Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem delivers a speech from an unknown location, Nov. 20, 2024, in this still image from video. Photo: REUTERS TV/Al Manar TV via REUTERS.

Hezbollah has once again rejected calls to disarm, urging mass anti-government protests in response to mounting pressure from the Lebanese government.

“We will not relinquish the weapon that protects us from our enemy,” Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem said in a televised speech on Monday.

“Those who want to disarm us are like those who seek to take our soul from us, and then they will witness our might,” the terrorist leader continued.

According to Qassem, Lebanon cannot hold talks on a national defense strategy until Israel honors the Nov. 27 ceasefire agreement between the two countries brokered by the US.

On Monday, Israeli officials said their country is “ready to support” Lebanon’s efforts to disarm the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah and will carry out a phased reduction of its military presence in Lebanon as a “reciprocal measure.”

“Israel will not be able to remain in Lebanon. The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] may occupy, kill, and destroy, but we will confront it so that it does not settle,” Qassem said during his speech.

“This is within our capability. The role of resistance now is greater and stronger,” he continued.

The terrorist leader also accused the United States of endangering Lebanon, claiming it seeks to destabilize the country through “sabotage and sedition.”

“Resistance is faith and will, it is nationalism and honor, it is pride and resilience, and it is a condition opposite to humiliation, surrender, and submission,” Qassem said. “It is a reaction to aggression, confronting it and obstructing its objectives.”

Meanwhile, Hezbollah urged its supporters to protest in Beirut this week against recent government actions to disarm “resistance groups,” describing the moves as harmful to Lebanon’s national interests and the principle of coexistence.

In its statement, the Shi’ite Islamist group said the protests are meant to defend Lebanon’s sovereignty, uphold the legitimacy of armed resistance against Israel, and reject what it called “external pressures” on the Lebanese state.

“This stand is an affirmation of our right to preserve our arms, which have proven capable of breaking the enemy’s power, and of our right to resist Israeli aggression and occupation,” the statement read.

Earlier this month, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun approved a US-backed plan to disarm Hezbollah, under which the group would fully lay down its weapons within four months in exchange for Israel halting airstrikes and withdrawing troops from positions it still occupies in southern Lebanon following last year’s war.

Last fall, Israel decimated Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities with an air and ground offensive, following the group’s attacks on the Jewish state — which Hezbollah claimed were a show of solidarity with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas amid the war in Gaza.

In November, Lebanon and Israel reached a US-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended a year of fighting between the Jewish state and Hezbollah.

Under the agreement, Israel was given 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon, allowing the Lebanese army and UN forces to take over security as Hezbollah disarms and moves away from Israel’s northern border.

However, Israel maintained troops at several posts in southern Lebanon beyond the ceasefire deadline, as its leaders aimed to reassure northern residents that it was safe to return home.

Jerusalem has continued carrying out strikes targeting remaining Hezbollah activity, with Israeli leaders accusing the group of maintaining combat infrastructure, including rocket launchers — describing such activity as “blatant violations of understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”

People walk near a mural of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, amid the Iran-Israel conflict, in Tehran, Iran, June 23, 2025. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

The prospect of Iran attacking the US homeland remains a serious threat as it maintains many avenues to pursue should the Islamic regime in Tehran seek to retaliate against Washington for bombing Iranian nuclear facilities in June, according to a new report by a top counter-terrorism analyst.

In the August 2025 issue of CTC Sentinel, a publication of West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, Matthew Levitt, the Fromer-Wexler senior fellow and director of the Reinhard program on counterterrorism and intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, detailed the nature of the threat.

“The 12-day Iran war [with Israel] may be over, but the threat of Iranian reprisal attacks now looms large, and will for the foreseeable future,” Levitt posted Friday on X, summarizing his findings. “Potential pathways for an Iranian attack on the US include deploying Iranian agents, criminal surrogates, terrorist proxies, or actively seeking to inspire lone offenders to carry out attacks within the homeland.”

Following the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, law enforcement agencies across the country ramped up surveillance of Iran-backed operatives amid growing fears of retaliation.

Levitt explained that “Iran and its proxies have spent years investing in a ‘homeland option.’ In just the past five years, US authorities have disrupted at least 17 Iranian plots in the United States. These have included both Iranian operatives as well as criminal proxies. Other cases that fell short of plotting for a specific attack include a Hezbollah operative in Texas who purchased 300 pounds of ammonium nitrate, an explosive precursor, and another who carried out surveillance missions in New York and Canada.”

Iran has also sought to inflame anti-Israel activism.

The CTC Sentinel analysis cited a US Department of Homeland Security report from October 2024 which stated that “Iranian information operations have focused on weakening US public support for Israel and Israel’s response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack [against southern Israel]. These efforts have included leveraging ongoing protests regarding the conflict, posing as activists online, and encouraging protests.”

