Lebanon’s former PM Hariri: Hezbollah is dragging us into Syrian ‘fire’

Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Saturday condemned Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, saying his recent speech threatened to further involve Lebanon in the Syria war.

“I listened to speech by Hezbollah secretary general. It was rather balanced at first, and catastrophic toward the end,” Hariri said, according to the Daily Star Lebanon.

“How can a responsible man contradict himself so, calling for self-restraint and announcing his readiness to personally go to Syria?” the leader of the Future Movement asked.

In a speech Friday, Nasrallah blamed Sunni extremists for a deadly car bombing that struck a Hezbollah neighborhood south of Beirut on Thursday.

Nasrallah defiantly said he was prepared to double the number of his fighters in Syria if the bombing turns out to be linked to his group's intervention there.

“It is good the Secretary General of Hezbollah is enthusiastic to combat terrorism, but we still don't understand why he drew a red line in Nahr al-Bared. Wasn’t it takfiri weapons fighting the army then?,” Hariri asked, referring to the deadly 2007 battles between the military and the Islamist Fatah al-Islam group in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared of north Lebanon, the Daily Star reported.

“Terrorism is the same regardless of the faces it takes, but Hezbollah explains it according to its own interests,” he said.

Sectarian tensions have worsened dramatically in Lebanon since Hezbollah openly declared it was fighting alongside Assad's troops to help crush a rebellion by Syria's Sunni majority.

Lebanese Sunnis support the rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is a member of a Shiite offshoot sect.

“Hezbollah’s logic reminds me of American logic for invading Iraq under the pretext of WMD's,” Hariri tweeted, referring to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“The same will happen in Syria and the takfiris will prove to be a tiny minority which will have no place in Syria after Bashar's fall,” he said.

“Takfiris have no place in Syria after the fall of Bashar. But what will Hezbollah do after Bashar falls?,” Hariri asked.

“Logically it will withdraw from Syria but what will it do in Lebanon? America withdrew from Iraq to America where Iraq is not a neighbor.”

“He [Nasrallah] is laying the foundations for a tense neighborhood with the new Syria,” Hariri said.

(With the Associated Press)