‘No choice but direct confrontation with Israel,’ says Iranian security chief

Head of Iran’s national security council threatens direct military confrontation with Israel, after five Hezbollah terrorists killed in Israeli strike.

By World Israel News Staff

A senior Iranian security official warned over the weekend that a direct military confrontation between his country and Israel is inevitable, following an Israeli airstrike in Beirut which killed five Hezbollah terrorists.

On Sunday night, Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, took to X to laud Hezbollah chief of staff Haytham Ali Tabatabai, the second in command of the Iranian-backed terror group who was one of the five terrorists eliminated Sunday afternoon.

“On the night of the martyrdom of Lady Fatima al-Zahra, peace be upon her, one of the truthful followers on the path of the Lady of the Women of the Worlds was martyred: the mujahid brother Haytham Ali Tabatabai, one of the senior leaders of Hezbollah, along with a number of his companions, at the hands of the criminal Zionists,” Larijani wrote.

The IDF airstrike targeted Tabatabai’s secret apartment in the Dahieh neighborhood of southern Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold. Along with the five terrorists killed in the strike, 28 people were injured, Hezbollah claimed.

Following the strike, Larijani said that it is now apparent that there is no alternative to a “direct confrontation” with Israel.

“They [the slain Hezbollah terrorists] have achieved what they desired, but Netanyahu continues his adventurism to the point that everyone reaches the conclusion that there is no path left except direct confrontation with this fabricated entity [Israel].”

Iran’s foreign ministry called Sunday’s targeted strike, which involved multiple guided missiles, a “treacherous attack,” and a “war crime,” warning that it constituted a “red line” for Iran.

Israel said Tabatabai was responsible for organizing the rebuilding of Hezbollah’s operational capabilities along the Israeli frontier, in direct violation of the November 2024 ceasefire agreement, which requires that Hezbollah remove all personnel from south of the Litani River and to surrender its entire arsenal country-wide.