Naim Qassem, secretary-general of Hezbollah, has an opinion on the Israel-Lebanon talks taking place Tuesday for the first time in more than three decades, and he isn’t holding back.

“Israel and the United States have openly stated they want to strengthen the army to disarm Hezbollah, fight it, dismantle its institutions and eliminate the resistance, its people and all who support it,” he told supporters in a prerecorded video address. “They want the [Lebanese] army to fight its own people—something the army cannot and will not do.”

Qassem declared that Hezbollah “will neither calm down nor surrender, and the battlefield will speak,” and he invited Lebanon’s prime minister, Joseph Aoun, to join him in fighting “the [Israeli] aggression together; afterward, we can agree on the future.”

Qassem characterized the scheduled negotiations as “futile and humiliating” and warned that Hezbollah would “remain steadfast, keep our heads held high and liberate the land.”

He blasted Aoun’s decision to ban Hezbollah, saying it was tantamount to “stabbing the resistance in the back.”

Hezbollah has been a thorn in the side of the Lebanese government for decades, but it lacked the will or the ability — or both — to disarm the terror group. It seems it has now had enough.

A Lebanese official said that Lebanon had successfully decoupled the Iran-Israel war from the Hezbollah-Israel war.

“Iran will not be allowed to intervene and regain control of the situation in Lebanon,” he said. The talks on Tuesday will address “the need for a ceasefire before the start of talks, a condition Lebanon has set without receiving an Israeli response so far,” he added.

A U.S. State Department official confirmed that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet with Israeli and Lebanese envoys Yechiel Leiter and Nada Hamadeh, as well as Michel Issa, U.S. envoy to Lebanon, and Michael Needham, State Department counselor.

“As a direct result of Hezbollah’s reckless actions, the Israeli and Lebanese governments are engaging in open, direct, high-level diplomatic talks — the first such talks since 1993 — brokered by the United States,” the official said.