Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists had “no business” being in Southern Lebanon after Jerusalem and Beirut mutually recognized each other last week.
Visiting Israel Defense Forces troops deployed in the security zone in Southern Lebanon, Netanyahu stated: “We say to both Iran and Hezbollah: Get out of here.”
The premier praised the troops for helping secure the agreement with Beirut, saying it would allow “two sovereign states” to restore “a reality of security and prosperity” along their shared border.
He said the Israel-Lebanon framework agreement signed on Friday was a “slap in the face” to the Iranian axis and warned it “won’t necessarily go unchallenged” by Tehran and its proxies.
“We are very proud of what we have achieved thanks to your brave action and also the decisions we have made,” Netanyahu continued. “Our insistence is that we will not leave Southern Lebanon until the threat is eliminated. As long as Hezbollah is armed and present here, posing a threat to us, we will remain here.”
Netanyahu told troops to “not wait, act” when confronting terrorist threats in the security zone. “The most important thing for you to know is that our directive—from me, the defense minister, the chief of staff and the deputy chief of staff—is to protect yourselves first,” he said.
“This is an ironclad directive,” he added.
Netanyahu said the Jewish state would maintain control of the buffer zones in Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip, adding that it would “no longer allow an army of terrorists to have a foothold on our border.”
He noted that Hezbollah had been “the most important link in the Iranian axis,” with an arsenal that totaled 150,000 missiles and rockets before the war. He claimed the group now retains about 8% of that stockpile and said the IDF eliminated some 9,000 terror operatives, including hundreds in recent weeks.
Israeli forces also pushed Hezbollah back and destroyed infrastructure used to attack citizens and soldiers above and below ground, including tunnels and terrorist hotbeds, he said. “This is the directive: leave nothing behind, and you are doing that,” Netanyahu stated.
Hezbollah renewed its rocket and drone attacks from Southern Lebanon on Israel on March 2, following the targeted killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on the first day of “Operation Roaring Lion” on Feb. 28.
In response, Jerusalem launched a broad aerial campaign against Hezbollah targets and expanded military operations in Lebanon aimed at preventing cross-border attacks on Israeli communities.
Following the resumption of hostilities, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun vowed to do “the impossible” to stop cross-border hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, and moved to outlaw the Iranian proxy.
Israeli and Lebanese officials subsequently held five rounds of historic direct talks at the U.S. State Department, resulting in the framework of understandings that was reached on Friday and is conditioned on Hezbollah being removed from the south.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz told reporters on Monday that Jerusalem made clear to the Trump administration that it will not leave Lebanon, Syria or Gaza as long as threats from Iranian-backed terrorist organizations persist.
The IDF is “prepared and on alert” for Iranian missile fire in defense of its Lebanese proxy and has prepared a bank of targets to strike inside the Islamic Republic, Katz said during a briefing.
The Islamic Republic launched several barrages of ballistic missiles at Israel on June 7-8 in support of Hezbollah, prompting Jerusalem to retaliate with strikes against the regime.
“If we have definitive intelligence about Iranian decisions, we will act on it,” Katz said on Monday. “If Iran attacks us with missiles, we will respond with force, and that has been made clear to the Americans.”
A renewed Iranian attack “could happen even within two days,” he said, adding that the Jewish state “will not interfere with the U.S. president’s course of action vis-à-vis the Iranians.”
