Ayatollah Jafar Shoujouni, warnings against Western Adventurism and making defensive intentions clear
Ayatollah: Hezbollah will respond to Iran attack
September 27, 2011 02:27 AM – By Kristin Dailey – The Daily Star
TEHRAN: Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah has said Hezbollah will destroy Tel Aviv if Israel attacks Iran, an Iranian ayatollah told The Daily Star.
Ayatollah Jafar Shoujouni, a senior Shiite scholar and prominent member of Iran’s Combatant Clergy Association, said Nasrallah made the remark during a two-and-a-half hour meeting with the Hezbollah leader in Lebanon about three months ago.
During the meeting Nasrallah told him, “I am a cadet of Ayatollah Khamenei’s school,” said Shojouni.
Nasrallah also expressed gratitude toward the late Grand Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Bahjat, crediting the recently deceased Iranian religious leader’s prayers for Hezbollah’s victory in the 2006 war, adding that his resistance group would retaliate against any Israeli attack on Iran.
“If Israelis come near Tehran, we will destroy Tel Aviv,” Shojouni, who was Bahjat’s only student for eight years, quoted Nasrallah as saying.
Western and Israeli analysts have warned that an Israeli attack on Iran could draw Hezbollah retaliation, but officials in the resistance group have never acknowledged or denied this publicly.
Shojouni said Nasrallah is a cause of honor, not just for Lebanon, but also for all Islamic and Arab countries.
“Because Israelis are afraid of him and his people, we must thank him, and Iranians are protecting him for this reason,” he said.
“Israel is afraid of this sayyed, son of Zahra, and it shows because Israel has forgotten what was once its slogan, which is that they will have the lands from the Euphrates to the Nile River. It shows that they are so afraid of Hezbollah that they have forgotten about all of these things,” Shojouni added.
Speaking about the unrest in neighboring Syria, one of Iran’s closest allies, the ayatollah said that the Assad family’s control of the Syrian presidency for four decades was “not correct.”
“These sort of 40-year presidencies will lead to dictatorship, and it is so,” he said, arguing that Syria should instead “follow the path and methods of Iran,” by holding elections for a new president every four to five years.
However, he warned that Israel and Western countries were seeking to exploit the turmoil in Syria to their own advantage.
“On this point I say with certainty, Syria is not Libya. In Libya, oppression led to an awakening of the people, but in Syria, Israelis and Americans have made this problem in the name of the people … I think they wish to open the door of Syria with NATO force. Of course, Iran won’t allow this to happen,” he said.
“In the Iranian overview, Syria is on the front line against Israelis, and even Hezbollah in this case is connected with us [geographically] through Syria,” he said. “We agree with any kind of protests or internal reform aimed at improving the situation of the people. [But] our goal is that Zionists not use these protests as a way to inflict damage on Hezbollah and Syria’s resistance.”
