The Hizballah deputy interviewed below seems to have no qualms about speaking freely about Hizballah’s arsenal, but why should he? It’s abundantly clear by now that no one is going to confiscate it.
His tally of 8,000 missiles fired at Israel is grossly exaggerated (the Associated Press reported a total of 3,970 fired in the conflict), but the fact remains that due to the insufficient mandate given to UN forces in Lebanon to enforce Resolution 1701, and the complicity of the Lebanese government in letting them keep their weapons, the only way to begin to count the missiles still in Hizballah’s possession will be when they start firing them again.
From Haaretz: “Hezbollah: We could have up to 70,000 rockets left in arsenal”
Hezbollah could have tens of thousands of rockets still left in its arsenal, the group’s deputy leader Naim Qassam said in an interview published Sunday in a London-based Arabic-language newspaper.
Qassam said that the reconstruction of Hezbollah’s military wing was not a top priority as the group still had a plentiful supply of weapons.
“We had the option to confront Israel for many months,” he said. “The 8,000 missiles that we fired at Israel could be a quarter or even just 10 percent of the rockets we have.”
The group is now contemplating how best to move ahead following the deployment of Lebanese soldiers and United Nations troops in the south of the country, Qassam said.
He said that Hezbollah has yet to decide on its policy toward Israel if it does not pull out of the Shaba Farms, but indicated the group would not give up its “right to resistance.”
He stressed that Hezbollah has no plans to strike American targets and said that the resistance to Israel would be carried out only on Lebanese soil, not “all around the world.”
For now, they claim to have no such plans — perhaps not today or this week. But when they do, evidence and past experience suggest that the infrastructure to do so is in place.