WarSclerotic

BEIRUT: Hezbollah will retaliate against Israel if the Jewish state launches any steps against the Islamic Republic, Iran’s Mehr agency quoted Saturday a senior military aide to Iran’s supreme leader as saying.

“If the Zionist entity carried out any steps against us, resistance groups, particularly Hezbollah in Lebanon, given their central role in our defensive strategy, will respond against this entity,” the semi-official news agency quoted Maj. Gen. Yahia Safawi as saying.

“The defense of the Palestinian people comes within the framework of our defensive strategy and Lebanon and Syria also constitute the core of our defensive strategy,” Safavi, an aide to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, added, the agency said.

In June Safavi was quoted by AFP as saying: “Hezbollah has thousands of missiles … Hassan Nasrallah is a soldier of the supreme leader … All places in the Zionist entity are within missile range.”

Safavi was until 2007 the commander in chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the force that protects Iran’s Islamic system of governance.

In a face-to-face interview with Almayadeen television last week, Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said a possible Israeli strike on Iran would invite a strong retaliation from the Islamic Republic, but he played down the possibility such strike would take place, adding that Israeli officials were divided on the issue.