Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem leads prayers during funeral of Hezbollah senior leader Ibrahim Aqil and Hezbollah member Mahmoud Hamad, who were killed in Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sept. 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

Hezbollah head Naim Qassem said on Saturday that the Lebanese armed group had lost its supply route through Syria, in his first comments since the toppling of President Bashar al-Assad nearly a week ago by a sweeping rebel offensive.

Under Assad, Iran-backed Hezbollah used Syria to bring in weapons and other military equipment from Iran, through Iraq and Syria and into Lebanon. But on Dec. 6, anti-Assad fighters seized the border with Iraq and cut off that route, and two days later, Islamist rebels captured the capital Damascus.

“Yes, Hezbollah has lost the military supply route through Syria at this stage, but this loss is a detail in the resistance’s work,” Qassem said in a televised speech on Saturday, without mentioning Assad by name.

“A new regime could come and this route could return to normal, and we could look for other ways,” he added.

Hezbollah started intervening in Syria in 2013 to help Assad fight rebels seeking to topple him at that time. Last week, as rebels approached Damascus, the group sent supervising officers to oversee a withdrawal of its fighters there.

More than 50 years of Assad family rule has now been replaced with a transitional caretaker government put in place by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former al Qaeda affiliate that spearheaded the rebel offensive.

Qassem said Hezbollah “cannot judge these new forces until they stabilize” and “take clear positions,” but said he hoped that the Lebanese and Syrian peoples and governments could continue to cooperate.

“We also hope that this new ruling party will consider Israel an enemy and not normalize relations with it. These are the headlines that will affect the nature of the relationship between us and Syria,” Qassem said.

Hezbollah and Israel exchanged fire across Lebanon’s southern border for nearly a year in hostilities triggered by the Gaza war, before Israel went on the offensive in September, killing most of Hezbollah’s top leadership.

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Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad attends the Arab League summit, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, May 19, 2023. Photo: Saudi Press Agency/Handout via REUTERS

In the final days leading to his ouster, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad complained to Iran’s foreign minister that Turkey was actively supporting Sunni rebels in their offensive to topple him, two Iranian officials told Reuters this week.

Five decades of rule by Assad’s family ended on Sunday when he fled to Moscow, where the government granted him asylum. Iran had backed Assad in Syria’s long civil war and his overthrow was widely seen as a major blow to the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance,” a political and military alliance that opposes Israeli and US influence in the Middle East.

As rebel forces from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly aligned to al Qaeda, seized major cities and advanced towards the capital, Assad met Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi in Damascus on Dec. 2.

At the meeting, Assad voiced anger over what he said was Turkey’s intensified efforts to unseat him, according to a senior Iranian official. Araqchi assured Assad of Iran’s continued support and promised to raise the issue with Ankara, the official said.

The next day, Araqchi met with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to express Tehran’s deep concerns over Ankara’s support for rebel advances.

“The meeting was tense. Iran expressed its unhappiness with Turkey’s alignment with US and Israeli agendas and conveyed Assad’s concerns,” a second Iranian official said, referring to Ankara’s support for rebels and cooperation with Western and Israeli interests in targeting Iran’s allies in the region.

Fidan, the official said, blamed Assad for the crisis, asserting that his failure to engage in genuine peace talks and his years of oppressive rule were the root causes of the conflict.

A Turkish foreign ministry source familiar with Fidan’s talks said that those were not the exact remarks by Fidan, and added that Araqchi did not bring and convey any messages from Assad to Turkey, without elaborating.

Fidan told reporters in Doha on Sunday that the Assad regime “had precious time” to address Syria’s existing problems, but did not, instead allowing “a slow decay and collapse of the regime.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that Assad’s toppling was the result of a plan by the United States and Israel.

He said that one of Syria’s neighbors also had a role and continues to do so. He did not name the country, but appeared to be referring to Turkey.

NATO member Turkey, which controls swathes of land in northern Syria after several cross-border incursions against the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, was a main backer of opposition groups aiming to topple Assad since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011.

Assad’s downfall stripped Iran and its ally the Lebanese group Hezbollah of a vital ally. Tehran’s ties to Damascus had allowed Iran to spread its influence through a land corridor from its western border via Iraq all the way to Lebanon to bring arms supplies to Hezbollah.

Iran spent billions of dollars propping up Assad during the war and deployed its Revolutionary Guards to Syria to keep its ally in power.

Hezbollah also played a major part, sending fighters to support him, but had to bring them back to Lebanon over the last year to fight in a bruising war with Israel – a redeployment that weakened Syrian government lines.

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Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff. Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi salutes fallen soldiers at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem in a picture published on Oct. 27, 2024. Photo: IDF.

A top US military officer visited Israel from Wednesday to Friday, meeting with Israeli defense officials and discussing the situation in Syria, among other regional topics, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement.

Army General Michael Kurilla, CENTCOM’s commander, met Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, along with Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, CENTCOM said.

Washington has urged Israel to be in close consultation with the US over events unfolding in Syria, where days earlier Syrian rebels led by rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani brought an end to more than 50 years of rule by the Assad family, as ousted President Bashar al-Assad fled the country.

The world has been watching to see if Syria’s new rulers can stabilize the country in which more than a decade of civil war killed hundreds of thousands and sparked a refugee crisis.

Following the collapse of Assad’s regime, the Israeli military said its jets conducted hundreds of strikes in Syria and destroyed the bulk of its strategic weapons stockpiles.

Katz has ordered Israeli troops to prepare to stay over the winter on Mount Hermon, a strategic location overlooking Damascus, adding to signs that Israel is planning a prolonged military presence in Syria.

“The leaders discussed a range of regional security issues, to include the ongoing situation in Syria, and preparedness against other strategic and regional threats,” the CENTCOM statement said.

CENTCOM said Kurilla also visited Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon in recent days.

While Israel welcomed the removal of Assad, an ally of arch rival Iran, it is suspicious of the rebel groups that toppled him, many of which have origins linked to Islamist groups.

In Lebanon, Kurilla visited Beirut to monitor withdrawal of the first Israeli troops under a ceasefire reached last month for a war that killed thousands and displaced over a million.

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