Alghadeer TV Alghadeer TV
Hezbollah says it will surely take action to import gasoline from Iran as means of countering Lebanon’s dire fuel shortage, a product of the country’s worsening economic situation.
“We will definitely import gasoline and fuel residue from Iran,” the Lebanese resistance movement’s Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Sunday, Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen television network reported.
“And we will do this in broad daylight, not at night,” he added, reiterating his movement’s complete preparedness to take the measure towards resolving the crisis.
The small Mediterranean country has since 2019 been paralyzed by a major financial crisis, which has cut the value of its currency by more than 90 percent, eliminated jobs, and made banks freeze accounts.
Western countries have sanctioned Lebanon in order to punish it over the considerably high stakes and involvement that Hezbollah has in the country’s political and military spheres. The bans have played a major role in bringing about the financial nosedive.
The United States and others have endlessly been finding fault with Beirut’s inclusion of the group in its major sectors.
The group has defended Lebanon against two major wars waged on it by the Israeli regime, the US’s most treasured ally in the region, in the 2000s. It has also vowed not to give up its resistance efforts in the service of the country’s security that is under constant Israeli threat.
Since the onset of the economic crisis, which has thrown more than half the Lebanese population into poverty, the Central Bank has been effectively subsidizing fuel by using its dollar reserves to fund imports at exchange rates far less than the rates on the parallel market.
“The one, who stocks up on fuel so they can sell it on open market, has betrayed trust,” Nasrallah added. These include those who smuggle the already scarce commodity to neighboring Syria, he noted, calling them “traitors” racking up on “ill-gotten gains.”
