In speech commemorating death of top commander, Hezbollah leader says US strikes on Yemen ‘will harm the security of all maritime navigation,’ vows Houthi strikes will continue
All of the violence in the Middle East is connected to Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah terror group leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Sunday in comments directed at the United States.
In a televised address, Nasrallah charged that envoys sent to Lebanon have been seeking to “extinguish” the front by delivering a warning that if the group did not stop its attacks, “Israel would launch a war on Lebanon.”
He did not identify the envoys, and reiterated that the aim of the Lebanon front is to “stop the aggression against Gaza.”
Nasrallah, whose group is a leading part of an Iran-aligned regional alliance which includes the Houthi rebels, said the Yemeni-based group’s targeting of ships belonging to Israel or heading to its ports would continue.
“The more dangerous thing is what the Americans did in the Red Sea,” he said, saying this “will harm the security of all maritime navigation, even the ships that are not going to Palestine, even the ships which are not Israeli, even the ships that have nothing to do with the matter, because the sea has become a theater of fighting, missiles, drones and warships. Security has been disrupted.”
The war in Gaza began on October 7, when some 3,000 Hamas terrorists burst across the border into Israel from the Gaza Strip by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing over 240 hostages — mostly civilians — under the cover of a deluge of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli towns and cities.
The Houthis say their strikes are in solidarity with the people of Gaza, where the Hamas-run health ministry says nearly 24,000 people have been killed in the conflict. These figures cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both Hamas terrorists and civilians, and people killed as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires. Israel says it has killed over 9,000 Hamas members, in addition to 1,000 killed in Israel following the October 7 invasion.
In December, the US announced a multi-nation coalition to quell the Houthi missile and drone attacks on ships transiting the Red Sea.
Nasrallah said the US should understand “that the security of the Red Sea and calm on Lebanon’s front, the situation in Iraq, and all developments in the region are tied to one thing: stopping the aggression against Gaza.”
“You are trying to deal with the consequences and the results, go fix the reason,” he said.
Nasrallah was speaking to commemorate the death of a top Hezbollah commander, Wissam Tawil, who was killed in south Lebanon last week, the most senior Hezbollah commander to die in three months of hostilities with Israel.
Since October 8, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the group repeatedly saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.
So far, the skirmishes have resulted in six civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of nine IDF soldiers and reservists.
There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
Hezbollah has named 161 members who have been killed by Israel during the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon, but also some in Syria. In Lebanon, another 19 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and at least 19 civilians, three of whom were journalists, have been killed.
Content retrieved from: https://www.timesofisrael.com/nasrallah-red-sea-lebanon-border-iraq-violence-all-tied-to-one-thing-gaza/.