Iran’s top diplomat visited Lebanon’s border with Israel on Friday where he expressed support for the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group in its struggle against their common enemy: Israel.
Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian began his visit to Lebanon since Wednesday, meeting top officials and expressing Tehran’s readiness to help build power stations in an effort to try to end the Mediterranean country’s prevailing electricity crisis.
Lebanon is in the throes of the worst economic crisis in its modern history, rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement by the small nation’s ruling class. The crisis erupted in October 2019 and has plunged three quarters of Lebanon’s 6 million people, including 1 million Syrian refugees, into poverty.
Earlier this month, Israel launched rare strikes into southern Lebanon, hours after militants fired nearly three dozen rockets from there at Israel, wounding two people and causing some property damage. The Israeli military said at the time that it targeted installations of the Palestinian militant Hamas group in southern Lebanon.
Iran is a main Hezbollah backer and has supplied the militant group over the past decades with weapons and funds.
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