Compiled news by Ya Libnan, the tower.org and middle-east monitor
Speeches by Hezbollah’s leader this week were aimed at making clear to the new administration of U.S. President Donald Trump that the Lebanese group could strike U.S. interests by hitting Israel, a source familiar with its thinking said on Friday. Trump and administration officials have used strong rhetoric against
Hezbollah’s political patron Iran and to support its main enemy Israel,
including putting Tehran “on notice” over charges it violated a nuclear
deal by test-firing a ballistic missile.
Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun,
an ally of Hezbollah, defended the group this week, saying: “As long as
the Lebanese army lacks sufficient power to face Israel, we feel the
need for (Hezbollah’s) arsenal because it complements the army’s role”.
In his speech on Sunday, Nasrallah said: “We are not worried (about
Trump), but rather we are very optimistic because when there is an idiot
living in the White House, who boasts of his idiocy, it is the
beginning of relief for the weak of the world”. On Thursday he
said that his group, which played a major role in ending Israel’s
occupation of Lebanon, could strike its nuclear reactor at Dimona. The harsh words for Israel and Trump were aimed at drawing “red
lines” for the new U.S. administration, the source familiar with the
thinking of the Lebanese Shi’ite group said. “Until now, Hezbollah is
not worried about the arrival of Trump into the U.S. administration, but
rather, it called him an idiot this week and drew red lines in front of
any action that threatens Lebanon or Hezbollah’s presence in Syria,” the source said. Israel and the United States both regard Hezbollah, which dominates Lebanese
politics and maintains an armed militia that has had a significant part
in fighting for President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, as a terrorist
organisation. “We can turn the threat (of their nuclear capability) into an
opportunity,” he said, signalling that Hezbollah could strike the Dimona
reactor and other Israeli atomic sites according to the source familiar
with Hezbollah thinking.
Lebanon’s Change Movement leader Elie Mahfoud warned against
Hezbollah becoming like Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)
or like the Iran-backed Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF)
paramilitary organisation. Mahfoud said that “the issue of Hezbollah’s armament has always been a
contentious issue amongst the Lebanese people,” in comments that
reflect statements made by Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri
earlier this week, who declared that the Shia jihadist movement
possessed weapons “illegally”. Mahfoud and Al-Hariri’s comments were in response to Hezbollah ally
and Lebanese President Michel Aoun’s remarks supporting the Iranian
proxy’s possession of arms.
Ibrahim al-Amin, chairman of the pro-Hezbollah newspaper Al-Akhbar,
wrote in an editorial on January 24 that “a vast supply of advanced,
state-of-the art weapons of various kinds, including weapons provided by
Iran” have flown into Hezbollah’s depots since the beginning of the
Syrian civil war. He also asserted that while Israel targeted
convoys transporting sophisticated weapons to Hezbollah, “dozens if not
hundreds of convoys managed to [get through and] bring the necessary
[weapons] to the resistance bases in Lebanon.” “Israel reads the map and realizes that Hizbullah’s weapons arsenal
has steadily grown, and is now several times larger than it was in 2006,
and that the kind of weapons that the enemy tried and is still trying
to prevent the resistance from acquiring – namely, what Israel calls
‘game-changing’ weapons – is available to it in great amounts,” al-Amin
claimed.
