On his second visit to Lebanon since the beginning of the war in Gaza on October 7, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian welcomed the four-day truce between Israel and Hamas, cautioning, however, that a sustainable cease-fire is needed.
“Without a sustainable ceasefire, the situation will worsen, and the region will not return to what it was before the war,” Abdollahian declared Wednesday after a meeting with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, adding “the four-day truce in Gaza is good, but more importantly, efforts should focus on reaching a permanent ceasefire.’
The Iranian minister said he had come to Lebanon to discuss with the Lebanese authorities “ways of ensuring security in the region and recovering the rights” taken by Israel.
For his part, Mikati urged the ‘influential countries to pressure Israel to stop its aggression on South Lebanon and to halt targeting civilians and journalists in particular.”
Later in the evening Abdollahian met with the secretary general of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Ziad al-Nakhalah and the deputy chief of Hamas political bureau in the Gaza Strip Khalil al-Hayya, according to the Iranian News Agency, Irna.
Upon his arrival in Beirut earlier Wednesday, which coincided with Lebanon’s Independence Day, he hailed “the heroic resistance put up by Palestinian groups over the past six weeks,” and said “time was not on the side of the Israeli regime if the war dragged on.”
The Iranian official’s visit comes hours after Israel and Hamas agreed on the truce in Gaza during which the Palestinian militants would free at least 50 of the hostages taken in their deadly October 7 attack in exchange for the release of some 150 Palestinian prisoners and the entry of more humanitarian aid into the coastal enclave.
His previous visit to Lebanon was shortly after Hezbollah had opened the front in south Lebanon, which was later presented by the party’s leader Hassan Nasrallah as one of the three Iranian-backed support fronts for Gaza, alongside Iraq and Yemen.
