(I24) Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said Friday his Iran-backed terror group was not afraid of US warships and “all options” were open for an expansion of the Israel-Hamas conflict into Lebanon.

In his first speech since war broke out almost four weeks ago between Hamas militants and Israel, the head of the Lebanese Shiite terror militia said the United States was responsible for the Gaza war and that Washington could prevent a regional conflagration by the Israeli offensive inside the Palestinian territory.

“America is entirely responsible for the ongoing war on Gaza and its people, and Israel is simply a tool of execution,” Nasrallah said in a televised broadcast, calling the conflict “decisive”.

“Whoever wants to prevent a regional war — and this is addressed to the Americans — must quickly stop the aggression on Gaza,” he said.

Yet he choose to adopt a distance from the October 7 massacre that started the war, saying it “was a 100% Palestinian operation carried out by Palestinians for the Palestinian cause, with no relation to any regional issues.”