Hezbollah accused Saudi Arabia and Turkey on Monday of obstructing efforts to reach a political solution in Syria, saying Riyadh did not want to see any progress at Geneva peace talks aimed at ending five years of conflict.
Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Saudi Arabia have for years been on opposing sides of Syria’s civil war, but relations have worsened in recent months – mirroring the growing hostility between Riyadh and Tehran, the region’s two rival powers.
“What is disrupting any progress towards a political solution is firstly Saudi Arabia, and secondly Turkey,” Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah told Al Mayadeen television in an interview.
Shi’ite Muslim Hezbollah has sent fighters to Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad. Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which insist Assad must leave power, have been supporting Sunni Muslim insurgents fighting to overthrow him.
“Saudi Arabia doesn’t want any progress in the negotiations in Geneva,” Nasrallah said, adding Riyadh might be holding out until the U.S. presidential election in November to see whether a new administration might pursue a different policy on Syria.
“So I don’t expect progress in the political process or a political solution,” he said.
His criticism of Riyadh comes nearly three weeks after the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which groups Saudi Arabia, the Unitd Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar, declared Hezbollah a terrorist organisation.
Saudi Arabia said last week it would punish anyone who belongs to Hezbollah, sympathises with it, supports it financially or harbours any of its members.
Several GCC countries have deported Lebanese nationals over suspected links to the group. A Kuwaiti newspaper said on Monday the emirate had expelled 11 Lebanese and three Iraqis.
Nasrallah warned Israel against trying to exploit Hezbollah’s deployment in Syria to launch military action in Lebanon, but said he believed a major conflict with Israel was unlikely – because of the heavy costs it would bring.
“In any war against Lebanon, which targeted Lebanon’s people, infrastructure – we would go into this war without limits or red lines,” he said.
Nasrallah said Hezbollah could hit any target inside Israel, including nuclear facilities and what he said were biological research centres and petrochemical plants.
Israel and Hezbollah fought an inconclusive war in 2006.
