Israel could be ‘wiped out’ in a war with Iran, Hezbollah leader warns

BEIRUT: The head of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement has said that US ally Israel would not be "neutral" if a war broke out between the United States and Iran and that  "all of the Zionist state was within the range of Hezbollah missiles".

Nasrallah made the remarks during a televised interview al-Manar television on Friday on the occasion of the 13th anniversary of the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

Nasrallah's remarks came after weeks of increasing tensions between the US and Iran, and as US President Donald Trump steps up his war of words with the Islamic Republic, the key backer of Hezbollah.

"When the Americans understand that this war could wipe out Israel, they will reconsider," Nasrallah said.

"Our collective responsibility in the region is to work toward preventing an American war on Iran," he said.

On Friday, the US House of Representatives voted to restrict Trump's ability to attack Iran, voicing fear that his hawkish policies are pushing toward a needless war.

"Once we said that we could strike targets south of Haifa. Today, we can say that if Israel has sites south of Eilat, then we can also hit them. All of Israel is under the range of our missiles," he said.

However, he said a war with Israel was unlikely to happen anytime soon, stressing that Israel will not risk another war thanks to Hezbollah's deterrent force. The Hezbollah leader, while presenting the group's developed capabilities, warned that in case of any confrontation, the Zionist entity would be brought to the "verge of vanishing, and it knows this."

"We have a larger number of missiles and we have precise missiles that we did not have in 2006. We also have a large and powerful branch of UAVs," Hezbollah's chief further said.

Hezbollah is considered to be a terrorist organization by the United States, and is the only faction not to have disarmed after the Lebanese 1975-1990 civil war.

But it is also a major political player in the Mediterranean country, taking 13 seats in parliament last year and securing three posts in the current cabinet.

Nasrallah also said he had decreased the number of his movement's fighters supporting the Damascus regime in neighboring war-torn Syria.

"The Syrian army has greatly recovered and has found that today it does not need us," he said.

"We are present in every area that we used to be. We are still there, but we don't need to be there in large numbers as long as there is no practical need," he said.

The head of the Iran-backed Shiite movement, which has been fighting in Syria since 2013, did not give details on the extent of the reduction.

Backed by fighters from Hezbollah and Iranian and Russian support, the Damascus government has taken back large swathes of territory from rebels since 2015, and now controls much of the country.

But "if there was a need to return, all those who were there would go back" to Syria, Nasrallah added.

Responding to a question about repeated Israeli air strikes on Syria, he said the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was "deceiving his people."

"He is playing a game of brinkmanship, because Iran will not leave Syria," he warned.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in neighboring Syria against what it says are Iranian and Hezbollah military targets. It has vowed to keep Iran from entrenching itself militarily there.

Nasrallah's interview came to mark the start of his movement's 2006 war with the Jewish state and which ended in Israeli retreat from Lebanon.