Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in a televised address on Wednesday said that “a lot of Israeli attacks on Syria have nothing to do with arms transfers to Hezbollah and Israel is seeking to prevent Syria from obtaining missile capabilities.” He suggested that his terror group continues to receive Iranian rockets with few interruptions.
“No matter what you do to cut the route, the matter is over and the resistance possesses precision and non-precision rockets and weapons capabilities,” he said.
Nasrallah announced that his terror group will stay in Syria “until further notice,” and belittled the effect of Israeli airstrikes against Syria in curbing Hezbollah’s plans.
Hezbollah has sent thousands of soldiers to fight alongside the Syrian government forces since the 2011 eruption of the civil war.
“No one can force us to withdraw from Syria and as long as the Syrian leadership needs us we will stay there,” he said. “We will remain there even after the Idlib accord,” he added, referring to a Russia-Turkey deal to stop a Syrian attack on the last rebel-held stronghold.
“The continuous Israeli aggression against Syria is being carried out under various excuses and claims that Iran is arming Hezbollah in Latakia are totally baseless,” Nasrallah said. “This is a lie. Sometimes they do hit places that are connected to weapons — that they know of — but many of the attacks are not related to that at all,” he said.
Nasrallah stressed that Lebanon’s dissociation policy is “a serious controversial issue in Lebanon, seeing as the events in the region are critical for the Lebanese people,” and suggested that Lebanon “cannot be separated from what’s happening in the region,”
“Had ISIS seized control of Syria, what would have Lebanon’s fate been?” he asked.