Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said Saturday that the Lebanese armed group had lost its supply route through Syria, in his first comments since the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad nearly a week ago in a major rebel offensive.
Under Assad, Iran-backed Hezbollah used Syria to bring weapons and other military equipment from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, to Lebanon. But on December 6, anti-Assad fighters seized the border with Iraq and cut that road, and two days later, Islamic rebels captured the capital Damascus.
“Yes, Hezbollah has lost its military supply route through Syria at this point, but this loss is a detail of the resistance’s work,” Qassem said in a televised address Saturday, without mentioning Assad by name.
“A new regime could emerge and this path could return to normal, and we could look for other paths,” he added.
Hezbollah began intervening in Syria in 2013 to help Assad fight rebels who were trying to overthrow him at the time. Last week, as rebels approached Damascus, the group sent officers to oversee the withdrawal of its fighters from there.
More than 50 years of Assad family rule have been replaced by an interim transitional government established by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former al Qaeda affiliate who led the rebel offensive.
Qassem said Hezbollah “will not be able to judge these new forces until they stabilize” and “take clear positions,” but said he hoped the Lebanese and Syrian people and governments could continue to cooperate.
“We also hope that this new ruling party will consider Israel an enemy and not normalize relations with it. These are the headlines that will influence the nature of the relationship between us and Syria,” Qassem said.
Hezbollah and Israel clashed on Lebanon’s southern border for nearly a year in hostilities sparked by the Gaza war, before Israel went on the offensive in September, killing most of Hezbollah’s top leaders.
Source: Terra
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