Report: Iran told Nasrallah to prevent Assad downfall 'at all costs'
Arab official tells Kuwaiti newspaper Supreme Leader Khamenei instructed Shiite group leader to take on larger role in Syria war, block rebel supply routes
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei instructed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to prevent the downfall of Bashar Assad's regime in Syria "at all costs," the Kuwaiti newspaper Araa reported Thursday, citing a high-ranking Arab official.
The official said that during a meeting between Khamenei and Nasrallah in Tehran last month, the supreme leader told the secretary general of the Lebanese Shiite group to block all supply routes to the rebels fighting to overthrow the Syrian president.
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According to the report, the demand surprised Nasrallah, but he treated it as a "religious edict."
The newspaper's source said the directive led the Shiite group to send to Syria a large number of trained fighters who succeeded in laying siege to the city of El Quseir, near Homs, while cutting off military supply routes to the rebels.
Syrian rebels (Photo: AP)
The source said Hezbollah helped bolster the Syrian army's situation on the outskirts of Damascus.
Video courtesy of jn1.tv
Over the past few days a source affiliated with Hezbollah told the Arab press that Hezbollah units were taking part in the fighting in Syria and played a significant if not decisive role in the Syrian army's recapture of a strategic city located on the international route between Damascus and Daraa, located in the south of the country.
The source said Hezbollah fighters were advancing southward at a fast pace and have reached the entrance to Daraa and the Syrian-Jordanian border.
A senior member of a Salafi jihadist group whose fighters are taking part in the Syrian war warned Hezbollah that if its fighters reach the border with Jordan they will be "burned by a blazing fire." The senior member of the group, Muhammad al-Shalbi, resides in Jordan.
Jordanian Information Minister Mohammad Momani also responded to the report, saying he had no information regarding the presence of Hezbollah fighters near the border, but stressed that the Hashemite Kingdom would "not allow any element to breach the border."
