Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said on Saturday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was correct in his concern that Hezbollah is now “stronger than ever,” The Daily Star of Lebanon reported. Nasrallah added that the Warsaw conference had been a way to impose normalization with Israel, and therefore “eliminate the Palestinian cause and Palestinians’ rights.”
Referring to the fact that representatives from Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates attended the conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Nasrallah said, “They were trying to bring the world together in Warsaw for Netanyahu.”
Secretary Pompeo told reporters last week that Hezbollah’s power was increasing, and it is now “more powerful than they were four or five years ago.”
In an interview last Thursday with CBS News’ Roxana Saberi, Pompeo said the Warsaw conference was part of the US effort “to get Iran to behave like a normal country – to stop supporting the Houthis, to stop supporting Hamas, to stop supporting Hezbollah, to stop supporting the Iraqi militias, the Shia militias in Iraq, their efforts in Syria – all of these things are destabilizing in the Middle East.”
“That’s why we’ve gathered 60 countries-plus here today for a discussion about this,” Pompeo explained.
In a Saturday ceremony to commemorate the Hezbollah leaders killed in war with Israel and in defense of the Assad regime in Syria, Nasrallah boasted Hezbollah’s strength now on each of its fronts is 35-40 times more than what it had altogether back in the year 2000.
Nasrallah also denied claims that Hezbollah has cells in Latin America, while stressing his support for Venezuela.
Pompeo told CBS News that Hezbollah still receives funding from Iran, which is operating in Venezuela today. Earlier this month he told Fox News that Hezbollah operates “active cells,” in Venezuela, helping Iran have an impact “throughout South America.”
“This is baseless,” Nasrallah said on Saturday. “We have regional influence, yes, but America is trying to represent us as an international power, which we are not.”