Hizbollah warns Israel of war ‘without limits’ and threatens Cyprus

Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has warned the Lebanese militant group would fight “without rules and without limits” if its conflict with Israel widens.

In a televised address, Nasrallah also threatened neighbouring Cyprus for the first time, saying Hizbollah would consider the country “part of the war” if it allowed Israel to continue using Cypriot airports and bases for military exercises.

The Iran-backed militant group and Israeli forces have been trading fire almost daily since the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza began in October.

The speech comes as fears have risen of a full-blown war between Hizbollah and Israel, with belligerent rhetoric escalating and the Lebanese militant group this week issuing surveillance drone footage of sites in Israel.

Cross-border clashes intensified last week when Hizbollah fired dozens of rockets at Israel after it killed one of the group’s senior commanders in an air strike.

Nasrallah said Hizbollah had “information that Israel is conducting training in Cyprus and Cypriot airports” and that he had asked Lebanese officials to discuss the issue with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides when he visited last month. “If Israel uses [Cypriot] air bases to strike Lebanon, [Cyprus] will get dragged into the war,” he added.

Israel has held joint military exercises, including in 2023, with Cyprus, which lies in the Mediterranean close to Lebanon. The pair signed an agreement that also included Greece that year to step up defence co-operation.

“The Cypriot government should beware that opening Cypriot airports and bases to the Israeli enemy to target Lebanon means that the Cypriot government has become part of the war,” Nasrallah said.

Christodoulides rejected this and told reporters his country was “in no way involved in the hostilities”, adding that Cyprus was part of the “solution” with the humanitarian corridor to Gaza starting from its port.

Nasrallah also said that while “we do not want total war” with Israel, his group had more than enough capabilities to sustain a wider confrontation with its southern neighbour.

“Let Israel wait for us by land, air, and sea in case of a greater war,” he said. Nasrallah reiterated that Hizbollah’s condition for a cessation of hostilities on the Lebanon-Israel border was peace in the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza.

“A ceasefire in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen requires one thing: an end to the war in Gaza,” Nasrallah said, referring to the regional hostilities that erupted after Hamas’s deadly October 7 attack and Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza. “We will continue to support Gaza and we are ready for anything.”

The comments come a day after Israel’s military said senior officers had approved “operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon”.

Despite the intensifying exchanges, which have displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border and caused casualties in Lebanon and Israel, the two sides have not been drawn into all-out war. The US is leading a diplomatic push to de-escalate the situation, with White House adviser Amos Hochstein visiting both countries this week.

However, Israeli officials have repeatedly said they are prepared to take military action in the absence of a diplomatic resolution. The military on Tuesday said as well as approving plans for an offensive, officers had taken decisions on “increasing the readiness of troops in the field”.

That announcement came after Hizbollah, one of the world’s most heavily armed non-state actors, on Tuesday released a nine-minute video of what it said was footage gathered by its surveillance drones of parts of Israel, including the port in the northern city of Haifa.

In addition to views of the port, which lies about 30km from Lebanon’s border, the undated footage included what Hizbollah said were images of other military infrastructure.

Hizbollah, which controls southern Lebanon, is the country’s most potent political and military force.

In his speech on Wednesday, Nasrallah said the drone footage was “proof that we have the capabilities” to target anywhere in Israel, adding that his group had gathered hours of surveillance footage and had “many more drones” flying.

Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said Israel was “preparing for every scenario” after he held talks with the head of the military’s northern command on Wednesday.

“We must all remember that Hizbollah started a war against us on October 8, a day after Hamas [attacked Israel], and since then, it has not stopped [attacking Israel],” Gallant said.

“We have an obligation to change the situation in the north and to ensure the safe return of our citizens to their homes.”

Additional reporting by Malaika Kanaaneh Tapper in Beirut