“The terrorist threat on Lebanon is actual, real and continuous,” deputy head of Hezbollah’s executive council Sheikh Nabil Kaouk said Sunday. “And whoever doubts or underestimates [this threat] is either ignorant or negligent, and he harms the top national interest of Lebanon.”
Speaking at a ceremony at southern village of Shaqra in honor of a Hezbollah martyr killed last Sunday, Kaouk said “whoever denies Hezbollah’s role in protecting” Lebanon is “oblivious to the truth.”
He then underscored that “ISIL’s decision has [clearly] been declared. Their portrayed slogan is to establish the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria, which includes Lebanon.”
According to Kaouk, the fundamentalist group that has claimed authority over large parts of Syria and Iraq also has Lebanon on its sights, but might have been more focused on Syria and Iraq for strategic objectives.
“It is just a matter of priorities,” he said.
He said that while the tripartite o the “Army, people and resistance” was the right equation to protect Lebanon, the Army should be politically empowered to act, “before being given the tools and equipment.”
Stressing that Lebanon needed a unified defense strategy, Kaouk argued that “hesitation, procrastination, underestimation and aggressive and instigating speech give a free service to the takfiri plot.”
Also during the event Hezbollah’s MP Nawwaf Al-Moussawi echoed Kaouk’s argument, stressing that Lebanon needed “agreements that should lead to establishing one united Lebanese front against the Takfiri threat that wishes to impose darkness on Lebanon and the region.”
“If there is an increasing global interest in forming an international-regional alliance to confront Takfiri groups,” he said, “those eager to [safeguard] Lebanon should be even more progressive by forming this front, through which Lebanon’s diversity could be protected.”
Moussawi further underlined that Lebanon was not able to accept Takfiri ideologies, because the country was built on diversity, “which requires the necessity to acknowledge the other.”
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