Nasrallah: Hezbollah will stay involved in Syria war

Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah will stay involved in the Syrian conflict, after having helped government forces recapture the key town of Qusayr from rebels, its leader Hassan Nasrallah said Friday. "Before Qusayr is the same as after Qusayr. Nothing has changed," he said in a televised speech. "Isn't the conspiracy the same?... Have the facts changed? On the contrary, the other side is stirring up this conflict even more," said the leader of the powerful Iranian-backed group. "Where we need to be, we will be. Where we began to assume our responsibilities, we will continue to assume our responsibilities," he added. "To defeat this very, very dangerous conspiracy (against Syria) we will bear any sacrifices and all the consequences." Hezbollah, a staunch ally of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has become increasingly embroiled in the conflict in neighbouring Syria, which is now in its third year. The group has dispatched fighters to battle alongside regime troops, including most prominently in Qusayr, a former rebel stronghold in central Homs province on the border with Lebanon. Its fighters helped the Syrian army win back control of the town earlier this month, dealing a harsh blow to the opposition. The regime has said it plans to build on that victory by trying to retake large parts of the northern city of Aleppo and its surrounding province, but it is unclear whether Hezbollah will also join that operation. "The details will depend on the requirements on the ground," Nasrallah said in the address, which came on the Day of the Wounded, honouring Hezbollah casualties from different conflicts. Lebanon has been drawn into the Syrian conflict, despite an officially neutral stance on the fighting, by Hezbollah's involvement as well as the flow of rebel fighters and weapons across its borders. The involvement has raised tensions in the country, where many Shiites back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a member of the Alawite offshoot of Shia Islam, and Sunnis are more likely to support the mostly Sunni opposition. Nasrallah insisted Hezbollah was against increased sectarian tension in Lebanon, and urged his supporters and others to keep the calm in the country. But he defended the group's intervention in Syria. "We made the choice and we are involved because we are convinced that our contribution will be effective and it has proven effective," he said, in apparent reference to the capture of Qusayr. "The alternative (to the Assad regime) is chaos and the rule of these groups," he said, referring to extremist Islamist rebel groups he said were part of an "American-Israel-takfiri project." Hezbollah and its supporters have regularly made reference to the takfiri or extremist Islamist elements among the opposition to justify their involvement on the side of the Syrian regime. But Hezbollah's intervention has been condemned internationally, and regionally by the Arab League and the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, which announced sanctions against the group in response. Nasrallah said the GCC's decision came as "no surprise." "There are no Hezbollah members in the Gulf... We have no projects in the Gulf or elsewhere," he said. "If anyone thinks they are threatening us by putting us on a list of terrorist groups or by targeting the Lebanese (diaspora), they are mistaken," he added. "This will only strengthen our conviction that we're on the right track."