Assad: Will Supply Hizbullah With ‘Game-Changing’ Weapons

YERUSHALAYIM

Syrian President Bashar Assad said that his country “will give everything to Hizbullah” that it needs to fight Israel, the Lebanese al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Thursday.

According to the report, Assad’s statement was made during a meeting with Lebanese delegates in Damascus and was aimed at dispelling their fears that Syria will abandon support of Hizbullah in the wake of the Israeli airstrike on a Hizbullah-bound missile cache last week.

The Lebanese delegates described Assad as showing “self-confidence and contentment.”

In the same vein, The Associated Press quoted Hizbullah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah declaring on Thursday  that Syria will supply him with “game-changing” weapons.

“Syria will give the resistance special weapons it never had before,” Nasrallah said in a speech. “We mean game-changing.”

Nasrallah said the shipments of new types of weapons would serve as the Syrian reaction to Israel’s airstrikes. Syria has long been a conduit for Iranian weapons bound for Hizbullah.

Israeli officials said the Lebanese militia has tens of thousands of rockets, but that most of them are unguided. Israeli officials said the shipments targeted twice last week included precision-guided missiles. Earlier this week, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sent a message to Assad by special envoy promising “full and unlimited support from Iran, politically, militarily, and economically, to the Syrian leadership and people, against the terrorists, Israel, the U.S., and all who dare attack this country.”

At the same time, however, Assad and Iranian sources were quoted by al-Akhbar as saying that they are “aware that Israel does not want war.”

Assad went as far as saying Damascus chose not to response immediately to Israel’s alleged attack for that very reason.

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