Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday ruled out sending troops to Lebanon, after U.S. President Donald Trump suggested Damascus fight the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization.
“The solution for Lebanon will not come through war and the bombing of cities,” the Sunni Islamist leader told Al Mashhad Media in an interview. He urged the Lebanese state and the international community to advance a political solution that “everyone can believe in.”
“The crisis in Lebanon is very serious and there is a deadlock in political solutions,” al-Sharaa said. “President Trump expressed concern about the current situation in Lebanon, and his words were misunderstood. He spoke about Syria’s role in seeking a safe and peaceful solution, but people understood him as if Syria would enter Lebanon tomorrow morning.”
Trump in recent weeks expressed frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over airstrikes in Lebanon that he said could have jeopardized his peace deal with the Iranian regime.
On June 16, Trump said the Jewish state had been fighting Hezbollah for too long and that too many civilians have died.
“You don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the G7 summit in France. “Because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses, and they’re not all Hezbollah, that I can tell you.”
He added, “I suggested to Israel to let Syria take care of Hezbollah, because to be honest with you, I think they do a better job of doing it.”
Asked the next day if he had spoken to al-Sharaa about his suggestion, Trump nodded and said “yes.” Asked if Damascus was willing to take on Iran’s proxy army in Lebanon, Trump said he would talk about that later.
Netanyahu told the JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem on Sunday night that “no country” would do a better job in Lebanon than Israel, noting that the ratio of terrorists to noncombatants slain in the war has been as low as 5 to 1, despite Hezbollah’s use of human shields.
“Unheard of, because no army goes to such lengths as the Israeli army, who target terrorists and minimize civilian casualties,” he declared, saying that Jerusalem “should be commended for it.”
The IDF will remain in Southern Lebanon “as long as we need to protect our people” from Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists, Netanyahu stressed.
“The reason is perfectly understood; no country would be asked to do otherwise,” the premier said in his remarks.
“Imagine the United States. across the border, you have thousands, an army of thousands of terrorists who pellet your cities and your towns with rockets and ballistic missiles and killer drones. They kill your soldiers, they kill your citizens, they kill your children. And they threaten them every day. Well, what would America do?
“Would it say, ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do, let’s hold our fire’? Is that what America would say? No. You know damn well what America would do. It would cross the border, create a security zone, kill the terrorists and protect its people until the threat is removed,” he said. “That’s exactly what we are doing.”
