Hezbollah leader signals no major shift in clashes with Israel

Beirut — The leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah warned Friday that all options were “on the table” in his group’s battles with Israel but stopped short of announcing an all-out escalation in his first public comments since the start of the Gaza war.

The speech by Hassan Nasrallah was closely watched in Israel, Lebanon and around the Middle East for any signs that his powerful Iranian-backed group could expand its rocket attacks and other strikes on northern Israel and possibly push the region closer to a wider conflict.

Speaking live in a video feed, Nasrallah demanded an end to Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip and said any decision by Hezbollah to escalate — from what, for the past few weeks, have been intensifying border skirmishes — would depend on Israel’s military decisions in both Gaza and southern Lebanon.

There has already been spillover. Other Iranian-backed groups allied with Hezbollah, in Iraq and Yemen, have launched attacks against Israel and U.S. bases. Israel has carried out airstrikes in Syria. But a decision to escalate by Hezbollah — one of the most heavily armed militias in the world — would transform the conflict and could further draw in the United States, Israel’s main military ally.

The Israeli military offensive in Gaza has killed more than 9,000 people, including nearly 4,000 children, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry. War erupted on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants from Gaza launched a deadly attack inside Israel that killed more than 1,400 people, and with more than 200 taken back into Gaza as hostages.

Nasrallah addressed a significant portion of his speech to the United States, which has sent warships to the region, including the eastern Mediterranean close to Lebanon’s coastline. “Your fleets in the Mediterranean Sea, these do not scare us, nor have they ever scared us,” Nasrallah said. The only path Washington could take to reduce tensions, he continued, was reining in Israel.

“You Americans can stop the aggression on Gaza, because it is your aggression. Whoever wants to stop the start of a regional war — and the message is to the Americans — then you have to rush to stop the aggression on Gaza,” Nasrallah said in the nearly 90-minute speech.

Hezbollah, a major political force in Lebanon, has faced competing pressures. Lebanese political groups worry about the country’s being drawn into a full-scale war with Israel even as Lebanon reels from a devastating economic crisis. But some within Nasrallah’s own movement, as well as armed factions around the region, seek to open a new front against Israel.

In Iraq, members of Iranian-backed militias gathered to hear Nasrallah. Ali Al-Yassiri, a member of one of the groups, the Badr Organization, said he was expecting something “stronger” — a speech that “draws a road for the resistance to begin achieving the dream, liberating the Arab land of Palestine,” he said.