Lebanon: Hezbollah claims to have doubled its precision-guided missiles in a year

The Secretary-General of the Lebanese movement Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah announced the group now has twice as many precision-guided missiles in its arsenal compared to last year and that Israeli attempts to prevent the movement from acquiring them have failed.

Speaking in an end-of-year interview with Al-Mayadeen TV on Sunday, Nasrallah stated: “The number of precision missiles at the resistance’s disposal has now doubled what it was a year ago.”

He also claimed that Hezbollah now has the capability to strike anywhere in Israel. “Any target across the area of occupied Palestine that we want to hit accurately, we are able to hit accurately,” he said.

The four-hour interview showed Nasrallah seated next to a picture of the late Iranian Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani who was assassinated alongside the deputy-head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, in a US drone strike in Baghdad almost one year ago. Regarding retaliation for Soleimani’s death, Nasrallah maintained that the “revenge is coming no matter how long it takes”. He also vowed to avenge the killing of Hezbollah member, Ali Kamel Mohsen Jawad, who died in an Israeli airstrike in Syria in July.

In his interview yesterday with al-Mayadeen, Hezbollah leader Nasrallah said that Qassem Soleimani was behind the delivery of Russian-made Kornet missiles to the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip.⬇️ pic.twitter.com/rYJFtNeQhH

— Yossi Mansharof (@Yossi_Mansharof) December 28, 2020

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According to Nasrallah, Soleimani played a key role in Hamas’ acquisition of Russian-made Kornet missiles. “[Syrian] President Bashar Al-Assad bought Kornet missiles from the Russians, and they are the missiles we used in the July war. Hajj Qassem demanded that these missiles be sent to Gaza, and I proposed the issue to President Assad who instantly approved,” he explained.

In addition to claiming that the US, Israel and Saudi all played a part in the assassination of Soliemani and Al-Muhandis, Nasrallah – citing his sources – also revealed that during Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s first visit to Washington, he sought to goad President Donald Trump into authorising the assassination of senior Hezbollah members, including himself, through Israeli operations.

“We have information that Saudi Arabia has been plotting to assassinate me at least since the war on Yemen started.”

According to a Jerusalem Post article published earlier this month by Eli Bar-On, a retired Israeli colonel, Hezbollah’s surface-to-surface firepower capability is greater than that of 95 per cent of the world’s militaries. They also now can fire up to 4,000 projectiles a day, “compared to a total of fewer than 4,000 rockets fired throughout the entirety of the 34-day conflict in 2006”, he said.

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