Iran and Hezbollah Offer Aid to Beirut

The government of Iran and leaders of Hezbollah, Iran’s terrorist proxy group in Lebanon, supplied help to the city of Beirut just after a enormous explosion on Tuesday triggered huge harm and casualties. Hezbollah issued a statement on Tuesday providing “deepest condolences over the national tragedy which took place in Lebanon in these hard times,” a reference to the financial and political crises that had been gripping the nation even just before the explosion. “This grievous disaster, along with its unprecedented repercussions and damage it had caused on several levels, requires a national stand by all Lebanese people and powers in a bid to overcome this ordeal,” the Hezbollah statement stated. The extremist group saluted the efforts of initial responders in Beirut and stated it would place “all capabilities” at the disposal of “honored people and dear citizens.” It also postponed a speech by its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, that had been scheduled for Wednesday to honor 3 days of national mourning declared by the government. Hezbollah’s patrons in Tehran also supplied their help. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani pledged “medical and pharmaceutical aids” on Wednesday in a message to Lebanese President Michel Aoun. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the great and resilient people of Lebanon. As always, Iran is fully prepared to render assistance in any way necessary. Stay strong, Lebanon,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif stated on Twitter. The quantity of help Iran could deliver is open to query. Iran was hit tough by the Wuhan coronavirus, its government complains frequently of poverty due to U.S. sanctions, and the Iranian folks complain frequently about their government squandering public revenue on foreign adventures, like help for Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Iranian military would have problems shipping humanitarian help via its principal naval port of Bandar Abbas at the moment due to the fact it managed to block access to the port by sinking a scaled-down wooden replica of an American aircraft carrier in shallow water in the course of a war game final week. Iran and Hezbollah have excellent motives to be nervous about the predicament in Lebanon. Writing at the Spectator on Tuesday, Paul Wood cited Lebanese contacts who stated the battle to spin the explosion for political benefit started even though debris was nevertheless raining from the sky: Who decided to leave this massive quantity of bomb creating material close to the centre of Beirut? Several Lebanese good friends and contacts messaged to say that this could only be Hezbollah, the Shiite militia and shadow state in Lebanon. Even if that is not accurate, it shows what some Lebanese are considering — and for that reason how this crisis may well create. Hezbollah, via its media outlets, spoke about an accident involving ‘fireworks’. Major General Abbas Ibrahim, head of Lebanon’s General Security Directorate, stated, acidly, that it would be ‘naive to describe such an explosion as due to fireworks’. Someone I know with excellent contacts in the Hezbollah leadership stated there had been an Israeli drone strike on a Hezbollah weapons dump. Perhaps that will be Hezbollah’s new line to take. Several witnesses have stated they heard a plane flying low overhead just before the explosion. A retired Army common, interviewed on Lebanese tv, stated he even saw a plane and that it fired a missile. Israel has denied obtaining something to do what occurred and has supplied to send help. Lebanon and Israel stay in a formal state of war – there’s no possibility whatsoever that help would be accepted. “If Hezbollah are in any way to blame for this, it will be very bad for Lebanon – even if the explosion was an accident,” Wood predicted, alluding to Hezbollah members serving as Lebanese officials who may well have played some function in leaving a massive quantity of explosive material in a warehouse with minimal security protocols. The Jerusalem Post recalled on Wednesday that Hezbollah was caught stockpiling ammonium nitrate, the fertilizer chemical blamed for the Beirut explosion, in the U.K. and Germany more than the previous couple of years. The explosive was a great deal far more meticulously stored in ice packs than the massive and apparently unsecured quantity of ammonium nitrate stated to be kept at the Port of Beirut. Israel’s intelligence service, the Mossad, helped the Germans obtain Hezbollah’s ammonium nitrate stash final year, even though the British police and intelligence officers who identified the London stockpile in 2015 believed it was intended for use in terrorist attacks. The U.K. formally banned each the political and paramilitary wings of Hezbollah in 2019, even though Germany properly outlawed the group in 2020. The United States designated Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997 and has been pressing the whole European Union to ban the organization.

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