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The head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah said Tuesday that the country could soon be forced to rely on fuel imports from Iran, amid an ongoing economic collapse.
Lebanon has been facing increasingly severe fuel shortages in recent months, with long queues at service stations and some drivers waiting more than an hour to buy even small quantities of supplies.
Describing the situation as humiliating, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah called on authorities to take a “courageous decision” and override their “fear” of the US to import fuel supplies from Iran, a country under hefty American sanctions.
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If the Lebanese state fails to take action, “we, within Hezbollah, will go to Iran, negotiate with the Iranian government… and buy vessels full of petrol and fuel oil and bring them to Beirut port,” Nasrallah said.
“Let the Lebanese state (dare to) prevent the delivery of petrol and fuel oil to the Lebanese people!” he said, adding, “We can no longer tolerate these scenes of humiliation.”
Hezbollah, long designated a terrorist organization by the US, is a major political player in Lebanon and is closely aligned with regional Shiite powerhouse Iran.
Washington slapped punitive sanctions on Tehran under former president Donald Trump, after he unilaterally withdrew from a 2015 nuclear accord between Iran and world powers.
Trump’s successor President Joe Biden favors returning to the nuclear deal and Vienna has hosted indirect negotiations to that end, but sanctions seeking to block Iran from exporting fuel remain in place.
In late 2019, Lebanon plunged into political and economic crisis, with huge street protests against an elite deemed beholden to sectarian interests. The country has been without a government for the past 10 months.
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