Israel says Hezbollah chief assassination target in future war

The Israeli military has threatened that Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Lebanon’s resistance movement, will be a target of assassination in Tel Aviv’s next war against the Arab country.

“There won’t be a clear victory picture in the next war, though it’s clear that Nasrallah is a target,” the military’s chief spokesperson, Brigadier General Ronen Manelis, told a conference for journalists in the city of Eilat on Monday.

“It is clear that if he dies, it will influence the [military] campaign,” Manelis added.

Israel launched two wars on Lebanon in 2000 and 2006, in both of which the Hezbollah fighters inflicted heavy losses on the regime’s army.

Nasrallah has repeatedly warned the regime in Tel Aviv against going for another act of aggression against his country, vowing that Lebanese armed forces would give a crushing response to the regime in any future war.

The Hezbollah leader said last month that the Israelis “do not have a correct picture about what is awaiting them if they go to the idiocy of this war.”

Elsewhere in his Monday remarks, Manelis admitted that the Israeli army is engaged in psychological and media warfare against Hezbollah.

    The Israeli military is “active” in the field of “transition from traditional media consumption to social media…. Just in the past few weeks, we’ve taken a great many actions that caused consternation on the other side," he added.

Manelis also claimed that the Israeli army “makes daily efforts, both overt and covert, in an effort to push back the next war.”

“However the next war will look different” given the Israeli military’s capabilities, he said, claiming that though the future confrontation is “difficult in Israel - in Lebanon it will be much worse.”

The comments come amid rising Israeli threats of a new war against Lebanon over the past months.

Earlier this month, Lebanon’s army chief Commander, General Joseph Aoun, ordered soldiers to stand fully ready on the southern frontier to respond to the Israeli military’s “threats and violations.”