"Israel's new defense minister is vastly experienced in the disappointments of south Lebanon," Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Tuesday in an interview marking 20 years since the Israel withdrawal from the security zone on the Lebanese border.
"The term 'Israel is weaker than cobwebs' was coined back then, with the Israeli military's downfall," Nasrallah told Hezbollah's Nur radio station.
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Former IDF Chief of Staff Defense Minister Benny Gantz commanded the military's Lebanon Liaison Unit until Israel withdrew from the security zone in May 2000.
Speaking about the 2006 Lebanon War with Israel, Nasrallah, whose organization is Iran's largest proxy in the Middle East, said, "The fighting spirit with which we defeated Israel still exists and our faith in our fighters is steadfast.
"Today we have capabilities we did not have in 2006, in terms of mind wars and war-planning. Israel knows it cannot underestimate the deterrence we have created. They know that no strike on Lebanon will go unanswered," he bragged.
Fueling conspiracy theories, as he routinely does, Nasrallah claimed, "Our success in 2000 prevented Lebanon from plunging into the civil war that Israel planned to ignite."
Touching in the civil war in Syria, which has been heavily involved in as part of Iran's efforts to prop up Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, Nasrallah said, "There are opposition groups that received support from Israel. It wanted the Assad regime to fall and for Hezbollah forces to return to Lebanon.
He also commented on Operation Northern Shield in the winter of 2019, during which the Israeli military destroyed an extensive grid of terror tunnels, saying that "all Israel cared about was informing Lebanon that the tunnels were discovered."
Israel filed a grievance with the UN Security Council over the grid, as well as over the UN's peacekeeping force in Lebanon.
Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said at the time that information Israel provided to UNIFIL had been passed on to the Lebanese Army, which then passed it to Hezbollah.
"The Zionist entity is a racist entity, it's not a religious state," he said.
