Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem delivered two speeches to commemorate Quds Day last week. This annual event, begun by Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is held on the last Friday of Ramadan to express opposition to Zionism and Israel’s existence. Qassem delivered one speech on March 26 and another on March 29, the day after Quds Day.
The March 26 speech
In his 15-minute speech on Tuesday, Qassem offered little that was new. He condemned Israel and its existence, describing it as a “non-state without borders.” He also praised Al Aqsa Flood, the attack launched by Hamas and its partners against Israel on October 7, 2023, for attracting international attention and sympathy for the Palestinian cause and hastening Israel’s dissolution.
Qassem went on to praise the sacrifices of both the Palestinian people, which he said had displayed “legendary endurance despite 50,000 martyrs and more than 160,000 wounded,” and the Palestinian “resistance.” He said these sacrifices “must, God willing, be the prologue to regaining Jerusalem one day.”
Qassem also portrayed Israel’s war in Gaza as “a grand and very dangerous tyrannical American plot” that “employed” Washington’s “murderous tool” to liquidate the Palestinian cause, expel all Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, occupy Lebanese, Syrian, Jordanian, and Egyptian lands, and create Arab disunity to make countries more pliable and the Middle East easier to control. Qassem insisted, however, that the “sacrifices” of the resistance would foil this plot, and, in the interim, had exposed both Israel’s genocidal nature and the United States’ hypocrisy on human rights, “revealing this oppressor’s true monstrosity.” Qassem then thanked the Islamic Republic of Iran for supporting the resistance and its goal to liberate Palestine.
Turning to Hezbollah’s “support front” for Palestine, Qassem recounted his group’s sacrifices during the last war and, once again, inaccurately insisted it had foiled Israel’s objectives and advance in south Lebanon. “Israel didn’t fulfill its goal to end the resistance in Lebanon, [it] failed to reach the Litani [River], and [it] called for a ceasefire while the resistance was enduring and had the upper hand.”
Now, Qassem said, Hezbollah had shifted to the “phase of the [Lebanese] state’s responsibility” for continuing what the group had started, “to implement the [ceasefire] deal and remove the [Israeli] occupation” from south Lebanon. Meanwhile, the resistance would “maintain its strong presence [and] will act where it must and where it can.” Qassem said, “Everyone must know that the resistance is a rooted faith and firm choice that moves wisely based on the needs of the confrontation,” perhaps attempting to excuse Hezbollah’s relative quiescence in the face of continued Israeli operations in Lebanon and the renewed fighting in the Gaza Strip.
“Now,” Qassem insisted, “the Lebanese state must carry out its responsibilities and pressure the relevant actors who sponsored the [ceasefire] deal” to stop Israel’s operations. “We will not accept the continuation of the [Israeli] occupation,” he said, likely referring to the five points in south Lebanon that Israel retained after the February 18, 2025, deadline for its withdrawal. Israel, Qassem also insisted, “must release the [Lebanese] detainees, and there is no place for normalization [with Israel] or surrender in Lebanon.”
The remainder of Qassem’s speech praised Hezbollah’s allies in Iraq and Yemen.
The March 29 speech
Qassem’s speech on Saturday was longer and touched on many of the same themes. He focused on the centrality of the Palestinian cause and the indispensability of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s support for Palestine. He also praised the “rootedness” of the Palestinian resistance among the Palestinian people, “an armed resistance which seeks to liberate [Palestine] from the sea to the river.”
This resistance’s development, Qassem claimed, culminated in Hamas’s ability to launch the Aqsa Flood attack and coincided with the similar rise of the resistance in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq. “Therefore, these peoples in this region, alongside the resistance groups among them, and many peoples in the region and around the world, demonstrated political, media, and cultural solidarity and offered financial support,” he said, claiming this transnational solidarity “is a true inflection point in the Palestinian cause.”
Qassem went on to call Israel “an expansionist cancerous tumor [that is a tool] in the hands of the American Arrogance,” a term commonly used by Khomeinist movements like Hezbollah to describe the United States. Israel, he insisted, never withdraws or halts its military operations out of goodwill, but only when “it confronts pressure, resistance, rejection,” and even then, only tactically and temporarily. This is why, he said, Israeli settlements were slowly “eating” the West Bank, because “the Israeli entity doesn’t recognize the ’67 lands or Palestine.” The sacrifices offered by Gazan Palestinians in the recent war, he said, put a limit on Israel’s expansionism.
Qassem said Hezbollah supports the Palestinian cause out of a genuine belief in its justness. The group, he said, also believes in the liberation of the holy sites from Israeli rule, namely, Al Aqsa Mosque. Hezbollah’s support for Palestine also stemmed from its “commitment to the religious authority of our leadership represented by Imam Khamenei … and this religious authority transcends all borders, geography, and considerations,” Qassem said. The allegiance to Iranian authority “is faith. It is religion. It is a commitment,” he stressed. Finally, supporting Palestine is a matter of self-interest, Qassem claimed, because supporting Palestine “would reflect goodness upon Lebanon and the entire region.”
