Hizbullah founder: Group has missiles, courage

Menacing words: Hizbullah possess Zelzal-2 missiles with a range of roughly 250 kilometers (about 160 miles) capable of hitting "any target in Israel," one of the Iranian founders of the Lebanese terror group says.

In an interview with reformist Iranian newspaper Sharq published on Thursday, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-Pur, who served as Iran's ambassador in Damascus during the 1980s, said Hizbullah has additional weapons in addition to missiles, as well as the courage to use them.

"There are countries that have weapons but don't have the courage to use them," he said.

According to Mohtashemi-Pur, Hizbullah constructed a series of underground bunkers, which allow it to maintain its missile-firing capability despite ongoing Israeli air raids.

Mohtashemi-Pur served as ambassador to Syria during the Lebanon War and is considered to have been one of the main contributors to the establishment of Hizbullah in the early 1980s. Western countries attribute to him involvement in the planning of the major attack on the Marines barracks in Beirut in 1983.

Today, he serves as the secretary-general of an organization called "The Committee for Support of Palestine's Intifada" and is one of the leaders of the reformist camp in Iran.

Iranian aid to Hizbullah

In the interview, Mohtashemi-Pur describes the circumstances that led to the establishment of Hizbullah as well as Iranian assistance to the organization.

"Some of the Hizbullah training took place in Lebanon," he said, but noted that former Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini decided to train Lebanese forces in Iran and provide them with equipment "so that they can protect Lebanon from Israel and fight for the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples' rights."

"From that moment, a new phase of training the Lebanese forces began and that's how the resistance started and the Hizbullah organization was established," Mohtashemi-Pur said.

"While I was in Syria and Lebanon, about 30 training courses took place, with 300 Lebanese being trained in each one of them, and it continued later on," he said. "Until now, Hizbullah trained more than 100,000 people directly or indirectly, most of them volunteers, yet Hizbullah's regular forces are fewer."

Mohtashemi-Pur also took the opportunity to praise Hizbullah, saying that "it's true that at first the (Iranian) Revolutionary Guard trained Hizbullah in Lebanon and Iran, yet they're the type of students who do better than their teachers, and today there's no room for comparison."

In recent days, Iranian leaders have made increasingly harsh statements regarding the war in Lebanon. On Wednesday, Iran's spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Hizbullah is Islam's front line of defense. Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also lashed out at Israel, saying that "the Zionist regime is a Satan under which all Satans come together, the long arms of the United States and Britain."