In a private meeting with Imam al-Mahdi Scouts this past June, Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah was reported as saying, “In Syria, I said, ‘The Sayyida Zeinab [daughter of Imam Ali] shrine will not be taken captive twice,’ and in Iraq I say, ‘The time when we allowed anyone in the world to destroy or desecrate our holy sites at Najaf, Karbala, Samarra is long gone.’”

Nasrallah’s statement came after the Islamic State (IS), formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, occupied Mosul and other cities in the north and west of Iraq over the last month, and after their threats to storm Shiite cities in Samarra, Najaf and Karbala and destroy the shrines of Ahl al-Bayt (the family of the Prophet Muhammad).

According to some Lebanese newspapers, Nasrallah said that he was “ready to sacrifice in Iraq five times as many martyrs as we sacrificed in Syria for the sake of holy sites, because they are much more important.”

These statements led some media figures and politicians to predict the possibility of Hezbollah taking part in the fighting in Iraq alongside the Iraqi army and Shiite militias against IS militants, their extremist Sunni allies and former Baathists. Some analysts considered these statements as a clear indication of Hezbollah’s readiness to participate in defending Shiite holy sites, if need be.