The official, Saleh Arouri, was the highest-ranking Hamas leader killed since the start of the conflict in October, when Hamas militants flooded into Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking some 240 hostages.
The location of the strike Tuesday — in Dahieh, a densely populated residential neighborhood on the edge of Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway — was seen as especially provocative. It compounded concerns that the Lebanese militants, who have traded fire with Israel along their shared border but avoided all-out war, might feel compelled to ratchet up their response.
While Nasrallah said little about the attack, he made clear that Hezbollah would retaliate: “This dangerous crime will not stay without a response and punishment,” he said calmly. “And between us and you,” he continued, addressing Israel, “there is a battlefield, and [many] days and nights.”
Usually a fiery orator, Nasrallah was more reserved than he had been in his previous two public addresses since Oct. 7. Yet he became animated as he warned Israel against further attacks.
“Whoever considers a war with us will regret it,” he said. “A war with us will be very, very, very costly.” He acknowledged the “Lebanese situation and national interests,” a reference to the economic crisis that has ravaged the country since 2019. But if war was waged on Lebanon, then the national interest would be “to go to the war till the end, with no restraint,” he yelled, to thundering applause.
While Israel has not publicly claimed Tuesday’s strike, which killed six other members of Hamas, including two commanders of its military wing, it has vowed to hunt down the militant leaders responsible for Oct. 7. The Israeli military’s punishing war in Gaza has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, Hamas’s leadership structure remains largely intact.
Last month, Israeli media published leaked recordings from Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s internal security agency Shin Bet, pledging to locate and take out Hamas leaders “in every location” in the world, including Lebanon, Turkey and Qatar.
“It will take a few years, but we will be there in order to do it,” he said in recordings aired by the Kan public broadcaster. “This is our Munich,” he added, referring to a series of Israeli assassinations in the 1970s that targeted Palestinians involved in killing 11 Israelis at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Nasrallah’s speech, announced in December, was meant to commemorate the anniversary of the U.S. assassination of top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in Iraq in 2020. He dedicated the bulk of his speech to Soleimani and Gaza, waiting until the end to address the strike in Lebanon. He said he would have more to say about the matter on Friday.
Arouri regularly met with Nasrallah, who has been in hiding since Lebanon’s 2006 war with Israel. A Hezbollah spokesperson confirmed the two men were scheduled to meet Wednesday, because “every time he’s here, he meets with the Sayyed,” referring to Nasrallah.
Arouri “was the one who traveled between here and Turkey; he had the link between inside [Gaza] and Hezbollah,” the spokesperson told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the group’s rules. “He was a big player, both politically and militarily.”
Arouri was seen as a political envoy of sorts, said Amal Saad, a lecturer of politics and international relations at Cardiff University who closely follows Hezbollah. In 2017, Arouri was part of a Hamas delegation that visited Iran at a time when relations between the two parties had deteriorated over differing positions on Syria’s civil war.
Arouri’s assassination came as Israel announced the withdrawal of some of its troops from northern Gaza, part of what it has described as the “third phase” of the war.
Saad said Nasrallah’s cryptic threats Wednesday were by design. It was “meant to be psychological warfare,” she said. “Very quick, very menacing because of its brevity, the sarcastic smile. He deliberately underspoke,” she said.
Any retaliation by Hezbollah, she noted, would be less about avenging Arouri and more about establishing red lines for future attacks inside Lebanon: “It’s telling Israel, we’re going to respond and you’re just going to have to shut up and deal with it … You can’t go further up the escalation ladder, because then we will go to war.”
What had protected Hamas leaders in Lebanon, she said, was “the balance of deterrence … knowing Israel wouldn’t dare” attack Beirut. Now that the threshold has been crossed, she said, measures will have to be put in place to protect the remaining leaders outside Gaza, which would probably entail them going underground or into hiding. This could be what saves Lebanon from an all-out war, she added.
In 2015, the U.S. listed Arouri as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” and offered a $5 million reward for any information that would lead to his capture.
He told Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen channel in August that the repeated Israeli threats against his life were “part of the price we pay.” The 57-year-old said he had not expected to make it to his current age, predicting that assassinations and other actions by the Israeli government could push the region into “a comprehensive war.”
Since October, Iranian-allied groups around the region have retaliated for Israel’s Gaza offensive, with attacks targeting Israeli or U.S. interests.
The threat of a broader regional conflagration has remained ever-present as the attacks have escalated, drawing more forceful rhetoric and military responses from the United States and Israel.
Some of the most disruptive attacks have been staged by the Houthis, a militant group that controls northern Yemen and also has ties to Iran. The group has carried out missile and drone attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea, saying it aims to prevent Israeli-owned ships, or vessels bound for Israel, from transiting as long as the siege of Gaza continues.
On Sunday, an attempt by Houthi militants to board a container vessel in the Red Sea culminated in a firefight between U.S. Navy helicopters and the militants, killing 10 Houthi gunmen. It was the first direct engagement since October between the U.S. military and the militant group, and led to fears of further escalation in one of the world’s busiest maritime routes.
Before Tuesday’s killing of Arouri, Israel had stepped up its attacks beyond its borders, including with suspected strikes inside Syria. One such strike, on Damascus on Christmas Day, killed a high-ranking Iranian general, Seyed Razi Mousavi, according to Iranian state media.
Fahim reported from Istanbul. Mohamad El Chamaa in Beirut contributed to this report.
