BEIRUT—Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem has said any attack on the group’s backer Tehran would also be an attack on the militants, and warned that any new war on Iran would ignite the region.
Last week, President Donald Trump said a US “armada” was heading toward the Gulf and that Washington was watching Iran closely after a bloody crackdown on protesters.
He had appeared to step back from military intervention, but has insisted it remains an option.
Speaking in a televised address to supporters at a solidarity rally for Iran, Qassem said Hezbollah and its backer were facing an “aggression that does not distinguish between us.”
“A war on Iran this time will ignite the region,” he warned.
“We will choose at that time how to act… but we are not neutral,” he said, adding that “on how we act, these are details that the battle determines, and we will decide according to the interests at stake”.
Iran is Hezbollah’s main supporter, providing it with funding and weapons since its creation in the 1980s.
Qassem said in the past two months, his party had received via mediators “a clear and explicit question” about whether Hezbollah would intervene if the United States and Israel went to war with Iran.
He said they sought a “pledge from the party that it would not intervene.”
More than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, which largely ended with a November 2024 ceasefire, badly weakened the group, and the Lebanese government has begun implementing a plan to disarm it starting in the south.
Hezbollah had called on supporters to gather on Monday in its strongholds across Lebanon to express support for Iran “in the face of American-Zionist sabotage and threats.”
