Israel warns Hezbollah to stay out of its fight against Iran: ‘Leader hasn't learned from his predecessors'
Israel's defense minister on Friday warned Hezbollah to stay out of its fight against Iran, saying that the terror group's leader 'hasn't learned from his predecessors.'
'I suggest that the Lebanese proxy be careful, and understand that Israel has lost patience with the terrorists who threaten it,' Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said after Hezbollah leadership condemned Israel's airstrikes on Iran, according to the Times of Israel.
'The Hezbollah leader hasn't learned from his predecessors and is threatening to act against Israel,' he said about the Iranian proxy groups' former leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by Israeli airstrikes in September.
5 Lebanon's Hezbollah deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Qassem, speaks during a rally supporting Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Beirut, Lebanon, on Oct. 13, 2023.
REUTERS
Hezbollah's leader, Naim Qassem, who succeeded Nasrallah in October, said Thursday that the terror group would 'act as we see fit' reading the conflict between Israel and Iran.
The group declared it was standing in full solidarity with Iran and that threats against Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would lead to 'disastrous consequences.'
'Threats to assassinate [Khamenei] are foolish and reckless, and will have disastrous consequences… Merely uttering them is an offense to hundreds of millions of believers and those connected to Islam, and it is utterly reprehensible. Today, we are more determined and united around him,' Hezbollah declared.
Israel began to conduct airstrikes on Iranian nuclear sites and its missile capabilities on June 13 after fears that their longtime enemy, which has repeatedly called for the destruction of the Jewish state, was close to creating a nuclear weapon.
Iran retaliated with a barrage of missiles and drone strikes on Israel — fully igniting the deadly conflict between the two Middle Eastern nations.
5 Israel's Foreign Affairs Minister, Israel Katz, listens during a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on the war in Gaza, on March 11, 2024.
AP
On Thursday, Iran launched a missile barrage that damaged the Soroka Medical Center in the southern city of Beersheba and hit a high-rise and several other residential buildings near Tel Aviv.
At least 240 people were wounded by the Iranian missiles, four of them seriously, Israel's Health Ministry said.
Early Friday morning, Israeli officials warned of an incoming barrage of missiles from Iran, with at least one making a strike on the nation's largest southern city, Beersheba.
In Iran, Israeli air attacks have killed 639 people, including some of the nation's top military commanders and nuclear scientists.
5 Smoke billows from a building at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba in southern Israel following an Iranian missile attack on June 19, 2025.
AFP via Getty Images
5 Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi lays a wreath of flowers at the grave of slain Lebanese Hezbollah's Leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air strike in September 2024, at his mausoleum in Beirut's southern suburbs on June 3, 2025.
AFP via Getty Images
Fears that the fighting between Iran and Israel will continue to escalate prompted US special envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack to fly to Beirut on Thursday and meet with Lebanese officials.
Barrack told Lebanon's Speaker of Parliament and ally of Hezbollah, Nabih Berri, it would be a 'very bad decision' if the terror that if the terror organization were to attack Israel.
'I can say on behalf of President (Donald) Trump, which he has been very clear in expressing as has Special Envoy (Steve) Witkoff: that would be a very, very, very bad decision,' Barrack said.
President Trump said Thursday he would make his final decision on whether to strike Iran in the 'next two weeks,' because he's still hoping for negotiations.
5 Demonstrators wave Iranian and Hezbollah flags as one holds up a poster of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a rally marking the Muslim Shiite holiday of Eid al-Ghadir, which commemorates the Prophet Muhammad naming his successor, Ali, who is revered as the first Shiite imam, in Tehran, Iran, on June 14, 2025.
AP
'Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, reading a statement directly from Trump during her daily briefing.
Leavitt also stressed that Iran currently has the capability of creating a nuclear weapon.
'Iran has all that it needs to keep a nuclear weapon,' Leavitt said. 'All they need is a decision from the Supreme Leader to do that.'
Iran said Friday it would refuse to discuss its nuclear program while under Israeli attack.
Israel has asked for US involvement, particularly to use its bunker-busting bombs on the Fordow nuclear facility hidden deep in an Iranian mountain.
On Friday, foreign ministers from the European Union, including Britain, France, and Germany, are set to meet with Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi in Geneva in hopes of de-escalating the conflict.
with Post wires
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