Report: Hezbollah Terror Group Pulling Out of Syria, Refocusing on Israel

Since Iran and Russia continue to pile on with direct support of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah, an Iran-backed terrorist group, has been allowed to fortify its gains outside Damascus and retreat back into southern Lebanon, from where the jihadi outfit is based.

Hezbollah leaders have told Assad’s representatives in Damascus that they would be scaling back and letting other entities join the Syrian Armed Forces in their offensives against opposition fighters, the Beirut-based Daily Star reports.

An unnamed source told the Lebanese paper that Hezbollah felt they had accomplished their goal of securing the integrity of the Syria-Lebanon border, and that they could now prepare to refocus on their chief enemy: Israel.

The story notes that Hezbollah’s reported shift in strategy and tactics comes more than two years after their leader, Hassan Nasrallah, pledged to fight alongside Assad’s forces in May of 2013.

The source added that Syrian, Hezbollah, Russian, Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and the forces of the Iran-backed Fatima Organization had been conducting joint operations in Syria.

A pro-Hezbollah paper, Al Akhbar, also reported on the alliance between the multiple aforementioned entities.

“The parties to the alliance are the states of Russia, Iran, Syria and Iraq, with Lebanon’s Hezbollah as the fifth party,” said Al Akhbar’s editor-in-chief, adding that the multi-nation fighting force would be called the “4+1” alliance.”

The alliance is “the most important in the region and the world for many years,” the writer opined.

Hezbollah continues to try to impose pressure onto figures within the internal politics of Lebanon. The group called on Wednesday for an iron-fisted leader to lead the country as president.

“If we had a choice between a powerful elected president and the option of chaos, disorder and illegality, we would choose the first option, because we are against chaos and disorder,” Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, said Wednesday.

Middle East observers have worried that Hezbollah can now refocus its massive missile arsenal and armaments on Israel. After the nuclear deal reached between the P5+1 world powers and Iran, both Hezbollah and Tehran agreed that the post-deal world presented an opportunity to “face threats posed by the Zionist entity.” Hezbollah was originally created to turn Lebanon into a “graveyard for Jews,” according to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the terror group.