Hezbollah dismisses US-led strikes as failure

BEIRUT (Reuters): The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah said on Sunday that Western strikes on Syria had failed to terrorize the army, help insurgents or even serve Israel’s interests.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the U.S. military had kept its strikes limited because it knew a wider attack would spark retaliation from Damascus and its allies.

“The American (military) knows well that going towards a wide confrontation and a big operation against the regime and the army and the allied forces in Syria could not end,” Nasrallah said at a rally in Lebanon’s Bekaa.

“Any such confrontation would inflame the entire region.”

Iran-backed Shi’ite Hezbollah has been a vital ally of Damascus in Syria’s seven-year war, helping it regain territory from rebels and Islamic State militants.

The Hezbollah military and political movement, which has lawmakers in the Lebanese parliament, fights alongside the Syrian army.