Iran Ready to Supply Lebanon with Electricity as of Next Week
An official at the Iranian Energy Ministry revealed that his country will start providing Lebanon and Syria with electricity “soon,” Iran's state news agency IRNA reported.
“Supplying Lebanon with power was among the issues that Lebanon and Iran agreed on in the previous few months,” Abdolhamid Frazam Behboodi said.
He noted that Tehran is “ready to export electricity to Lebanon as of next week.”
However, a ministerial source ruled out to An Nahar newspaper the possibility of implementing the project.
The source said that the project needs three vital issues that aren’t available yet.
“The first is technical as setting the electricity lines through Aleppo (in Syria) and guarantying that they will not be sabotaged” is a difficult process amid the developments in the neighboring country.
More than 12,000 people, the majority of them civilians, have died since the Syrian uprising began in March 2011, according to the Observatory, including more than 900 killed since the April 12 truce.
The source said that the international sanctions imposed on Iran are another obstacle.
“Iran’s solution is to open a frozen account at the Central Bank, (a move that) would be considered a type of deception that the international community will not accept,” the source told the daily.
The United States and the European Union have imposed economic sanctions on Iran to pressure it over its disputed nuclear program.
The West and the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency suspect the program includes a drive to develop the capability to make atomic weapons, despite Iran's repeated denials.
The source added that the third issue is that the two countries didn’t agree on the quantity of exported megawatts from Iran.
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