Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Saturday blasted U.S. President Donald Trump ahead of his expected declaration of victory against the Islamic State group in Syria.
Nasrallah said that had it not been for the U.S., Syrian government forces supported by Hezbollah fighters on the ground would have defeated the extremists a long time ago.
Syrian forces captured all areas west of the Euphrates River from ISIS by late 2017, while on the eastern side, U.S.-backed Kurdish-led fighters are expected to conclude their battle against ISIS in the coming days.
Nasrallah said the victory declaration against ISIS will be made by "the biggest hypocrite in the world. American President Donald Trump."
The terrorist leader also denied U.S. assertions that the group has cells in Venezuela, saying the Latin American nation "does not need them."
His Iran-backed organization is in "solidarity with the political leadership and state of Venezuela against the American aggression," Nasrallah said.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week that "Hezbollah has active cells" in Venezuela and "Iranians are impacting the people of Venezuela and throughout South America."
Last week, a senior member of Venezuela's opposition, which supports interim President Juan Guaidó, told Israel Hayom that the presence of Iran, Hezbollah and other Arab terrorist elements in the country "is very concerning" to the democratic opposition and will pose an "immense challenge" to the new government after the socialist regime of Nicolás Maduro is ousted.
"We are presently formulating policy pertaining to defending Venezuela's internal security and are looking for help and advice," the senior official said. "And Israel can help us establish the necessary apparatuses to contend with this problem when the political change in Venezuela realized."
Meanwhile, the commander of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria, Jiya Furat, said Saturday that his forces were poised to capture Islamic State's last, tiny enclave on the Euphrates.
"In the coming few days, in a very short time, we will spread the good tidings to the world of the military end of [ISIS]," Furat said.
Trump on Saturday said the caliphate was "ready to fall and that the United States was asking European allies to take back more than 800 Islamic State fighters captured in Syria and put them on trial.
"The United States is asking Britain, France, Germany and other European allies to take back over 800 ISIS fighters that we captured in Syria and put them on trial," he said on Twitter. "The Caliphate is ready to fall. The alternative is not a good one in that we will be forced to release them...
"The U.S. does not want to watch as these ISIS fighters permeate Europe, which is where they are expected to go. We do so much, and spend so much – Time for others to step up and do the job that they are so capable of doing. We are pulling back after 100% Caliphate victory!"
As the SDF advanced under heavy U.S. airstrikes in recent days, a stream of civilians fled the few square miles of hamlets and farmland that remain within the ISIS "caliphate," along with defeated jihadists trying to escape unnoticed.
All that remains, said Furat, is an encircled pocket some 700 square meters (7,500 square feet) in size. "Thousands of civilians are still trapped there as human shields," he said.
The SDF had caught several militants trying to flee among the civilians. Others had handed themselves over, the SDF said.
Their fate, and that of their families, has befuddled foreign governments, with few ready to repatriate citizens who pledged allegiance to a group sworn to their destruction, but who might be hard to legally prosecute. The SDF does not want to hold them indefinitely.
On Friday U.S. Army General Joseph Votel, who oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East as head of Central Command, said the end of the territorial caliphate would lead to a more dispersed, harder-to-detect network of fighters waging guerrilla warfare.
