Hezbollah Pressures its Supporters to Attend Nasrallah Funeral

People visit the site where late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed by the Israeli airstrike on 27 September 2024 in the Haret Hreik neighborhood, in the Dahieh suburb, southern Beirut, Lebanon, 21 February 2025. (EPA)
People visit the site where late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed by the Israeli airstrike on 27 September 2024 in the Haret Hreik neighborhood, in the Dahieh suburb, southern Beirut, Lebanon, 21 February 2025. (EPA)
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Hezbollah Pressures its Supporters to Attend Nasrallah Funeral

People visit the site where late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed by the Israeli airstrike on 27 September 2024 in the Haret Hreik neighborhood, in the Dahieh suburb, southern Beirut, Lebanon, 21 February 2025. (EPA)
People visit the site where late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed by the Israeli airstrike on 27 September 2024 in the Haret Hreik neighborhood, in the Dahieh suburb, southern Beirut, Lebanon, 21 February 2025. (EPA)

Hezbollah has for over a month been preparing to hold a mass funeral for its slain leaders Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine, who were killed by Israel in 2024 in its last war with the Iran-backed party.

Hezbollah is aiming to use the funeral into a sort of referendum over its popularity and demonstrate that its supporters continue to stand by it after its heavy losses in the war and after it has been weakened politically in Lebanon.

The party has been calling on supporters in Lebanon and abroad to show up en masse to the funeral that will be held on Sunday.

The government had recently suspended flights from Iran to Beirut due to security concerns, which had left Hezbollah scrambling to find alternative routes to fly its supporters from Iran to Lebanon.

The Iranians have turned to Baghdad and flights from the Iraqi capital to Beirut have been fully booked for days.

Informed sources said Iran’s proxies in Iraq have worked on sending droves of people to the funeral.

Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport has been the scene of a number of disputes between travelers over the insistence of funeral attendees to brandish Nasrallah posters and chant slogans in support of the party.

Nasrallah’s son Mohammed Mehdi has also joined efforts to rally supporters. In an instagram post, he accused “enemies of working against us to prevent the funeral from happening.”

He called on those who can attend to do so and to ignore concerns about traffic and the poor weather.

Meanwhile, security agencies are on alert for any clashes that may erupt on the day of the funeral between Hezbollah supporters and its opponents.

President Joseph Aoun chaired on Friday a security meeting attended by the ministers of defense and interior and heads of security agencies to discuss the measures in place for the funeral.

A security source told Asharq Al-Awsat that the agencies are on their highest alert level throughout the country in anticipation of the funeral.

All precautions and plans are in place to confront any development, it added.

The funeral will likely leave Lebanon at a standstill as Hezbollah supporters flock to Beirut from across the country. Authorities have already suspended flights from Beirut airport on Sunday between 12 and 4 pm.

Hezbollah officials have called on the people to attend the funeral, revealing that travelers and officials from 79 countries are confirmed to be there.

People line up to check in for a flight to Beirut at the Baghdad International Airport on February 20, 2025. (AFP)

Politically-motivated

Political activist and editor-in-chief of Janoubia website Ali al-Amine said the intense rallying of supporters for the funeral is purely politically-motivated and has nothing to do with the burials.

Hezbollah is using every means at its disposal to rally and pressure supporters to attend the event. Anyone failing to show up will be viewed as a traitor to its cause and will face criticism, he told Asharq Al-Awsat.

Hezbollah is trying to impose a “new internal equation” to stand against the wave of change that has swept the country following the party’s defeat in the war, Aoun’s election and the formation of a new government that does not include Hezbollah ministers.

The party wants to act against the state building project, Amine warned.

Hezbollah is working on rallying its Shiite popular base because it believes it offers it “protection and immunity,” he went on to say.

Inciting Shiite sectarian sentiments and spending millions of dollars on Nasrallah’s funeral is an attempt to “sanctify” him and turn his burial site into a shrine similar to the Shiite ones in Iraq, Syria and Iran, he said.

