Hezbollah chief says reports of his deteriorating health are baseless

Iranian TV released a recording with the voice of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah denying reports that his health was deteriorating.

Over the weekend, Israeli and Lebanese reports claimed that Nasrallah was hospitalized with a heart attack, while other reports said that he was suffering from cancer.

On Saturday, Europe-based Lebanese journalist Jerry Maher tweeted that unnamed intelligence sources had confirmed Nasrallah was taken to the hospital in Beirut in critical condition, and that he has been battling cancer for years.

Maher posted Twitter updates over the weekend including claims that Hezbollah rejected a suggestion for Nasrallah to be moved to the Syrian capital Damascus for treatment by Russian and Iranian doctors.

The reports were denied on Sunday by Hossein Amirabdollahian, assistant to Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, who dismissed claims that Nasrallah was sick as a “Zionist” ploy and the “biggest lie of the new year.”

On Tuesday, a purported recording of Nasrallah himself was broadcast on the Iranian “Al-Alam” station, in which Nasrallah is heard denying that his health has deteriorated and calling such reports Israeli “psychological warfare.”

“Sometimes, when they talk about death, sometimes they kill someone, sometimes they invent a heart attack for him, sometimes a stroke, sometimes cancer…I want to emphasize to everyone not to listen to all of these things, which have no basis.”

“It is part of the war of rumors and psychological warfare, and the attempt to worry and harm the morale of everyone listening,” the recording continues. “I emphasize that life is in the hands of God, but in everything connected to my health situation – I am not suffering from any medical problem […] I am not taking any medicine. So let’s let the subject go.”

Agencies