Hezbollah says Kurdish vote a step towards wider Mideast partition

The powerful Lebanese group Hezbollah said on Saturday that an Iraqi Kurdish independence vote marked a first step towards the partition of the Middle East, warning that this would lead to “internal wars” and must be opposed.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Iran-backed group, said events in northern Iraq, where Kurds overwhelmingly voted for independence on Monday, were a threat to the whole region and not just Iraq and neighbouring states with Kurdish populations.

Nasrallah said:

It will open the door to partition, partition, partition…partition means taking the region to internal wars whose end and time frame is known only to God

Nasrallah noted that his group’s arch enemy Israel had come out in support of Kurdish statehood and described the referendum as part of a US-Israeli plot to carve up the region.

The United States came out in opposition to the vote, along with major European states and neighbouring countries Turkey and Iran. The government of Syria, where Kurdish groups have established autonomous regions, also opposed the referendum.

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Nasrallah was speaking to supporters on the eve of Ashura, when Shias commemorate the slaying of the Prophet Mohammad’s grandson, Imam Hussein, at Kerbala in 680 AD.

Hezbollah, a political and military movement, is a major player in the Syrian conflict, where it has deployed thousands of fighters in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

Hezbollah fighters are currently fighting along with other Iran-backed militias and the Syrian army against Daesh militants in eastern Syria.

“Daesh is at its end. It is a matter of time in Iraq and Syria,” Nasrallah said.

He said counter attacks mounted by Daesh in eastern Syria in the last two days were expected as the group was besieged, adding that it was “incapable of recovering ground”.

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