Only days after the Israeli air
strikes were reported to have hit Iranian shipments of weapons bound for
Hezbollah, chief of the Lebanese Shia group said on Thursday that Syria will
supply “game-changing” weapons to Hezbollah.
Hassan Nasrallah’s speech, which
was televised to an audience in Beirut as a security precaution, explained that
the resistance against Israel is prepared to accept any sophisticated weaponry
even if it was to break the equilibrium in the region.
“We are worthy of having such
weapons and we would use them to defend our people and our country and our holy
sites”, he added.
He also said that the weapons shipments
were a strategic response of Syria to Israeli airstrikes.
Although, Israel never
acknowledged the airstrikes in Damascus, it indicated that the government will
do what is necessary to prevent Hezbollah from receiving future weapon
shipments, meaning that they could get involved in the two-year civil war if
Nasrallah’s threat is valid.
Only recently, Hezbollah admitted
that its fighters have been backing Assad’s forces in the war against the
rebels trying to remove Assad from power.
“We in the Lebanese resistance
declare that we stand by the Syrian popular resistance and give our material
and moral support, and cooperate and coordinate in order to liberate the Syrian
Golan,” he said.
During the statement, there were
reports of fierce clashes between the rebels and fighters loyal to Assad around
the rebel-run town of Qusayr, close to the border with Lebanon.
“The Syrian army seized back
control of Shumarlyeh in the Qusayr countryside and troops are currently on
their way to the village of Ghassaniyeh,(which has been under the rebel control
for more than a year),” an official from the army told AFP news agency on
Thursday.
In another related issue, Israeli
security officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that there
was information being passed to the US from Israel in a bid to persuade Russia
from selling S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Syria, which would greatly improve
their air defense system.
Earlier in the day, Syrian Information minister Omran al-Zoubi had indicated that Assad’s government is willing to go into negotiations for a solution that will end the conflict, but added that they will continue to eliminate “terrorists”, a term used to describe the rebels and their supporters.
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