ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah said on Tuesday that the group has “no objection” to meeting with Syria’s new authorities, who US President Donald Trump has suggested should fight the Iran-backed group instead of Israel.

Before the ouster of the Assad regime in late 2024, Syria served as a crucial land corridor that allowed Hezbollah, a Lebanese paramilitary group and political party, to receive arms and other supplies from its primary external backer, Iran. 

“There is no objection to a public meeting between Hezbollah and the Syrian leadership, at a time deemed appropriate by both parties,” Naim Qassem said in a video message.

“We emphasize the importance and necessity of fraternal, positive, and cooperative relations between the states of Lebanon and Syria,” he added.

Hezbollah fighters were deployed in Syria at the behest of the Assad regime during the country's civil war, where they fought against myriad rebel groups, including Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by current Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who ultimately toppled the Iran-backed government in an unprecedented offensive and assumed power.

Having been embroiled in a conflict with Israel following its intervention in the US-Israeli war on Iran in March, Hezbollah has found its strategic position enfeebled, with the Lebanese government having agreed with Israel to disarm the militia in areas of southern Lebanon in which Israeli forces have begun a conditional withdrawal.

Owing to the animosity between Syria's new authorities and the Shiite armed group, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly spoken of the prospect of the Syrian military conducting operations in its neighboring country to disarm the group, telling reporters on July 9 that he raised the topic with Sharaa at a NATO summit in Ankara.

“I'll tell you what, Israel's fighting Hezbollah too long and too many people are being killed,” Trump said at the G7 summit in June. “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.”

Israel and Syria's new authorities have also faced tensions after Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the complete takeover of the 1974 buffer zone in the Golan Heights following Assad's overthrow in December 2024, arguing that the 1974 Disengagement Agreement was void until order was restored in Syria.

Israel has also launched repeated incursions in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and southwest Syria’s Quneitra countryside, conducting arrest sprees, raids, and setting up checkpoints.

“We, as Hezbollah, wish Syria success in establishing justice and cooperation among all its components, to remain unified, and to expel the Israeli enemy from all its occupied lands,” Qassem said. 

In January, high-level Syrian and Israeli delegations held a US-mediated meeting to resume negotiations over a security arrangement.

The resumption of dialogue was a “direct result” of Trump’s request to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the Axios source at the time. After he met with the premier, Trump told reporters that he is confident Israel and Syria “will get along.”