Profile: Hassan Nasrallah

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh meets with Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah for an interview. Nasrallah offers his analysis of US Middle East policy, telling Hersh that the administration is interested in “the drawing of a new map for the region. They want the partition of Iraq…. The daily killing and displacement which is taking place in Iraq aims at achieving three Iraqi parts, which will be sectarian and ethnically pure as a prelude to the partition of Iraq. Within one or two years at the most, there will be total Sunni areas, total Shiite areas, and total Kurdish areas. Even in Baghdad, there is a fear that it might be divided into two areas, one Sunni and one Shiite…. I can say that President Bush is lying when he says he does not want Iraq to be partitioned. All the facts occurring now on the ground make you swear he is dragging Iraq to partition. And a day will come when he will say, ‘I cannot do anything, since the Iraqis want the partition of their country and I honor the wishes of the people of Iraq.’” [New Yorker, 3/5/2007]