“Therefore, we declare clearly [that] we remain committed to our covenant, O Jerusalem. Always. No matter the sacrifices, difficulties, or complications. We believe in pursuing the liberation of Palestine [and] we have an interest in liberating Lebanon and protecting it during this sensitive time. Faith and interest have combined for us,” he said.
The combination of those reasons led Hezbollah to support Gaza during the recent war, Qassem stated, exemplified by the “martyrdom of the greatest of the Umma’s [worldwide Muslim community’s] martyrs, sayyed [former Hezbollah Secretary-General] Hassan Nasrallah.” Israel had set its expansionist sights upon Lebanon too, “or at least south Lebanon,” he claimed, “to build settlements and naturalize [Palestinians].” Qassem said that Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and support for the South Lebanon Army were proof of his claim that the Israelis sought to annex South Lebanon as “an inseparable part of the Israeli entity.” Another proof, he said, was the visit of some religious Jews to the graves of Talmudic rabbis in south Lebanon.
After the Israeli invasion of 1982, Qassem said, Israel only withdrew after 18 years under the pressure of the resistance—despite international resolutions and pressure—because it sought to conquer Lebanon and control its fate. “We are clear on this: Israel is an expansionist enemy; it has no limit, and it will always cross all borders. Our resistance is a defensive reaction, a lawful right, and it must continue,” he said, despite the resistance’s inability to prevent all Israeli aggression, “Because it can foil [Israel] and prevent it from achieving its goals.”
To justify Hezbollah’s initiation of hostilities against Israel on October 8, 2023, and claim victory for the group, Qassem claimed Hezbollah had accomplished a win in the recent war—namely, the group had foiled a planned Israeli invasion to conquer large swathes of Lebanon. He continued his attempt to cover Hezbollah’s obvious defeat in the last war:
Some question: ‘You say the resistance wants to bring about this enemy’s downfall, but we saw the enemy succeed in occupying additional swathes of land.’ We respond: ‘Shall we not consider at all the disparity in power between us and the enemy? Of course, it must be considered. But what is the point? Did this power allow the enemy to accomplish its intended goals, with all the enemy’s disparity in strength over the resistance?’ We respond: ‘No, the result was that they did not accomplish their goals, and this is a victory for us—for the resistance to continue, for the enemy to fail to accomplish its goals. This is important.’
Echoing a point often repeated by his predecessor, Nasrallah, Qassem insisted no one should expect Hezbollah and the collective resistance movements to destroy Israel in one fell swoop. “We prevented [Israel] from accomplishing its goal, and, with time, blow after blow, confrontation after confrontation, the endurance of the resistance, we will reach a specific point when we can bring down this occupation [Israel], God willing,” he said.
Qassem claimed that Israel sought to expand into Lebanon, end Hezbollah, and control Lebanon’s future during the last war “through barbarism and aggression, and with support from the barbaric American tyranny.” He alleged Hezbollah “confronted these goals” and “succeeded in stopping Israel in its tracks.” Qassem said, “We succeeded in preventing Israel from advancing on the border for a time … to reach a ceasefire through the Lebanese state,” insisting that “this meant a specific force was able to prevent Israel from achieving its goals, so Israel sought a ceasefire deal, and we agreed with the Lebanese state.”
Seeking to explain away Hezbollah’s current inaction in the face of continued Israeli military operations, Qassem said:
Since the ceasefire deal was signed indirectly with the Lebanese state, the responsibility moved to the Lebanese state. It is now its responsibility to end the occupation, end the aggression, by pressuring the great powers that sponsored [the deal]. It’s [the Lebanese state’s] responsibility to seek the appropriate ways and means to end the occupation and to abandon diplomacy at a certain point to confront this occupation. In any case, this is the responsibility of the Lebanese state now.
Meanwhile, Qassem said, Hezbollah was entirely committed to the ceasefire. “We have no armed presence south of the Litani River,” he said. Despite that claimed disposition, “Israel has not withdrawn from all Lebanese lands, continues to occupy points, violates and commits acts of aggression every day” throughout Lebanon. “All of these actions can be described as violations for a time,” he said, “but after a while, they are not violations; they are aggression that has crossed every limit.”
Qassem stressed that “all Israeli justifications are meaningless,” and insisted Israel must “implement the [ceasefire] deal just as Lebanon has, just as the entire world has witnessed Lebanon do—Lebanon, with its resistance, implemented the deal, but Israel has not,” he said.
Qassem also said that neither normalization with Israel nor diplomatic negotiations “through which Israel is seeking to make more gains beyond the ceasefire agreement” are acceptable. “Israel is seeking to gain through peace what it failed to through war, and this is unacceptable,” he said. “Thank God that the cornerstones of the Lebanese State, the three presidents [the president, the prime minister, and the speaker of Parliament] completely reject this path of normalization.”
