Lebanese Hezbollah Agrees To Remove Banners, Soleimani Posters From Airport Road
Iran-backed Hezbollah militia group has agreed to remove banners and billboards of the Shiite group’s leaders, deceased members and slogans from Beirut’s airport road.
Iran-backed Hezbollah militia group has agreed to remove banners and billboards of the Shiite group’s leaders, deceased members and slogans from Beirut’s airport road.
The decision was made following a request by Lebanese Tourism Minister Walid Nassar, who plans to replace the ideologically-driven propaganda on the road to the Rafic Hariri International Airport with welcome signs and images of Lebanon to boost tourism.
Pictures of Hezbollah leaders as well as General Qasem Soleimani, who was the head of Iran’s elite Qods (Quds) Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iran-backed militias in Iraq known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, have long occupied the airport road space on both sides and in the median strip. The sizes of the pictures almost exceeded that of the houses and small shops located on both sides of the road.
The airport road – which is named Imam Khomeini in tribute to the founder of the Islamic Republic – is the route taken by diplomats and political figures coming to Lebanon and borders the neighborhoods hosting the offices of Hezbollah and the Amal Movement, the two main Shiite parties of the country.
Politicians opposed to Hezbollah often called for the removal of the images, which they described as “provocative to the Lebanese.”
Earlier in the year, a large group of Lebanese politicians established a new opposition group to end what they called Iranian occupation of Lebanon represented through Hezbollah.
According to Khabar Online, this is a U-turn by Biden who has so far not been attaching importance to Washington's old allies in the region. It appears that both sides have deemed the current situation good for mending their relations.
Mohebali said in his interview with Khabar Online that the developments in Ukraine as well as the suspension of Iran's nuclear negotiations have played their parts in bringing back Washington to its old policy of close ties with Saudi Arabia. The result, said Mohebali, will be a coalition between the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia and other regional players.
During Biden's upcoming visit to the region, Israeli's will have a chance to convince Washington that returning to the JCPOA is meaningless and the US should exert more pressures on Iran, Mohebali said, while the United States could be able to convince Israel to refrain from provocative actions against Tehran.
As these concerns were being aired in Tehran, Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz told the Knesset on Monday that a regional air defense coalition is being formed with US leadership. The effort, he said, has already stopped some Iranian attacks.
This comes while the prospects for reviving the 2015 nuclear deal is becoming increasingly weaker, while Iran desperately needs to revive the JCPOA and have US sanctions lifted in a bid to improve its ailing economy.
A former member of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Hshmatollah Falahatpisheh, told Nameh News in an interview on June 20, that Iran will certainly be the big loser if no nuclear deal is reached.
Meanwhile, referring to Iran's defiant reactions to the June 8 IAEA resolution that condemned Tehran's lack of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Falahatpisheh warned that "it is not the right time for Iran to stand against the IAEA. This will make Tehran's situation even worse."
Pointing out Tehran's weak position, Falahatpisheh said: "Once we could determine our own fate at the negotiating table, but now we have to wait and see what decisions are being made by lobbyists behind the scenes at the IAEA Board of Governors.
Explaining why Iran will be the loser if the negotiations are not fruitful, Falahatpisheh said: "All the agreements Iran signs with other countries, including long-term 20-year contracts, are being concluded under sanctions, so these cannot serve Iran's interests." He added that Iran missed all the chances for a rapprochement with the United States before the war in Ukraine. Now, all countries including Russia only think of their own interests."
He criticized Iranian officials' inaction in the current situation by saying, "It is as if they do not have a good understanding of the situation and do not see the weakening of Iran's currency on a daily basis. While prices are rising, the government increases taxes and redoubles the pressure on the people."
While Falahatpisheh stressed that the government should do away with slogans and take important political decisions to solve the country's problems. Meanwhile, lawmaker Somayeh Rafiei said in an interview with Rouydad24 on Monday: "The people can hardly tolerate the situation any longer…and they
are looking for results and the government needs to introduce essential changes."
The head of the Justice Department of Mazandaran Province, Mohammad-Sadegh Akbari, said Sunday participants in the tour had “committed criminal activities".
These, Akbari said, included unrelated men and women mingling and dancing together, drinking, and women flouting their hijab. He said the case has been referred to relevant judicial authorities for prosecution.
Young men and women, and even groups of families, often book nature tours together to remote areas such as forests, mountains, and deserts to socialize and party in a more relaxed setting than urban public and private venues. Mixed parties with music, dance, and alcohol are banned and often raided by the morality police. Participants in such parties can be arrested even within the confines of their private homes.
Such events very rarely involve any crimes other than merrymaking, but nevertheless, authorities in charge of watching people's abidance by the state-sanctioned Islamic norms and regulations consider them as defiance and often crack down when tipped off. Being caught at mixed parties, particularly where alcohol is served, may entail legal punishments including prison, lashes, and cash fines.
