Senior Hizbullah Official Ammar Al-Mousawi: Anti-Hizbullah Campaign Following Beirut Port Blast Raises Suspicion That Hizbullah Rivals Were Behind The Blast

Ammar Al-Mousawi, Hizbullah's head of international relations, was interviewed on OTV (Lebanon) on August 25, 2020. He said that the anti-Hizbullah campaign launched immediately after the Beirut port blast leads one to suspect that Hizbullah's rivals had "prior knowledge" of the blast or had deliberately caused it in order to attack Hizbullah in the media. Al-Mousawi emphasized that he is not making any accusations to this effect and added that some Lebanese people go to Washington, act as informants, and incite people against Hizbullah. Al-Mousawi also claimed that these people use sanctions as a "Satanic approach of intimidating people" against members of Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement.

Ammar Al-Mousawi: "That group was prepared [for the Beirut post blast]. You know what I mean by 'that group.' Our rival group. Our rivals were prepared to launch an attack at the moment of the explosion – against the prime minister, the government, the parliament, Hizbullah... This readiness leads one to suspect that... It is as if these people caused the incident and then moved on to the next phase of attacking us politically in the media."

Interviewer: "Well, this is your assessment..."

Al-Mousawi: "I am not accusing anyone..."

Interviewer: "Of course not..."

Al-Mousawi: "What I want to say is that their readiness was to that level."

Interviewer: "Yes."

Al-Mousawi: "They were prepared to the point that one can say that either they did it or had had prior knowledge of it, and the evidence is that within hours, they were ready to launch their [media] campaign against their rivals.

[...]

"There are Lebanese people who go to incite in Washington. This is well known. It's nothing new. They even incite against Hizbullah. They go there and work as informants. If the Americans miss something, there are people who go there and draw their attention to it. There are people who go there and incite [against us]. There are people who use the 'stick' of the sanctions as a scarecrow. The sanctions may never come, but they say: 'You just wait, the sanctions are coming.' The threat of sanctions may not intimidate President Aoun or Minister Gebran Bassil, but it might scare people who support their Free Patriotic Movement. This is how they operate, with this Satanic approach of intimidating people."