BEIRUT (Dispatches) --
Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Lebanon, in the battle to demarcate the southern maritime borders got everything it wanted, except for one matter that remained pending.
Speaking during a televised speech, Nasrallah deemed the file of demarcation of the southern maritime border with the occupying regime of Israel, resulting from indirect maritime negotiations, as “an important outcome and a historic and great victory,” explaining that “a small square remained stuck with an area of 2.5 km, which Lebanon insists on considering as an occupied area that must be liberated.
He stressed that “the resistance and the threat of war were decisive factors in the completion of the maritime border demarcation agreement”.
“We almost reached war before reaching an agreement.”
Nasrallah pointed out that Lebanon did not provide any security guarantees, outlining the accomplishments Lebanon was able to achieve through the maritime border demarcation agreement.
Lebanon, he said, acquired the entire Qana field, “without any commitment or compensation or anything, which was achieved from a position of strength and an obligation on part of the enemy not to carry out any activity towards the Qana field.
Lebanon also “achieved the lifting of the ban on companies that have committed to working in the blocks, as the Israeli enemy cannot threaten or open fire at them nor prevent them from operating according to the agreement; in addition to the lifting of the American and Western ban in the context of the siege imposed on Lebanon, far-reaching the encouragement of companies to explore and extract gas”, he added.
Nasrallah said Lebanon’s share of the exclusive economic zone in the area with Cyprus will expand after this demarcation.
“The Israeli enemy recognized the balance of deterrence with the resistance as a result of what happened in the maritime border demarcation file,” he said.
“There is no suspicion of normalization or recognition of the Israeli enemy following the maritime border demarcation agreement.”
Elsewhere in his remarks, the Hezbollah chief pointed to monumental demonstrations that took place earlier on Saturday following a terrorist attack on the southeastern Iranian city of Shiraz.
The tragedy saw an armed Daesh terrorist storming Shah Cheragh -- a sacred and popular Shia shrine in the city – and shooting indiscriminately at pilgrims. The attack left 13 people martyred and several others injured.
The huge processions that came in the aftermath of the attack, Nasrallah noted, amounted to a “decisive message” to Iran’s enemies that all their hostile efforts against the Islamic Republic would end in failure.
The rallies indicated “the Iranian people’s support for the country’s establishment, and spelled despair for all those who are contemplating malicious activities against the country,” the Hezbollah chief stated.