Hezbollah Threatens Israeli Leaders, Warns It's Ready for Next War

The head of Hezbollah today told his fighters that Israel would pay a heavy price if it invaded Lebanon again and warned Israeli leaders that they could be assassinated "anywhere ... at any time" by his operatives.

"I say to the fighters of the Islamic resistance: Be ready," Hassan Nasrallah said during a televised speech, Agence France-Presse reported. "If a new war is imposed on Lebanon, we may ask you to take Galilee, to free Galilee. ... I hope the people of Israel have good bomb shelters."

Nasrallah also vowed that Hezbollah would take revenge for the 2008 killing of one of the militant Shiite Muslim group's founders -- Imad Mughnieh, killed in a car bombing in Damascus -- by assassinating a similarly high-profile Israeli target.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah speaks during a televised address to a rally marking the Shiite party's martyrs' day in southern Beirut on February 16, 2011 where he urged his fighters to stand ready to take Galilee in any future Lebanon-Israel war and threatened Israelis 'anytime, anywhere' to avenge a top operative's killing.Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah speaks during a televised address to a rally marking the Shiite party's martyrs' day in southern Beirut on February 16, 2011 where he urged his fighters to stand ready to take Galilee in any future Lebanon-Israel war and threatened Israelis 'anytime, anywhere' to avenge a top operative's killing.

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Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah speaks during a televised address to a rally marking the Shiite party's martyrs' day Wednesday in southern Beirut, where he urged his fighters to stand ready to take Galilee in any future Lebanon-Israel war.

"I do not want to go into details. Suffice to say that our decision remains the same and will be executed, God willing, at the right time," he said. "To the Zionist generals, I say: Anywhere you go in the world, at any time, watch out, for the blood of Imad Mughnieh will not go to waste."

Nasrallah's comments came a day after Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said his country might need to strike out at Hezbollah's stronghold in southern Lebanon again in the near future.

"Even though it's quiet and deterrence exists -- Hezbollah remembers the heavy beating they suffered from us in 2006 -- but it is not forever, and you may be called to enter again," Barak told soldiers during a tour of Israel's northern border, according to Israeli daily Haaretz.

The 34-day war with the powerful Shiite militia in 2006 killed 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers. Although Israel inflicted heavy casualties on Hezbollah and temporarily stunted its military growth, the organization claimed victory, saying that its guerrilla fighters won by simply surviving an attack by one of the world's best-equipped armies.