Qassem insisted, however, that Hezbollah’s patience, while extensive, was not infinite:
Israel is now in the position of aggression, and this aggression must be ended. It crossed [limits] by striking Dahiyeh for the first time since the ceasefire and also struck several areas in south Lebanon, causing martyrs and wounded and damage to infrastructure. We cannot accept the continuation of this behavior. If Israel thinks it can create new rules of engagement [literally, “a new equation”] by relying on flimsy excuses to kill and intrude upon these areas, commit aggression in Dahiyeh, the Beqaa, and the south—this is entirely rejected. The Lebanese state must confront this. There’s still time to deal [with this situation] politically and diplomatically. But we cannot accept rules of engagement allowing Israel to violate Lebanon[‘s sovereignty] whenever it pleases, while we watch idly. Everything has a limit, and everything is permitted for a time. Do not take what I say lightly. Know this resistance remains present, ready, and committed during this period to the [ceasefire] deal. But if Israel does not fully adhere [to the agreement], and if the Lebanese state is incapable of achieving the desired result through political means, we will have no option but to return to choices that do not align with the current situation and that will prevent Israel from setting new rules of the game.
Qassem insisted Israel would never achieve its goals through any means so long as “this resistance, this people, and this domestic cohesion” remain. He also said Hezbollah would “not allow anyone to deprive us of our strength and means to confront this enemy,” rejecting calls from within Lebanon and by the international community for the group to disarm.
Qassem called on his audience to judge the Lebanese state’s ability to confront Israel’s alleged aggression “by its results.” He said Hezbollah remained strong enough to confront American and Israeli plots, and that the group’s patience so far is meant to give a chance to “solutions that reduce pain and casualties.” However, Qassem stressed, “If we reach a stage whereby Israel’s actions become killing, destruction, and occupation, shall we remain idle bystanders? We will not.”
Qassem then turned to address Lebanese officials, saying, “They must know everything has a limit, and we don’t know when this limit will come or when we’ll decide. But you know have an opportunity to increase pressure” on Israel to halt its operations. Otherwise, he suggested Hezbollah, its fighters, and its support base were ready to offer more sacrifices. Qassem insisted mothers who lost children as “martyrs” were prepared to sacrifice the remaining ones, and fighters whose comrades had died fighting Israel expressed their envy of their fallen fellow combatants. “This is our people,” he said, asking, “Who can defeat it? Who can confront it?”
Qassem concluded his speech by addressing Hezbollah’s domestic posture. He insisted the group “and the Amal party achieved a great accomplishment for Lebanon by electing a consensus president,” Joseph Aoun, whom some had presented as staunchly anti-Hezbollah, “and completing the assembly of the government by granting it [our] confidence, and in our continued drive to build the state.” Qassem insisted Hezbollah is “an inseparable part of the partnership and building this state” and recalled his promise from November 20, 2024, to facilitate the election of a president.
Qassem said Hezbollah was both a resistance and a state-builder; thus, none should “try to be clever” and seek to exclude the group or any other faction.
Qassem set forth a proposed action plan for Lebanon. “On this basis, and until Lebanon achieves true stability, and we can build the state, we must carry out at least these matters,” he said. “First,” Qassem said, “Israel must withdraw, and we must all unite to insist Israel withdraws unconventionally and without discussing any other matter before this withdrawal.” Here, the Hezbollah secretary-general seemed to echo the apparent stance of Lebanese President Aoun, who, during a Friday press conference in Paris, seemingly preconditioned Israel-Lebanon land border demarcation negotiations on Israel releasing Lebanese detainees and withdrawing from the five points in south Lebanon.
“Second,” Qassem said, “the state must begin discussing reconstruction without linking it to any matter or condition,” hinting at attempts to tie foreign reconstruction aid to Hezbollah’s disarmament. Here, too, he echoed several Lebanese officials, including Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, Deputy Prime Minister Tarek Mitri, Environment Minister Tamara Al Zein, and others who expressed their opposition to such linkage. “It is the Lebanese people’s right to have its state rebuild what the Israeli enemy destroyed,” Qassem said while insisting that “Hezbollah will be by the side of the [Lebanese] state with more support and assistance.” The third step, he said, was to cooperate with “the salvation and reform plan,” a likely reference to the Lebanese government’s policy statement.
Qassem ended by denying Hezbollah’s involvement in recent disturbances on the Syria-Lebanon border and inside Syria “where massacres are committed against Alawites, Christians, and others.” He claimed, “Hezbollah is completely uninvolved with what’s going on in Syria or the aggression on the Lebanon-Syria border” and stressed that “the Lebanese Army is responsible for defending Lebanon’s borders and the Lebanon-Syria border. This is the state’s responsibility.”
