Iran could strike US bases in the Gulf in response to any Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities, the leader of Lebanon’s Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said yesterday.

‘Iran will not be conciliatory in the case of a strike against its nuclear facilities,’ Hassan Nasrallah said in an interview with the Beirut-based Al Mayadeen television, which champions Hezbollah’s cause. ‘A decision has been taken to respond and the response will be very great,’ he said.

‘The response will not be just inside the Israeli entity – American bases in the whole region could be Iranian targets,’ the Hezbollah leader said citing information he stated was from Iranian officials. ‘If Israel targets Iran, America bears responsibility.’

Nasrallah also denied that Hezbollah possessed chemical weapons, ‘We don’t have chemical weapons and we cannot use them for reasons linked to the Sharia and for humanitarian reasons,’ he said.

In early August, Israeli officials warned that the possible transfer of Syrian chemical weapons to Hezbollah, constituted a ‘red line’ for Israel. The Syrian regime, gripped by civil war, admitted in July for the first time that it possessed chemical weapons and threatened to use them in the event of foreign military intervention.

While ruling out an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear sites, Nasrallah said that in the case of ‘enemy attacks’ against Lebanon, Hezbollah would not be content to ‘defend itself’ but would ‘enter Galilee’.

Nasrallah also made comments on the civil war in Syria, which in recent weeks has spilled over into Lebanon, leading to sectarian violence. The Hezbollah leader praised Bashar Assad’s government for inviting the opposition groups to ‘dialogue’ and criticised Syrian rebels for rejecting the initiative.