Report: Hezbollah preparing to defend Damascus, strike Israel if Syria situation worsens

Hezbollah will only attack Israel if Iran approves strike; source says 10,000 fighters have been recruited by the Shi'ite group.

By YASSER OKBI
Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorists marching with flags 370 (photo credit: Jamal Saidi/Reuters)
Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorists marching with flags 370
(photo credit: Jamal Saidi/Reuters)
Hezbollah is preparing to defend Damascus from an invasion by the Syrian rebels following a possible US strike, as well as preparing for retaliation against Israel if the situation in the area calls for it, Lebanese sources told Saudi newspaper Okaz on Thursday.
The sources told the paper that the Shi'ite organization recruited 10,000 fighters, who were tasked to defend the Syrian capital in the event the Syrian army fails to thwart attacks on it from both the rebels and the United States.
An attack on Israel, however, will only take place "after receiving a specific order [to do so] from Iran," the sources told Okaz.
The sources added that Hezbollah has intentionally remained silent in recent days because "the organization's leadership understood right from the start that a military strike on [Damascus] is inevitable."
Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported on Tuesday that Hezbollah “called on all its officers and members to man their positions” ahead of the planned US strike on Syria.
Hezbollah fighters have left their regular positions and checkpoints in southern Beirut, turning off their mobile phones so that they could not be traced, according to the witnesses.
The head of the anti-Hezbollah movement Al-Mustaqbal ("Future") expressed doubt of Hezbollah's ability to respond to the impending military strike. "The masters of Hezbollah in Syria and Iran cannot respond," Moyin Marabi said. "So a criminal sect that acts as a militia and gets its instructions from its masters surely cannot respond either."
Marabi noted that Hezbollah was left on its own during the 2006 Second Lebanon War against Israel, and that Syria and Iran did not help it and chose to instead stand by to protect their own interests. "Whoever examines the situation understands that Iran is trying, through the presidential elections in which Hassan Rouhani was elected, to appease the West in order to gain relief from all of the sanctions imposed on it. The Iranian regime will not defend the [Assad] regime, that Tehran and Moscow consider to have already fallen."
Ariel Ben Solomon contributed to this report.