BEIRUT (AP/Anadolu) – Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement has warned of war against the Zionist regime if Beirut was not allowed to extract oil and gas from a disputed maritime field.
Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, said his group is able to prevent the occupying regime from extracting gas from disputed maritime fields.
“The resistance is the only force that Lebanon has in the demarcation negotiations,” Nasrallah said in a televised speech.
“If you want to get to a formula where this country is barred from taking advantage (of these fields), then no one will be allowed to extract gas or oil and no one will be able to sell gas or oil,” he warned.
Last month, Hezbollah sent three unarmed drones into the disputed Karish field for a reconnaissance mission.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned that sending unarmed drones over the Karish gas field in the Mediterranean earlier this month was “a modest beginning to where the situation could be heading.”
“The message of the drones meant that we are serious and we are not after a psychological war but we are gradually moving in our steps,” Nasrallah said, adding that Lebanese officials should take advantage of his movement’s strength to use it in indirect talks.
Nasrallah added that “whatever we are supposed to do, we will without any hesitation. This message was understood by the Israelis and by the Americans.”
Nasrallah said that besides the drones, Hezbollah has other capabilities in the air and by sea and “all the options are on the table.”
“If we go to war, we might impose our conditions on the enemy,” Nasrallah said, adding that if the Americans “don’t give us our rights that are demanded by the state and if you don’t allow companies to extract (oil) God knows what we will do. We will turn over the table in the face of the world.”
Lebanon and the Zionist regime are engaged in a dispute over a maritime area that is 860 square kilometers (332 square miles), according to maps sent by both sides to the UN in 2011.
The area is rich with natural gas and oil. Five sessions of indirect negotiations were held between Lebanon and the occupying under UN sponsorship. The last round of talks was in May 2021, but it was stuck because of major differences.