Iran says Hezbollah’s attack shows Israel losing its deterrent power

DUBAI – Iran said on Aug 26 that Israel has lost its power to deter strikes and that the strategic balance in the region has shifted against it, following attacks by the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.

Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel early on Aug 25, even as Israel’s military said it struck Lebanon with around 100 jets to thwart a larger attack, in one of the biggest clashes amid more than 10 months of border warfare.

“Despite the comprehensive support of states like the US, Israel could not predict the time and place of a limited and managed response by the resistance. Israel has lost its deterrence power,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani wrote on social media platform X.

Mr Kanaani added that Israel “now has to defend itself within its occupied territories”, and that “strategic balances have undergone fundamental changes” to the detriment of Israel.

Any major spillover in the fighting, which began in parallel with the war in Gaza, risks morphing into a regional conflagration drawing in Iran, Hezbollah’s backer, and the US, Israel’s main ally.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the group’s barrage, a reprisal for the assassination of senior commander Fuad Shukr in July, was completed “as planned”.

With three deaths confirmed in Lebanon and one in Israel after the exchanges on Aug 25, both sides indicated they were happy to avoid further escalation for now, but warned that there could be more strikes to come. REUTERS