Hezbollah’s thug-in-chief, Hassan Nasrallah, addressed Lebanon today. What he said is not promising. You can read the entire transcript here, but it’s not necessary. The following snippet tells you everything you need to know:

I said . . . that any hand that reaches for the resistance [i.e., Hezbollah] and its arms will be cut off. Israel tried that in the July War, and we cut its hand off. We do not advise you to try us. Whoever is going to target us will be targeted by us. Whoever is going to shoot at us will be shot by us.

Nasrallah has one rhetorical tactic that he deploys every time Hezbollah experiences internal pressure in Lebanon: he accuses his opponents of working for the CIA, the Mossad, the Jews, or the Americans. Thus he said today that “there is an American plan that we are fighting against. This is the nature of the crisis.” And: “This struggle is between an honorable resistance, which is endorsed by Arabs and Muslims, and the United States and its allies.”

Well, it’s tough times for Nasrallah — the Sunni Arabs do not, alas, endorse what he’s doing, and in fact would like to see Hezbollah, and by extension Iran, dealt a serious blow. Nasrallah isn’t fooling anyone. The Sunni mufti of Lebanon harshly condemned Nasrallah last night, calling Hezbollah an “armed gang of outlaws.” The Egyptian and Saudi foreign ministers have done so as well, albeit in more diplomatic terms. The Israel-Hezbollah war two years ago exposed to a limited degree Sunni outrage at Hezbollah and Iran. This time, without the common Israeli enemy involved, such anger is going to be expressed much more forcefully.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 12:51 PM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.