Iran FM visits Lebanon, hopes for 'new chapter' in relations

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived Tuesday in Beirut on an official visit and met with President Joseph Aoun and Speaker Nabih Berri.

“We respect Lebanon’s internal affairs and do not interfere in them, and we support Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Araghchi said at Beirut’s airport.

“We hope to open a new chapter in the relations with it based on mutual respect,” the minister added.

“My visit is part of my regional tour after my trip to Cairo … and our relations with Lebanon are historic and deep-rooted,” Araghchi added, noting that Tehran is “determined to develop these relations.”

Araghchi’s visit comes after Iran’s main Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, was weakened by a 14-month war with Israel that left much of the Iran-backed group’s political and military leadership dead.

Araghchi’s visit is his first since October, which came at the height of the Israel-Hezbollah war that ended a month later with a U.S.-brokered ceasefire. The war killed more than 4,000 in Lebanon, displaced over 1 million people and caused destruction that the World Bank said will coast $11 billion in reconstruction.

Since the war ended, army commander Joseph Aoun was elected president and prominent jurist and diplomat Nawaf Salam became the country’s prime minister. Both Aoun and Salam have repeatedly said that only the state will monopolize the use of weapons in Lebanon.

The visit also comes after the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad was removed from power in December by insurgent groups opposed to Iran’s influence in the region. Assad was one of Tehran’s closest allies in the Arab world and his country was a main link for the flow of weapons from Iran to Hezbollah.

Over the past decades, Iran funded Hezbollah with billions of dollars and sent all types of weapons to the Lebanese group enjoying wide influence in the small nation through.

Since the Israel-Hezbollah war ended, Lebanese authorities have taken tight measures at Beirut’s airport to prevent the flow of funds from Iran to Hezbollah and flights by Iranian companies have been suspended to Beirut.