Hezbollah warns Saudi Arabia of falling into US-Israeli quagmire

Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement has condemned the “brutal” American-Saudi attack on Iraq, warning Riyadh of falling into the US-Israeli quagmire that is intended to destabilize and divide the region.

The statement came as Saudi Arabia and the US bombarded positions of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), which is the umbrella resistance group in Iraq and is also known as Al-Hashd al-Shaabi, deep inside Iraq, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens more on Wednesday. Washington and Riyadh claimed that the attacks were carried out in response to assaults on Saudi Arabia allegedly originating from Iraqi territory, without providing any evidence.

In a statement on Friday, Hezbollah slammed the attack as “a blatant and flagrant violation of international law and of Iraq's sovereignty and independence”, warning of the strike’s “dangerous repercussions”.

“This blatant and dangerous aggression against an official Iraqi body, with the participation of an Arab state, opens the door to extremely dangerous repercussions for the entire region, and serves only the interests of the American-Israeli project aimed at destabilizing the region, fragmenting the Ummah, and plunging it into a spiral of tensions, disputes, and fighting,” the movement said.

The statement stressed that based on “good-neighborliness, and brotherly and historical relations between Saudi Arabia and Iraq and its people”, Riyadh should have resorted to dialogue with the Baghdad government to address any tension or crisis.

Hezbollah said the kingdom should not have been “drawn into the policies of the American and Israeli enemy and bogged down in the quagmire of their projects aimed at undermining the region’s stability and fragmenting its unity.”

Iraq rejects US-Saudi claims over drone attacks on Saudi Arabia

Iraq has dismissed US-Saudi allegations that recent drone attacks on Saudi Arabia were launched from its territory.

The PMU reported that its sites in the provinces of Baghdad, Wasit, Nineveh, Basra, Kirkuk, Karbala, and Diyala were attacked early on Wednesday.

The anti-terror resistance force characterized the assaults as a "hazardous escalation," a "breach of Iraq's sovereignty," and an assault on the nation's official security agencies.

Hashd al-Sha’abi resistance fighters have played a major role in the liberation of Daesh-held areas to the south, northeast, and north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, ever since the terrorists launched an offensive in the country in June 2014.

Back in November 2016, the Iraqi parliament approved a law giving full legal status to the PMU fighters. It recognized the PMU as part of the national armed forces, placed the forces under the command of the prime minister, and granted them the right to receive salaries and pensions like the regular army and police forces.

The PMU and allied groups in Iraq have also contributed to a regional resistance campaign against US and Israeli aggressions that intensified since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in 2023 and later expanded to attacks on other countries of the region, including Iran and Lebanon.

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