Hassan Nasrallah
Hassan NasrallahReuters

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday warned Israel that if it wages a war against Lebanon, Hezbollah will destroy its troops.

"If Israel enters the Lebanese territories, its troops will be destroyed live on television in front of the whole world," Nasrallah said in a speech marking the 13th anniversary of what Hezbollah views as its “victory” in the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

Nasrallah claimed that Hezbollah has gained much experience in the past years through training and has established an advanced defense system to defend itself and adopt military strategies to protect Lebanon's wealth and territories.

"The enemy is afraid to start a war against us. This happens because of the strenuous work since 2006, Hezbollah prepared itself, trained its men and has armed itself to be fully prepared for confrontation with the enemy," he declared.

Nasrallah also commented on the recent terrorist attacks targeting Israelis, saying, "Today there was a ramming attack in the West Bank and the resistance in Gaza tried to capture an Israeli soldier. This is a very important development, this is the future generation of Palestine and the resistance."

Of the 2006 war, Nasrallah claimed that the United States – and not Israel – was responsible for starting it.

"The goal was to ‘produce a new Middle East’. The war in Lebanon was not only Israel's, it merely served as a tool and completed the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. The decision on going to war was American," Nasrallah said, adding, “All the documents that have been written prove that Israel was satisfied with its initial response to the kidnapping of the soldiers (Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev -ed.) on day one, but the US pushed it further. The United States sought to overthrow the Assad regime, to end the Palestinian issue and to continue the occupation of Iraq. Finally, it also wanted to defeat Iran.”

“The war,” he continued, “was stopped for one reason, and not because of international and Arab pressure, but rather because of the US and Israel's understanding that they failed. If the war continued, it would have led to disaster for Israel. Had there been political unity in Lebanon during the war, not only would we have been able to refuse the terms that were dictated to us, but we could have forced the conditions to end the war ourselves."

(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)