Ahead of U.S.-Iran negotiations in Switzerland, the Iranian regime is exerting massive diplomatic pressure on the Trump administration to stop Israel’s ongoing operations against Hezbollah within the southern Lebanese buffer zone.
Early Sunday, the BBC reported that in the wake of “fighting with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon,” Iran “warned the US that if clashes continued there would be consequences.” According to British daily The Guardian, Tehran is threatening “to keep the strait of Hormuz closed in protest at Donald Trump’s inability to force Israel to end the fighting in Lebanon.”
Responding to Iranian threats, President Donald Trump on Truth Social warned the regime to stop Hezbollah from “causing trouble” in Lebanon or risk being hit “very hard again.”
With regards to the Strait of Hormuz, President Trump reportedly told Fox News that he “holds the cards and maintains a variety of options if the Iranians don’t make these serious commitments at the negotiating table,” including depriving the regime of its oil revenues.
The Tehran regime is rattled by the prospect of Hezbollah losing its main command center in southern Lebanon. In recent days, IDF troops have encircled a massive underground complex, regarded as Hezbollah’s “nerve center” close to Israel’s northern border.
This Iranian-funded tunnel complex, running beneath the crusader-era fortress of Beaufort, was built to invade northern Israel. “Hezbollah underground tunnel network beneath Beaufort Ridge in southern Lebanon, a system the military said was built with funding from Iran,” Israel’s Ynetnews reported last week.
Long before the Hamas-led massacre on October 7, 2023, Hezbollah had devised its own “Conquer the Galilee” plan, an even larger-scale invasion aimed at murdering and capturing Israelis in the north of the country. This tunnel network was key to Hezbollah’s planned invasion.
“According to the IDF, troops found maps inside one of the underground routes showing the threat posed by the tunnel network to communities in northern Israel,” Ynetnews added. “The IDF said the operation was intended to prevent Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force from infiltrating the Misgav Am area in the Galilee Panhandle, near the Lebanese border.”
In keeping with the U.S-backed ceasefire agreement, Israel has halted its military operation in the rest of Lebanon, but intends to remove the terrorist threat close to its border. “The Israeli military says it continues its operations in its declared “security zone” in southern Lebanon, including at a major Hezbollah tunnel system where dozens of operatives are holed up, but has “halted its fire” elsewhere in the country,” The Times of Israel reported Sunday.
With recent Israeli advances, Hezbollah terror fighters find themselves holed up in these terror tunnels, the Jerusalem Post reported:
The IDF cornered dozens of Hezbollah terrorists in a huge underground base in the village of Tebnit, Israeli media reported on Saturday.According to N12, the network of tunnels is over a kilometer in total length, and IDF forces have engaged in combat both above and below ground.Maariv reported that 30 Hezbollah terrorists were trapped inside, fighting back against the IDF using mortars and drones.The IDF stated that the base was one of the most important Hezbollah headquarters in southern Lebanon, and that the operation in the area was intended to remove a long-term threat to northern Israeli communities.
Other news outlets reported a much higher number of trapped Hezbollah members:
The Israeli security think tank, Alma Center, released a report on Sunday explaining the strategic significance of the Israeli operation against the Hezbollah tunnel network in the area. According to the think tank, the IDF is currently “conducting ground operations on the Ali al-Taher ridge, located approximately 4.5 kilometers northwest of Beaufort Castle in a straight line and north of the village of Tebnine.”
This subterranean complex was “likely” built with Iranian and North Korean assistance. This massive strategic underground infrastructure complex currently serves as the main headquarters of the Badr Unit, Hezbollah’s main terrorist formation operating in southern Lebanon,” the report observed.
Explaining Iran’s intense efforts to halt the Israeli operation, the think tank noted that the “combination of Hezbollah’s loss of control over the Beaufort Castle area and the Ali al-Taher ridge, together with the damage inflicted on its key underground infrastructure, constitutes a blow to a major center of power that Hezbollah invested significant efforts over time to preserve and defend.”
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