TEHRAN (Iran News) – The Secretary-General of Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, says the third vessel of Iranian fuel has been agreed with Tehran to ease crippling energy shortages in the country.
In a televised address Nasrallah says “We have agreed to start loading the third vessel,” Nasrallah said.
“The coming days will prove those doubtful about the shipments arriving with fuel wrong … and our words will be clear when the first vessel reaches Lebanon.”
On Sunday Nasrallah had said the first vessel carrying Iranian fuel for Lebanon had already departed.
Nasrallah also says the United States and Israel have been taken aback by Iran’s fuel aid shipments to Lebanon.
Earlier on Friday, Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati said he was against anything that would harm Lebanon’s interests but also asked denounced critics of the Iranian fuel deals calling on them to offer an alternative solution.
Some in Lebanon fear consequences from the purchase, saying it risks sanctions being imposed on a country whose economy has been in meltdown for nearly two years.
Nasrallah blamed the country’s financial crisis on an economic siege by the United States adding that the Caesar sanctions act imposed by Washington on Syria had harmed Lebanon.
Following Nasrallah’s announcement of fuel deliveries from Iran, the U.S. ambassador offered other ideas to help resolve the energy problem.
Those ideas have been slammed by analysts in Lebanon as time-wasting nonsense.
Addressing the United States in his speech, Nasrallah said “Go ahead and give Lebanon an exemption for Iranian gasoline and diesel … go ahead and give Lebanon an exemption from Caesar”
Lebanon’s worsening fuel shortages reached a crunch point this month threatening to bring daily life to a halt. The opening of gasoline and diesel routes from Iran is being seen as a quick fix to the country’s energy crisis.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Nasrallah says the United States was behind the creation and funding of the Daesh Takfiri group. Nasrallah cited former U.S. government officials who acknowledged this; both publicly or in declassified documents. This is while the Pentagon claims to be fighting the terrorist group.
It is not the first time accusations have been leveled at Washington and its closest allies in West Asia of creating, backing, and funding the Takfiri organization.
Turning to the country’s political impasse, Nasrallah urged top politicians to stop debating names for the new Cabinet and urgently form a government. “It is high time this debate now ends,” he said.
Lebanon has been run by the caretaker government of Prime Minister Hassan Diab, who resigned with his Cabinet after a massive Beirut port blast ripped through the capital a year ago.
Mikati is the third prime minister-designate since then to attempt to form a government with President Michel Aoun.
