Nasrallah issues defiant statement

Nasrallah says Trump threats will not intimidate Syria, Russia

Press TV,

13 April, 2018

The secretary general of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah says US President Donald Trump's threats to strike Syria will not intimidate either the Arab country or Russia, not even the entire region.

In a televised speech on Friday, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Trump’s threats “have not and will not frighten neither Syria, nor Iran, nor Russia, nor the resistance movements, nor the peoples of the region.”

President Trump initially threatened this week that he was committed to attacking the government of President Bashar al-Assad, which he accused of using chemical weapons in Douma on April 7. Damascus has rejected the accusation, saying militants in the area had made up the "chemical fabrications" to impede advances by the Syrian army.

Nasrallah said the resistance movement condemns the use of chemical weapons in any battle. He added that what happened in Douma was “a play.”

With every advance made by Syrian government forces against the foreign-backed Takfiri militants, he said, accusations of using chemical weapons rise.

Nasrallah further said people of the region and the world had the right to worry about the existence of a president like Trump “who does not understand what he wants and how he thinks.” The Trump administration, he added, “has no strategic vision for anything.”

“With such a president and an administration, the whole world has the right to worry.”

The Hezbollah secretary general said the US administration must know that the war on the region will not be a war on armies but an act of aggression against peoples of the region. He said the United States will definitely be the loser in such a campaign.

Female supporters of Lebanon's Hezbollah resistance movement hold flags and listen to Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as he gives an address from a screen during a rally in Beirut, Lebanon, April 13, 2018. (Photo by Reuters)

Elsewhere in his remarks, Nasrallah referred to Israel’s recent attack on T-4 air base in the Syrian province of Homs that killed several people, saying the assault was deliberate. He said Israel had committed a “historical mistake.”

Two Israeli F-15 warplanes carried out strikes from Lebanese air space on T-4 air base in Homs on Sunday. Syrian air defense systems shot down five of the eight missiles fired.

Over the past few years, the Israeli military has launched sporadic attacks against various targets on Syrian soil. Damascus says the attacks are an attempt to embolden terrorist groups who have been suffering heavy defeats on the battlefield against Syrian government forces.

Nasrallah made the Friday speech during an electoral rally as Lebanon’s parliamentary elections approach