BEIRUT (AP) — Iran’s high diplomat visited Lebanon’s border with Israel on Friday the place he expressed help for the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group in its wrestle towards their widespread enemy: Israel.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian started his go to to Lebanon since Wednesday, assembly high officers and expressing Tehran’s readiness to assist construct energy stations in an effort to attempt to finish the Mediterranean nation’s prevailing electrical energy disaster.

Lebanon is within the throes of the worst financial disaster in its fashionable historical past, rooted in many years of corruption and mismanagement by the small nation’s ruling class. The disaster erupted in October 2019 and has plunged three quarters of Lebanon’s 6 million folks, together with 1 million Syrian refugees, into poverty.

Earlier this month, Israel launched uncommon strikes into southern Lebanon, hours after militants fired almost three dozen rockets from there at Israel, wounding two folks and inflicting some property injury. The Israeli army stated on the time that it focused installations of the Palestinian militant Hamas group in southern Lebanon.

Iran is a predominant Hezbollah backer and has equipped the militant group over the previous many years with weapons and funds.

“We are here today … to declare again with a loud voice that we support the resistance in Lebanon against the Zionist entity,” Amirabdollahian advised a gathering that included a number of Hezbollah legislators within the border village of Maroun al-Ras.

Amirabdollahian’s go to to Lebanon is the primary since Iran and Saudi Arabia reached an settlement in China final month to re-establish diplomatic relations and reopen embassies after seven years of tensions.

Later Friday, the Iranian diplomat held a information convention on the Iranian Embassy. He stated the Riyadh-Tehran settlement can have optimistic “effects in the region in general.” The two international locations will reopen embassies in Tehran and Riyadh “within a few days,” he stated, including that he invited his Saudi counterpart to go to Iran and that the invitation was welcomed.

In neighboring Syria, a pro-government newspaper reported that Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi will start a two-day go to to Damascus subsequent Wednesday, the primary by an Iranian president to the Syrian capital since 2010.

Iran has additionally been a predominant backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad for the reason that rebellion that became struggle started in Syria in March 2011, killing almost half 1,000,000 folks. Tehran has despatched Iran-backed fighters from across the Middle East to combat alongside Assad’s forces, serving to tip the stability of energy in his favor.

The pro-government Al-Watan stated Raisi would meet with Assad to spice up “strategic cooperation” between the 2 allies. Several agreements and memorandums of understanding would even be signed through the go to.

Asked about Raisi’s upcoming go to to Damascus, Amirabdollahian solely stated that “a program and a plan for the visit in the near future” had been ready, with out providing a selected date.

Some oil-rich Arab international locations, together with Saudi Arabia, have been slowly reconciling with Assad after supporting opposition fighters for years.

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