Assad-allied Lebanese PM warns of Lebanon’s “total collapse”, blaming “Syrian displacement crisis”

Iran’s regime is playing the same game of ‘jam tomorrow’ promises in the four Arab nations across the region which it claims to control. In Lebanon, where the national power grid has effectively collapsed, Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahia last week vowed that Iran would be building two power stations. The regime in Tehran is also promising to fund reconstruction in Syria, Iraq and Yemen; some observers might suggest this is only fair after it helped fund and help carry out much of the destruction, along with mass displacement and refugee crises, in all three countries.

Political sources in Beirut said the assassination of Lebanese Shia political activist and prominent Hezbollah critic Lokman Slim in southern Lebanon on Thursday (February 4), in an area under direct Hezbollah control, was intended to intimidate the Lebanese people, especially the Shia community, and send a message from Iran’s regime to the new US administration.

Lebanon is currently the home to some 900,000 refugees who have fled Syria’s bloody civil war. But after Lebanon’s economy crashed late last year and the country was hit by the coronavirus crisis, the refugees are struggling even more to put food on the table. FRANCE 24’s Leila Molana Allen reports ahead of World Refugee Day.

Eight years ago, Aisha, a Syrian refugee, arrived in Lebanon with her husband and children to escape the horrors of their homeland. They built a small house in Bekaa Valley, and the family finally felt safe.

The top U.S. military commander overseeing the Middle East said Tuesday that despite the nuclear deal, Iran shows no signs of altering its destabilizing behavior.

"There are a number of things that lead me to personally believe that, you know, their behavior is not — they haven't changed any course yet," said Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of U.S. Central Command, at a Senate hearing.

The Syrian regime likely decided to execute Rafik Hariri after a tense meeting between the former prime minister and Bashar Assad in August 2004, Walid Jumblatt told the Special Tribunal for Lebanon Tuesday.

“I think that when [Hariri] visited Bashar Assad on Aug. 26, 2004, the death sentence was made then,” Jumblatt told the court.

But for months after the fateful meeting, Hariri thought that diplomacy could mend his fraught relationship with Damascus.

Lebanon‬, 05-05-2015: Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri attacked Hezbollah Tuesday over its preparations for an anticipated large-scale battle in Syria's Qalamoun region against Nusra-led rebels, saying the fight is meant to protect the Syrian government, and not Lebanon.

“Media channels and some leaders in Lebanon have been ringing the bells for the Qalamoun hills battle, while the Syrian regime is silent,” Hariri said in a statement released by his media office.