BEIRUT — The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah said his group was capable of striking any target in neighboring Israel, saying “the days when we fled and they did not are over.”

“Today we are not only able to hit Tel Aviv as a city but, God willing, we are able to hit specific targets in Tel Aviv and anywhere in occupied Palestine,” Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address.

“For every building destroyed in Dahiya, a building will be destroyed in Tel Aviv,” he said, referring to Hezbollah’s stronghold in a suburb of southern Beirut.

Nasrallah’s comments were some of his harshest words against Israel in several months, and came amid rising tensions between Israel and Hezbollah’s main backer, Iran.

Israel argues Iran’s nuclear enrichment project is being used to make an atomic bomb and has warned it could launch a strike to stop Tehran. Iran says its nuclear program is for civilian purposes.

Hezbollah has long been seen as a proxy for Iran and Syria and many analysts believe that in the event of an Israeli attack on Iran, Hezbollah could return fire. — Reuters