Report: Hezbollah hasn't given state guarantees on staying out of war

President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam have not received any “official guarantees” from Hezbollah regarding not engaging in a new war in support of Iran, an official source said.

Speaker Nabih Berri also has not received “any pledge of this kind," the source told the Nidaa al-Watan newspaper in remarks published Wednesday.

MP Hassan Fadlallah had announced Monday that Iran has not asked Hezbollah to intervene militarily if a new war is waged on the Islamic republic.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran did not ask us in the past, nor today, to support it in confronting the American-Israeli aggression,” Fadlallah said.

Asharq al-Awsat newspaper had reported over the weekend that Hezbollah had informed Berri that it would not intervene in support of Iran if war broke out, which Berri “conveyed to President Joseph Aoun.”

And while al-Liwaa newspaper has quoted a “senior Hezbollah official” as saying that the group has not and will not give guarantees to anyone in this regard, despite being keen on “preventing any escalation,” sources close to Hezbollah said Tuesday that Tehran has “informed Hezbollah that it does not want its participation in any upcoming war that may be waged by the U.S. and Israel.”

The sources told Al-Arabiya’s Al-Hadath channel that Iran "does not need anyone to support it in any potential war because it possesses the necessary capabilities," emphasizing that "the Iranians have not asked the party to participate in any upcoming war."

However, they noted that "Hezbollah will not stand idly by if Israel crosses the current lines" in Lebanon.

Furthermore, the sources quoted Hezbollah as stating that its "participation in the Second Support War (in March in response to the assassination of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei) yielded fundamental results, most notably the Islamabad Agreement, which led to de-escalation and restricted the rules of engagement to the South, which is an achievement in itself."

The sources concluded by stressing that "the party is in a position of reacting to Israeli attacks."