Iran leader of resistance, liberation movements across world: Hezbollah

A high-ranking Hezbollah official has praised Iran as the leader of resistance movements across the world and the only country that confronts the pro-Israel Western-led unipolar system.

Sheikh Naim Qassem, deputy chief of Lebanon’s resistance movement, made the statement in a ceremony held in the Iranian Embassy in Beirut in commemoration of the 35th anniversary of the passing of Imam Khomeini, the late founder of the Islamic Revolution.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran is the leader of the resistance and liberation movements, and bears the sole responsibility of confronting the unipolar system that supports the Zionist regime,” Sheikh Qassem said.

Pointing to the latest developments in the besieged Gaza Strip, the Hezbollah official said, “The Zionist occupation is an incapacitated regime and has been vanquished by committing genocide against children, women and innocent civilians.”

Sheikh Qassem said the Israeli regime is also beset by a political collapse and is in a “terrible state of chaos.”

Touching on the fire exchanges between the Lebanese resistance and the Israeli forces in the country’s south, Sheikh Qassem said, “Hezbollah’s confrontation with the occupying enemy in southern Lebanon is a battle to support the resistance and the Palestinian people… We emphasize once again that the South Lebanon Front will not stop unless the war in Gaza ends completely.”

Stressing that the resistance in Lebanon has no plans to move towards a large-scale war, the deputy chief of Hezbollah said, “If the enemy seeks to carry out provocative actions, it means that he has decided to go to war, and as a result, Hezbollah will fight the Zionists with all its might.”

Sheikh Qassem pointed to recent moves by the US and some Western countries to stop Lebanon’s southern front, saying, “If you want politics to bear upon the field, stop the war in Gaza first and then the Lebanese front will stop, and first reach an agreement with the Palestinians and end the war in Gaza completely.”

Israel launched its brutal war on Gaza on October 7 last year after Palestinian resistance groups carried out a historic operation against the usurping regime in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

The Israeli military has also been conducting attacks against the Lebanese territory since then, prompting retaliatory strikes from Hezbollah on a nearly daily basis in support of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.

Hezbollah has pledged to keep up its retaliatory operations as long as the Tel Aviv regime continues its onslaught on Gaza.

Nearly 37,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children, and more than 83,000 others have sustained injuries in the Israeli aggression on Gaza.

As many as eight months into the Israeli genocide, vast swathes of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.