Iran: Hezbollah will retaliate in case of Israeli strike

Major-General Yahya Rahim Safavi, who serves as the top military advisor for Iran's supreme leader the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned Saturday that if Israel were to attack his country's nuclear facilities, Hezbollah will retaliate.

Iran's Maher news agency quoted Safavi as saying that, "If the Zionist regime acts against us one of these days, resistance groups, and mainly Hezbollah, will respond and act against it with great ease."

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"Defending the Palestinian people is within the scope of our strategic defense interests and both Lebanon and Syria fall under our strategic maneuvering zone," he added.

Also on Saturday, Iranian Chief of Staff General Hassan Firouzabadi commented  on the West's attempts to intervene in the Syrian crisis, saying that the West was "sure to fail in that arena."

According to Firouzabadi, "Syria will surely become a source of defeat and scandal for the United States and the West, as they race to save the Zionist regime."

The Iranian general further claimed that the recent series of al-Qaeda terror attacks in Syria were part of the West's conspiracy against Muslims.

"The international community should know that al-Qaeda and the rest of the (Islamic) radicals have nothing to do with Shiites and Sunnis and that the result of this campaign of terror… will only make things more complicated for the Europeans and the Americans," he told Iran's Press TV.

Middle East experts believe that the Iranians are exacerbating their tone vis-à-vis the West in regards to Syria, for fear that their ally's days are numbered.

Should the Assad regime collapse, the radical axis of Iran-Syria-Hezbollah is likely to suffer a serious blow.

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