Lebanon’s Hezbollah Chief Naim Qassem gives a televised speech from an unknown location, July 30, 2025, in this screen grab from video. Photo: Al Manar TV/REUTERS TV/via REUTERS

Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said on Wednesday in a televised speech read on his behalf that negotiating with Israel under fire amounts to imposed surrender and called for unity against Israel.

The speech, aired on a Hezbollah affiliated television station, said Hezbollah fighters were prepared to continue “without limits.”

The remarks came one day after Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that Israeli forces will deploy across southern Lebanon up to the Litani River until the threat of Iran-backed Hezbollah is removed, saying they would “control the remaining bridges and ‌the security zone ‌up to the Litani” and create a “defensive buffer.”

Hezbollah, a powerful Lebanese terrorist group, began launching rockets at northern Israel earlier this month in response to the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran. The Israeli military responded with retaliatory strikes, and hostilities between the two sides have escalated over the course of the month.

Meanwhile, Lebanon declared Iran’s new ambassador to the country, Mohammad Reza Sheibani, persona non grata on Tuesday and ordered him to leave by Sunday, as relations with Tehran sharply deteriorate amid tensions over the Iranian regime’s continued support for Hezbollah and interference in Beirut’s affairs.

In an interview with Saudi outlet al-Hadath on Sunday, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam also condemned Iran’s role in the conflict, saying “the war was imposed on us,” and accused its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) of directing Hezbollah’s military operations from behind the scenes.

Earlier this month, the Lebanese government formally declared Hezbollah’s military operations illegal, though the army has so far refrained from intervening to halt the group’s military activity in the country’s southern region, even as Israeli strikes continue across the area.

The US and Israel have expressed frustration with Lebanon’s inability to disarm Hezbollah, which openly seeks Israel’s destruction. Israeli leaders have said they will do it if the Lebanese military is unable or unwilling to do so.