BEIRUT - Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Tuesday the Shi'ite guerrilla group would hit Israel's Ben Gurion airport if the Jewish state struck Beirut's international airport in any future war. "If you hit Rafik al-Hariri international airport in Beirut, we will hit Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv," Nasrallah said via a live video-link. "If you hit our ports, we will bomb your ports, and if you hit our oil refineries, we will bomb your oil refineries." Nasrallah's comments came amid recent heated anti-Israeli comments in the region including from Syrian, Iranian and Lebanese leaders. Syrian and Lebanese officials have accused Israel repeatedly in the past few weeks of pushing for a war in the region, against the backdrop of an Iranian nuclear program Israel views as a threat to its very survival. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking on a visit to Moscow, said on Tuesday "we are not planning any war" and accused Tehran of stoking such fears as Western powers weigh additional sanctions against Iran to press for a stop to its atomic development. Last year Nasrallah threatened to attack Tel Aviv if Israel were to bomb Beirut's southern suburbs, a bastion of the powerful Shi'ite military and political group. Hezbollah fought against Israel in a 34-day war in 2006 after the group captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. Some 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, were killed and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, died. Israel pounded Beirut's southern suburbs as well as mainly Shi'ite southern Lebanon where Hezbollah maintains a stronghold and from which Israel withdrew in 2000. Israeli bombing also hit bridges, roads, airport runways, ports, factories, power and water networks, and military installations, and the eastern Bekaa Valley. Nasrallah was speaking at an event marking the second anniversary of the assassination of military commander Imad Moughniyah. The Shi'ite group has blamed Israel for the 2008 bombing that killed him in Damascus, and has vowed revenge. Israel has denied involvment, and said that it has since foiled several Hezbollah attempts to kidnap Israelis abroad.