Levitt noted that top targets of terrorism could include government officials, Iranian dissidents, Israelis, or Jews. “If there were ever a time Iran would want to activate its homeland option, this would be it,” he stated. “But even if the next few weeks pass without any attack, the threat will persist.”

In June, US Attorney General Pam Bondi warned in congressional testimony of the threat posed by Iran-directed terrorism. “We are working hand in hand with all of our agencies to protect Americans and to keep us safe,” she said.

Tehran’s ability to coordinate or inspire attacks on American soil has long been a concern for US law enforcement and intelligence officials — especially the role of so-called “sleeper cells,” covert operatives or terrorists embedded in rival countries who remain dormant until they receive orders to act and carry out attacks.

Levitt described terrorism as “an extension of foreign policy” for Iran, enabling strikes against enemies with superior military capabilities. He quoted a CIA report that stated, “Tehran has used terrorism increasingly to support Iranian national interests.”

However, he also noted that religious fundamentalism still guides the leaders in Tehran too, again citing the CIA which stated the country’s leaders believe Iran “has a religious duty to export its Islamic revolution and to wage, by whatever means, a constant struggle against the perceived oppressor states.”

On Sunday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressed this theology which undergirds his regime’s genocidal quest to murder Jews and conquer Israel.

“They want Iran to be obedient to America. The Iranian nation will stand with all of its power against those who have such erroneous expectations,” Khamenei said in a speech, according to Iranian state media. “People who ask us not to issue slogans against the US … to have direct negotiations with the US only see appearances … This issue is unsolvable.”

Khamenei added that “the enemies, after facing the steadfast unity of the nation, officials, and armed forces, and after suffering heavy defeats in military attacks, have realized that Iran and the Islamic system cannot be subdued by war or forced into obedience.”

Levitt noted a Homeland Threat Assessment for 2025 from the Department of Homeland Security which stated, “We expect Iran to remain the primary sponsor of terrorism and continue its efforts to advance plots against individuals — including current and former US officials — in the United States.”

The Jan. 3, 2020, targeted killing of Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), remains a feature of Iranian propaganda with vows to strike at the US officials involved in the decision.

Analyzing a video put out by the regime, Levitt described how “the screen soon pans to a bulletin board covered in images of US officials, including President Trump, former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, and about a dozen others. The picture fades, the music crescendos, and text appears on a black screen: ‘The perpetrators of general Soleimani’s martyrdom will be punished for their actions.’”

US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron react on the day of a press conference, at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

As Washington presses Paris over its handling of antisemitism, new data shows anti-Jewish hate crimes in France remain far above pre–Oct. 7, 2023, levels nearly two years after the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.

On Monday, the French Foreign Ministry summoned US Ambassador Charles Kushner after he accused Paris of failing to act decisively against rising antisemitism targeting France’s Jewish community.

In a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron, Kushner voiced his “deep concern over the dramatic rise of antisemitism in France” and criticized the French government for its “lack of sufficient action” to confront it.

However, French authorities rejected such claims as “unacceptable” and warned that Kushner’s letter violated international law.

“The rise in antisemitic acts in France since Oct. 7, 2023, is a reality that we deplore and to which the French authorities are responding with total commitment, as these acts are completely unacceptable,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Aurore Bergé, France’s minister for combating discrimination, stood by the government’s efforts to protect its citizens, saying its fight against antisemitism is “unequivocal.”

“This matter is far too serious. In my view, it is too important to be handled through the courts in a diplomatic context,” she said in an interview with Europe 1-CNews.

France’s Jewish community has faced a troubling surge in antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel sentiment since the Oct. 7 atrocities. Jewish leaders have consistently called on authorities to take swift action against the rising wave of targeted attacks and anti-Jewish hate crimes they continue to face.

This latest diplomatic row comes as new figures from the French Interior Ministry show 646 antisemitic incidents were recorded from January to June this year — a drop from the previous year’s first-half record high but a 112.5 percent increase compared with the same period in 2023, when 304 incidents were reported.

The wave of anti-Jewish hatred has continued unabated.

Earlier this month, for example, an olive tree planted in memory of Ilan Halimi, a young French Jewish man who was tortured to death in 2006, was vandalized and cut down in one of the latest antisemitic acts to spark outrage within the local Jewish community.

“In France, we are no longer safe, neither alive nor dead,” Halimi’s sister, Anne-Laure Abitbol, told RTL on Monday, adding that public denunciations are no longer enough and urging concrete action.

“I feel less safe in France,” she said. “By recognizing a Palestinian state, Macron is encouraging antisemitism and failing to take action against antisemitic attacks in the country.”

Last month, Macron announced that France will recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September as part of its “commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”

Israeli officials have criticized the move, which was followed by several other Western countries, calling it a “reward for terrorism.”