Spokesman: Iran Ready to Continue Sending Fuel to Lebanon

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that Tehran is ready to continue selling fuel to Lebanon upon the demand of the Arab country’s government.

If the Lebanese government wishes to buy fuel from Iran to solve the problems its people are facing with, Tehran would deliver the fuel, Khatibzadeh told reporters in a press conference in Tehran on Sunday.

He referred to the recent dispatch of fuel ships to Lebanon, and said that it was a normal path of purchase, as Lebanese businessmen bought fuel and Iran shipped their purchase. “Peace and stability in Lebanon is more important than anything to us and God willing, we will help the Lebanese government to succeed on this path,” Khatibzadeh said.

Tankers carrying Iran-sent fuel arrived in the Lebanese territories last Thursday, bringing joy to people who have been facing acute fuel shortage in the past few months. A convoy of tankers loaded with Iranian mazut had entered the village of Hawsh al-Sayyed Ali in Lebanon’s Northeastern Baalbek-Hermel province on Thursday, Lebanon 24 News reported.

The media director of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah said that the tankers will first stop between the villages of Ain and Laboueh and that their last station would be the entrance to Southern Baalbek.

Speaking on Wednesday night, Hezbollah Secretary-General Seyed Hassan Nasrallah urged people not to gather to observe the convoy both for their own safety and the movement of the tankers. Announcing that ships carrying Iranian fuel would set sail for Lebanon last month, Nasrallah warned that the Israeli regime and the US that the resistance group regarded the convoy as part of the “Lebanese soil.”

In early September, the Iranian ships unloaded their fuel cargo at Syria’s Baniyas port, from where it was transferred to Lebanon via tankers. Lebanon has been mired since late 2019 in a deep financial crisis that has caused the Lebanese pound to lose around 90% of its value to the dollar. - Fars