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Hezbollah chief vows to remain in Syria

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Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Tuesday that US sanctions against Iran will not have major effects on support for his organisation and will not lead to regime change in Tehran.

In a televised address marking 12 years since the 34-day Second Lebanon War with Israel, Hassan Nasrallah said: “Iran has been facing sanctions since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. “He [US President Donald Trump] is strengthening the sanctions but they have been there since 1979 and Iran stayed and will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the victory of its revolution.”

Last week, the US began restoring sanctions that had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which Trump withdrew from in May. The administration says the renewed sanctions are meant to pressure Tehran to halt its alleged support for international terrorism, its military activity in the Middle East and its ballistic missile programme.

Iran has been backing Hezbollah financially and militarily since the terrorist group was established after Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. According to the US, Iran sends Hezbollah an estimated $700 million a year.

Nasrallah said Hezbollah was not scared of a possible war with Israel and that its army is stronger than the Israeli one. “The resistance in Lebanon – with its arms, personnel, expertise and capabilities – is stronger than ever,” he said.

Israel has repeatedly struck Hezbollah in Syria, where the group and Iran have played a vital military role in fighting rebels alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces, backed by Russian air power. Nasrallah said Israel would fail to force Hezbollah away from the Syrian Golan border.

Former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo has told the Saudi newspaper Elaph that the West should place economic sanctions on Lebanon for the purpose of weakening Hezbollah. He reiterated the Israeli position that all Iranian forces should be removed from Syrian territory, and expressed doubts about Russia’s ability to fulfil the Israeli security establishment’s desire.

Pardo also touched on Israel’s ties with the region, claiming that the unresolved Palestinian issue remains the main obstacle to the further development of ties between Israel and the moderate Sunni axis in the Arab world.