WarSclerotic

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, declared on Tuesday that his organization was stronger than ever and would “very soon” celebrate victory in Syria, where its Iran-backed militia has been fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Speaking on live television on the anniversary of a 2006 war Hezbollah fought with Israel, which regards Iran as its biggest foe and Hezbollah as the top threat on its borders, Nasrallah said that “The resistance in Lebanon today, in its possession of weapons and equipment and capabilities and members and cadres and ability and expertise and experience, and also of faith and determination and courage and will, is stronger than at any time since its launch in the region.”

Video: Reuters

He added that Hezbollah is not scared of a possible war with Israel.

“No one should threaten us with war and no one should scare us by war,” he said. “We are not scared or worried about war and we are ready for it and we will be victorious.”

“Israel is rebuilding itself today, in view of the defeat in 2006, including re-examining its doctrine of war, on the basis that its enemy is serious and capable,” he went on to say.

“Since 2007 the Israelis have threatened to go to war, but at the same time Hezbollah has become immensely stronger,” Nasrallah continued.

Israel has repeatedly targeted Hezbollah in Syria, where the group and its Iranian ally have played a key military role in fighting rebels alongside Assad’s forces, backed by massive Russian air power.

Assad now controls most of Syria, although a swathe of the northwest remains in rebel hands, and U.S.-backed Kurdish forces control the quarter of the country east of the Euphrates river.

Israel has demanded that Iran leave Syria and said last year it had carried out airstrikes there to stop Iranian weapons shipments to Hezbollah.

Last month, Assad and his allies recaptured the area bordering the Israeli-Golan Heights, while avoiding a wider escalation involving Israel, Iran and Hezbollah.

Concerns about such an escalation rose sharply in May, when Israel said it launched its heaviest attack on Iranian targets in Syria since the Syrian war began in 2011, prompting retaliatory rocket fire in the days that followed.

In his address Tuesday, Nasrallah also predicted that the recently reinstated U.S. sanctions against Iran and Hezbollah will not have major effects on them and will not lead to a regime change in Tehran.

He said Israel and the Trump administration are “mistaken” if they think the sanctions will lead to riots in Iran.

Last week the U.S. began restoring sanctions that had been lifted under a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, which U.S. President Donald 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 programs.

“Iran has been facing sanctions since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979,” Nasrallah said. “He [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.”

Speaking about Washington’s renewed sanctions, Nasrallah said: “I can tell you and I have accurate information they are building dreams, strategies and projects that Iran will head toward chaos and the regime will fall. This is illusion, this is imagination and has nothing to do with reality.”