Officials from the Iran-backed Houthi militias are also attending the funeral and Information Minister in Yemen’s legitimate government Moammar al-Eryani has called on Lebanese authorities to arrest them on charges of war crimes and human rights violations.

Former Minister Dr. Rashid Derbas told Asharq Al-Awsat that Beirut cannot arrest them without a warrant, which it does not have.



US Envoy Reaffirms Backing for Damascus, Rules Out ‘Plan B’

US Ambassador to Türkiye and Special Envoy for Syria, Thomas Barrack, arrives for a meeting with the Lebanese prime minister at the government palace in Beirut, Lebanon, 07 July 2025. EPA/WAEL HAMZEH
US Ambassador to Türkiye and Special Envoy for Syria, Thomas Barrack, arrives for a meeting with the Lebanese prime minister at the government palace in Beirut, Lebanon, 07 July 2025. EPA/WAEL HAMZEH
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US Envoy Reaffirms Backing for Damascus, Rules Out ‘Plan B’

US Ambassador to Türkiye and Special Envoy for Syria, Thomas Barrack, arrives for a meeting with the Lebanese prime minister at the government palace in Beirut, Lebanon, 07 July 2025. EPA/WAEL HAMZEH
US Ambassador to Türkiye and Special Envoy for Syria, Thomas Barrack, arrives for a meeting with the Lebanese prime minister at the government palace in Beirut, Lebanon, 07 July 2025. EPA/WAEL HAMZEH

The United States will keep backing Syria’s government and has no “Plan B” to working with it to unite the war‑scarred country back together, still reeling from years of civil war and wracked by new sectarian violence, US envoy Tom Barrack said on Monday.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Barrack – Washington’s ambassador to Türkiye and special envoy for Syria, who is also on a short assignment in Lebanon – called last week’s Israeli strikes inside Syria “badly timed” and said they had “complicated efforts to stabilize the region.”

Barrack spoke in Beirut after more than a week of clashes in Sweida province between Druze militiamen and Sunni Bedouin tribes.

Over the weekend he brokered what he described as a limited ceasefire between Syria and Israel, aimed only at halting the fighting in Sweida. Syrian government troops have since redeployed in the area and evacuated civilians from both communities on Monday, he said.

Barrack told the AP that “the killing, the revenge, the massacres on both sides” are “intolerable,” but that “the current government of Syria, in my opinion, has conducted themselves as best they can as a nascent government with very few resources to address the multiplicity of issues that arise in trying to bring a diverse society together.”

Regarding Israel’s strikes on Syria, Barrack said: “The United States was not asked, nor did they participate in that decision, nor was it the United States’ responsibility in matters that Israel feels is for its own self-defense.”

However, he said Israel’s intervention “creates another very confusing chapter” and “came at a very bad time.”

Prior to the violence in Sweida, Israel and Syria had been in talks over security matters, while the Trump administration had been pushing them to move toward full normalization of diplomatic relations.

When the latest fighting erupted, “Israel’s view was that south of Damascus was this questionable zone, so that whatever happened militarily in that zone needed to be agreed upon and discussed with them,” Barrack said. “The new government (in Syria) coming in was not exactly of that belief.”

The ceasefire announced Saturday between Syria and Israel is a limited agreement addressing only the conflict in Sweida, he said. It does not address broader issues including Israel’s contention that the area south of Damascus should be a demilitarized zone.

In the discussions leading up to the ceasefire, Barrack said “both sides did the best they can” to reach agreement on specific questions related to the movement of Syrian forces and equipment from Damascus to Sweida.

He suggested that Israel would prefer to see Syria fragmented and divided rather than a strong central state in control of the country.

Later Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz posted on X that Israel’s strikes “were the only way to stop the massacre of the Druze in Syria, the brothers of our brothers the Israeli Druze”.

Katz added: “Anyone who criticizes the attacks is unaware of the facts,” he continued. It was not clear if he was responding to Barrack’s comments.

Damascus has been negotiating with the Kurdish forces that control much of northeast Syria to implement an agreement that would merge the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces with the new national army.