Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah issued a sharp assessment of the U.S.-backed Saudi Kingdom's failing aggression and proxy campaign against alleged Iranian regional interference, urging Riyadh to opt for dialogue with Tehran.
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The televised remarks were delivered in Hermel in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley at a celebration of the 17th anniversary of south Lebanon's liberation from Israeli occupying forces.
"I advise Saudi to set aside struggle, hatred and war. Your only solution for the sake of all Muslims, the whole region ... is dialogue with Iran and to negotiate with Iran," the Hezbollah secretary-general said.
"This path you are taking will only lead to spending billions more dollars and spilling more blood and you will be the ones who lose. You will fail," he added.
Nasrallah also said that Riyadh aimed to pull the United States into its conflict with Tehran after a summit where U.S. President Donald Trump signaled unequivocal backing for the Saudi kingdom while nearly calling for regime change in Iran.
The resistance leader questioned Trump's visit to the Saudi, highlighting the hypocrisy of honoring the former reality television star in the wealthy Wahhabi kingdom known for its ostensibly strict adherence to Islam.
“Why all this honoring to Trump by the Saudis, knowing that he is the U.S. president who mostly offended Arabs, Muslims, Gulf countries, and Saudis in his electoral campaign?” Nasrallah asked, according to Hezbollah press outlet Al-Manar. “Isn’t he the first president to forbid Muslims from eight countries to enter U.S.? Didn’t he say that Saudi Arabia is a dairy cow that we should milk and throw away? Isn’t he the president who loves Israel the most?”
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“The Saudis honored Trump this much only to protect themselves especially amid the wide criticism and files opened against them specifically for standing behind the Takfiri groups,” he explained, using a term for intolerant and sectarian extremists who attempt to excommunicate other Muslims for alleged apostasy.
Sayyed Nasrallah continued to explain that the Saudis were attempting to flatter and bribe Trump to the tune of US$110 billion in arms purchase as a means to preserve its role in the Middle East amid dwindling oil revenue and failed attempts at regional dominance in Yemen, Iraq and Syria. However, Nasrallah added, Trump could care less about the Saudi flattery, only taking Israeli interests and money into account.
Hezbollah was formed in 1985 as a resistance group born out of repression against the Shia Muslim minority. It defines itself through its struggle against Israeli settler-colonialism in Palestine and Lebanon, particularly the 1982 Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon which ended in the defeat of Israel and its humiliating withdrawal from the country in 2000.
Many experts in the region say Hezbollah inflicted a historic second defeat on the Israelis when Tel Aviv launched another campaign against southern Lebanon in 2006, which lasted for 34 days and claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians, displacing about a million people.