by eliminating most of its senior leadership.
Together with the recently appointed Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, Aoun has vowed to extend the state’s authority over the entire country and to cooperate with a U.S.-backed plan that envisions a broad reconstruction of the country.
Hezbollah markedly sharpened its rhetoric this week, after the government tasked the Lebanese Armed Forces with creating a plan to disarm the terror group by the end of the year.
Qassem warned that the government would “bear responsibility for any internal explosion and any destruction of Lebanon,” accusing it of “leading the country to ruin.”
However, Qassem also said that Hezbollah and its allied Amal Movement would not organize street protests at this time but that they may in the future, “across Lebanon” as well as “at the U.S. Embassy.”
“The government’s duty is to build the country, not hand it over to the Israeli and American enemy. How do you, in the Lebanese government, accept facilitating the killing of your partners in the homeland?”
Qassem also added, “Palestine will be victorious, with all these sacrifices, because they are the owners of the land, the cause, the will, the blood, and the giving.”
Meanwhile, the IDF continues to hunt and strike Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon. On Thursday, the military said it struck an “underground infrastructure” that posed a “blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”
“The IDF will continue to operate in order to remove any threat posed to the state of Israel,” the army vowed.
