In a second public appearance within days to mark one week since the deadly Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah took the opportunity to serve a direct warning against “those who accused Hezbollah” of orchestrating the kidnapping of Lebanese Forces coordinator in Jbeil District, Pascal Sleiman.
Referring to the LF and Kataeb Party, Nasrallah accused the two Christian parties of seeking to start a civil strife. “What happened yesterday was a major scandal that revealed your true colors and showed that you are looking for civil war.”
Denying any implication of his party in the kidnapping, Nasrallah said, “It is very, very, very dangerous” to make such accusations. “What happened yesterday and today is a lesson for the Lebanese in general and for Christians in particular, showing that the LF and Kataeb are not people of truth but are tempted by civil strife.”
In reference to the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war, Nasrallah said, “We ask those who pursue us with (holding) the decision to make war and peace, who committed the war at that time? Did you carry out a decision from the state or did you make it yourself?”
Sleiman was abducted on Sunday evening in the village of Hakel, caza of Jbeil. He was on his way from the locality of Al-Kherbeh, where he was offering condolences to the family of a deceased man, to his own village, Mayfouk, when four armed individuals in a white Subaru blocked his path and forced him, by force of arms, to get out of his car and into theirs.
Nasrallah’s address also praised Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, senior commanders in the Quds Force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) foreign operations arm, killed in the Damascus attack along with five other IRGC activists.
“They were chief Iranian military advisors in Syria and Lebanon who made huge sacrifices to assist the two countries in their resistance against Israel.”
Underlining the gravity of targeting the Iranian consulate, Nasrallah said, “It is an attack against Iran and not just Syria. Israel has set a goal, which is to expel the Iranians from Syria, and targeting advisors is the highest Israeli attack of its kind in Syria in years.”
According to Nasrallah, “Zahedi spent 14 years in Lebanon and Syria in service of the resistance and in support of the Palestinians” in their struggle against Israeli occupation.
Giving a brief history of the IRGC’s presence in Syria and Lebanon, he said that it dates back to 1982, after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and it was pivotal in putting in place the “resistance” against Israeli occupation which ended with Israel’s withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000.
