Rubio addresses Middle East tensions and Cuba’s future in exclusive interview
In a candid interview, Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed the escalating tensions in the Middle East, placing particular emphasis on the fragile Israel-Lebanon ceasefire and the need to dismantle Hezbollah. Rubio also turned his focus to Cuba, labeling it a failed state and a potential national security threat to the United States. He advocated for meaningful economic reforms to alleviate Cuba’s ongoing energy crisis. Additionally, Rubio reiterated the Trump administration’s firm opposition to Iran’s maneuvers in the Strait of Hormuz.
Amidst these discussions, a recent report aired on Lebanon’s MTV television network, highlighting troubling activities by Hezbollah. This U.S.-designated terrorist group is allegedly involving children from its scout programs in jihadi missions, often resulting in their deaths.
This report, translated by the Washington, D.C.-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), comes during U.S.-facilitated peace negotiations between Israel and Lebanon. It alleges that Hezbollah not only involves children in combat but also celebrates their deaths with hero’s funerals, aiming to inspire other minors to follow suit. The report suggests that the loss of young lives is seen by Hezbollah as a step toward achieving victory.
Hezbollah’s al-Mahdi scouts have been observed in parades, bearing large portraits of Iran’s former leader Ayatollah Khomeini and current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, notably during Jerusalem Day events in Nabatiyeh, Lebanon, on August 1, 2013. (Photo by Hussein Malla/AP)
The report further alleges that Hezbollah indoctrinates its scouts to revere death and martyrdom, preparing a generation of loyal followers ready to sacrifice their lives. According to MEMRI’s translation, the use of child soldiers by Hezbollah dates back to the 1980s, marking them not just as fighters but as devout Khomeini loyalists within the scout movement.
It also claimed that Hezbollah uses its scout movements to cultivate an entire generation of obedient children prepared to die, through rhetoric that glorifies death and martyrdom. The MTV report, according to the MEMRI translation, said that “Hezbollah child soldiers have been used since the 1980s by this outlaw armed group. Not just as armed fighters but as Khomeini-loyal scouts.”
The late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, reportedly exploited the use of Iranian children during the country’s 1980-1988 war against Iraq.
Matthew Levitt, a leading scholar on Hezbollah from the Washington Institute, said that “Hezbollah’s recruitment and radicalization of youth through its Mahdi Scouts is long documented,” other experts talking to Fox News Digital concurred.
“Hezbollah has boy scouts, and they have been taught jihad, and it is a well-known thing in Lebanon,” Mideast expert Walid Phares told Fox News Digital.
The Lebanon expert said they could be termed “children jihadists” who are preparing to become full Hezbollah fighters. Phares said they mostly assign them [the children of Hezbollah fighters] to spying and transporting ammunition. He argued if the scouts are getting funding from a ministry or national boy scouts association in Lebanon, they should be sanctioned if they have the evidence.
Multiple Fox News Digital Emails and phone calls to the World Organization of the Scouting Movement (WOSM) were not immediately returned. The U.S. branch of WOSM referred Fox News Digital to WOSM, which is in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
A Hezbollah expert from the Israel Alma Research and Education Center, Sarit Zehavi, called for action against the exploitation of children by the terror group.
“The only way to bring a change is to designate all of these allegedly civilian activities of Hezbollah and close the movement of its scouts, and enable the Shiites of Lebanon to have a different source of services, whether it is educational, formal or informal, which will be part of the Lebanese state, and not part of Hezbollah. The loyalty will be to the Lebanese state and not to Khomeini and the Islamic Republic.”
She added, “This is only something Lebanon can do with a lot of international pressure, of course, led by the United States.”
An Israeli diplomat, Tammy Rahamimoff-Honig, posted on X: “Hezbollah sacrifices Lebanese children to further the ambitions of the Iranian regime. This isn’t ‘resistance’. It’s child abuse.”
Lebanon’s Ambassador to the U.S. declined to provide comment for this article.
