Iranian Brigadier General Ali Fazli, Lieutenant Commander of its volunteer Basij Forces, in Syria told reporters on Monday that the Israeli Army was cowed by a resurgent Hezbollah, according to Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency.

Fars tried to bolster Fazli’s case by referring to comments cited by Israeli media implying the Israel Defense Forces are unprepared to counter a threat from Lebanon.

“In the past, whenever Israel wanted, it attacked Lebanon and Palestine but today it doesn’t dare to do so due to the presence of the Lebanese Hezbollah and the resistance forces,” Fazli said at a press conference in Mashhad, Syria, on Monday.

Fars wrote: “Israel’s unpreparedness to confront Hezbollah has even been acknowledged by the regime’s army officers. The Israeli newspaper Maariv said in a report in April that Israeli forces are not ready militarily to engage in a war with Hezbollah and their capabilities have distinctly decreased. The paper quoted high-ranking Israeli army officers as saying that the Zionist entity cannot engage in a war with Hezbollah anytime soon.”

In March, Israel launched air strikes against Syrian military sites in response to a roadside bombing that wounded four of its soldiers, but both sides signaled they were not seeking further escalation.