The leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah terrorist organization on Saturday categorically denied Israeli claims about his group having factories to produce precision-guided missiles in Lebanon, saying that such "lies" were an attempt to justify Israeli attacks against the country.
The IDF, meanwhile, said on Saturday that in the past week its "ground forces, air, navy and intelligence forces improved their preparedness for various scenarios in the northern command area."
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It posted on Twitter footage of tanks and ground forces being deployed to the northern sector.
In a speech to hundreds of his followers who gathered in the group's stronghold in southern Beirut, Hassan Nasrallah said his group possessed precision-guided missiles but not the factories to produce them.
"We do not have factories to produce precision-guided missiles in Lebanon," he said.
Nasrallah spoke a week after Israel allegedly crash-landed two drones in Hezbollah-dominated southern Beirut. One of the drones landed on the roof of Hezbollah's media office while another exploded and crashed nearby, causing a fire and damage to buildings.
Drones like the ones used in the Beirut attack last weekend "open the door to assassinations" if left unanswered, he said. "This matter will not be tolerated ... Israel must pay the price."
The Iranian-backed group said both drones were armed with explosives and were carrying out an attack mission.
Israeli media reported that earlier this week, Israeli drones targeted a Beirut facility housing a "planetary mixer," a large industrial machine that is critical to making missiles.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Iran and its proxy Hezbollah of racing to build a missile-production program in Lebanon, vowing to destroy the ambitious project and issuing a stern warning to his enemies to "be careful."
The threats ratcheted up an already tense standoff that has pushed the bitter adversaries closer toward open, armed conflict in recent weeks.
Nasrallah said that Netanyahu was looking for pretexts to hit Lebanon. He said it is Hezbollah's "right" to have such factories, "but we have nothing of the sort."
"All the threats and intimidations will not prevent the retaliation of the resistance," he said.
The timing and scale of Hezbollah's response, he added, "is now in the hands of the field commanders who know what they must do ... and what the limits are."
Precision-guided missiles could pose a counterbalance to Israel's overwhelming military force in any future war, with the capacity to home in on and knock out core infrastructure sites.