Many branches of Islamic mysticism are considered as heretical sects in the Islamic Republic and their followers sometimes resort to booking nature tours in remote areas as a means of congregation. Last September police arrested 27 women and 52 men for holding a congregation, as a “false mystic sect” in a remote forested area of Gilan.
Group arrests of participants in nature tours is not unprecedented. In the past few years several groups of nature tourists have been arrested in the deserts and mountains for flouting Islamic morality rules.
The head of Mazandaran Justice Department also accused the participants in the recent forest tour of putting up "devil-worship banners" in their forest gathering. Devil-worship, in Iranian authorities' jargon, often refers to heavy metal or hard rock music and fashion associated with them, including body art, rather than the cult of the devil.
In December 2019, morality police arrested 135 young men and women at a party in an industrial shed near Tehran and branded them as "devil-worshippers".
Iranian authorities often invite foreign tourists to the country promising them safety and security if “they abide by the country’s rules”, including wearing the hijab for women and abstaining from alcohol.
The restrictions imposed on foreign tourists have deprived the country of huge revenues. The Russian ambassador to Tehran, Levan Dzhagaryan (Jagaryan), recently said in an interview that Iran could not be a popular destination for Russian tourists due to its dress code and ban on alcohol. Dzhagaryan’s remarks hugely displeased hardliners who accused him of being insensitive and disrespectful.
In recent weeks promotion of Iran’s tourist attractions by young social media influencer Hoda Rostami, particularly on her Instagram page which has over 450k followers, has stirred a huge controversy in Persian social media. Rostami took a ‘fam trip’ to Iran and published her own or other female tourists' images next to mosques, ancient relics and even the notorious Evin prison on social media.
Many netzines accuse Rostami of trying to whitewash the realities of living in Iran including many social and political restrictions imposed on Iranians, including the hijab, to encourage foreigners to visit the country. Rostami admitted, after being criticized that she had meetings with state officials at ministerial level to facilitate the fam trips.
Speaking to the Israeli parliament’s defense and foreign affairs committee, Gantz referred both to a shared vision and a “program” that was “already operative.” Gantz said the visit to Israel and Saudi Arabia in mid-July of US President Joe Biden would “support this process.”
“I have been leading for the past year together with my colleagues at the Pentagon and the [Biden] administration an extensive program to strengthen cooperation between Israel and the countries of the region, under American leadership and Centcom [US Central Command, covering the Middle East],” Gantz said.
“Part of that vision is what I call MEAD, Middle East Air Defense, which we are building amid Iran’s attempts to hit the region’s countries with rockets, cruise missiles and UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones].”
Possibilities for coordinating air defense were reportedly discussed at the March meeting in Negev of foreign ministers from Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt, and the US.
Israel has been working to improve relations with the Persian Gulf monarchies especially since the 2020 ‘normalization’ agreements with Bahrain and the UAE, arguing they face a common threat in Iran. The Israelis link Syria, where Iranian presence in support of President Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah, and Yemen, where Iran backs Ansar Allah, known as the Houthis, fighting a Saudi coalition that intervened in the civil war seven years ago. Saudi Arabia has faced intermittent Houthi missile and drone attacks since 2019. Iran has been accused of supplying the weapons to the Houthis.
Rather than following Bahrain and the UAE in ‘normalizing’ relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia has stuck to Arab League policy of insisting Israel first accepts a viable Palestinian state.
‘Powerful responses’
Gantz addressed a sense among many Israeli politicians that tensions with Iran are worsening, especially after the alleged killings of Iranian scientists and officers by Israel. He said he had ordered “powerful responses” prepared after reports Iran would kidnap Israelis in Turkey. His remarks came hours after Israeli authorities suspected an Iranian cyberattack had triggered rocket sirens in Jerusalem and Eilat Sunday.
Gantz said the Israeli government has been successful in “enlisting international support in our struggle against Iran in recent months," which he said included “our efforts to keep the designation of a terror organization, for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and in the condemnation of Iran by the IAEA.”
Year-long talks in Vienna aimed at reviving the 2015 international agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear program have been paused since March, reportedly because the US has refused Tehran’s request to remove its Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), around half its defense forces, from Washington’s list of ‘foreign terrorist organizations.’ Israel opposed the 2015 deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which the US left in 2018.
Europe Backs Restoring JCPOA
Addressing Gantz’s remarks on air defense, an Israeli official said “partner countries” were synchronising efforts through electronic communication rather than using the same physical facilities. Some US-based analysts have suggested Washington is fostering closer cooperation between Israel and Arab Gulf States in order to help fill a gap left by the withdrawal of US hardware.
The Council of the European Union Monday agreed a document, ‘Council conclusions on a strategic partnership with the Gulf’, that welcomed “recent positive steps, including…the normalization agreements with Israel…and the recent agreement on a truce and on confidence building measures in Yemen as a major development, offer opportunities for improved wider regional security and stability.”
But the EU also reiterated support for the “restoration and full re-implementation” of the JCPOA, which it said had “the potential to contribute positively to regional prosperity and security.”