Hezbollah lost its most important supply route from Iran through Syria, the Lebanese militia’s chief Naim Qassem said, the first time he has publicly acknowledged how the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime has hurt the group’s ability to rearm after a punishing Israeli campaign.

The militant group’s leader admits that the toppling of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, cut off an important land route from Iran.

The ascendance of Sunni Islamist rebels in Syria should be viewed with great caution by Western powers, but the Assad regime’s collapse disables a critical node in Iran’s regional proxy network, a counterterrorism expert explains.

Hezbollah head Naim Qassem said on Saturday that the Lebanese armed group had lost its supply route through Syria, in his first comments since the toppling of President Bashar al-Assad nearly a week ago by a sweeping rebel offensive.

A severely hobbled Hezbollah was in no position to help defend former Syrian President Bashar Assad, a longtime ally, from the lightning-fast insurgency that toppled him.

The leader of the Lebanese Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, Naim Qassem, on Saturday admitted that his group had lost a supply route after the overthrow of the allied regime of Bashar al-Assad in neighbouring Syria.

Hezbollah has lost one of its main supply routes because of the fall of the Syrian government, the group's leader confirmed in a televised statement Saturday.

Analysts say the diminishment of Hezbollah will have big consequences for Lebanon, where for decades it has been a major political player — and for Iran, which has relied on the group as one of

Follow the latest on Syria For years, Hezbollah broadly castigated the Syrian rebels opposed to president Bashar Al Assad, labelling them terrorists as the Lebanese armed group sent thousands of fighters to prop up the regime in the neighbouring country.