Lebanon

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Jan. 9 (UPI) — Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the United States and Israel on Friday of “direct involvement” in his country’s ongoing anti-government street protests and of attempting to turn them violent, while dismissing their military intervention as “a weak possibility.”

Speaking during a news conference after meeting with Lebanese House Speaker Nabih Berri, Araghchi said the current wave of demonstrations in Iran was similar, “to a large extent,” to the popular protests that broke out in Lebanon in 2019, when the collapse of the national currency and rising prices of hard currencies triggered widespread unrest.

He said the government in Tehran was seeking to “avoid this problem” and resolve it through dialogue.

“What differs this time are statements by American and Israeli officials indicating their direct involvement and interference in the disturbances in Iran,” he said. “They are trying hard to turn these peaceful protests into violence.”

He cited, as an example, Mike Pompeo, the former U.S. CIA director and secretary of state, who addressed Iranian protesters in a post on X on Jan., saying: “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them ….”

According to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights non-governmental organization, at least 51 protesters, including nine children under 18, have been killed, hundreds injured, and more than 2,200 detained in the latest round of nationwide protests in Iran.

The unrest, which began Dec. 28 in Tehran’s bazaar over poor economic conditions, quickly spread to other parts of the country.

U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to attack Iran and “come to the rescue” of protesters if they are harmed by security forces.

Araghchi dismissed as “slim and weak” the possibility of U.S.-Israeli military intervention in his country, saying they had tried before — referring to the 12-day war in June 2025 — and that “it was a total failure.” He added that if they were to repeat it, “the results would be the same.”

The visiting foreign minister, who met with several Lebanese officials, said his two-day visit to Beirut was meant to consolidate bilateral political, economic and cultural ties and discuss how to confront mounting Israeli threats that “menace all the people of the region.”

“We are trying to open a new page in our relations … one that would serve and respect our mutual interests,” Araghchi said, expressing hope that his visit would mark the start of a new chapter and a “launching point” for Iran-Lebanon ties.

Lebanon’s new leaders, who have been in power for a year, have adopted bold decisions concerning Hezbollah, the country’s most powerful militant group, which has been financed and armed by Iran for more than four decades.

Chief among these was a decision to assert the country’s sovereignty and contain weapons –meaning disarming Hezbollah — in line with the Nov. 27, 2024, cease-fire agreement brokered by the United States and France to end 14 months of war with Israel.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Youssef Rajji went a step further by asking Araghchi during their meeting early Friday whether Tehran “accepts the presence of an illegal armed organization on its territory” — similar to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Rajji said defending Lebanon is the responsibility of the Lebanese state, but this cannot happen in the presence of “an armed organization outside its authority.”

He called on Iran to discuss with Lebanon “a new approach regarding Hezbollah’s weapons,” so that they do not become “a pretext to weaken Lebanon.”

Araghchi replied that Iran supports Hezbollah “as a resistance group, but it does not interfere in its affairs, and any decision concerning Lebanon is left to the party itself.”

He added, however, that dialogue between the two countries is necessary to confront “challenges and risks” arising from differences in their approach “to certain issues.”

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam emphasized, in separate statements after talks with the visiting Iranian official, the importance of establishing sound relations with Iran, based on mutual respect and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.

Araghchi, who also met with Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem, dismissed threats to “deprive his country of its right to peaceful nuclear energy or to develop defensive capabilities” — conditions set by the United States and Israel to prevent an attack on Iran.

He confirmed that Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi is scheduled to visit Tehran on Saturday and, when asked by a reporter whether he would bring a new U.S. proposal for negotiations, said he was “waiting to see whether he is carrying any letter or proposal from any party.”

On Syria, Araghchi said Iran supports its sovereignty and unity and rejects any measures aimed at partitioning the country or occupying its territories.

“Syria’s stability is important for all countries in the region,” he added, noting that the Syrian authorities should understand that any rapprochement with the “Israeli Zionist” entity is not in Damascus’ interest and that normalization would lead to “Zionist conspiracies” against the Arab nation.

Over the past year, Syria and Israel have held intermittent negotiations aimed at reaching a security agreement to stabilize their shared border, prevent repeated Israeli attacks on Syrian territory and potentially pave the way for future diplomatic normalization.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

Israel’s military launched attacks on what it described as Hezbollah and Hamas “targets” in Lebanon after issuing ⁠evacuation orders for four villages in the ​country’s east and south.

An ‍Israeli army spokesperson said earlier it was planning air strikes on Hezbollah and ‍Hamas “military infrastructure” ⁠in the villages of Hammara and Ain el-Tineh in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley and Kfar Hatta and Aanan in the south.

An AFP news agency photographer in Kfar Hatta saw dozens of families flee the village after an Israeli warning was issued with drone activity in the area. Ambulances and fire trucks are on standby.

Israel and Lebanon agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire in 2024 ending ​more than a year ‌of heavy fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah. Israel has repeatedly violated the truce with bombardment and continues to occupy five areas in the country.

‌Lebanon ‌has faced growing pressure ⁠from the United States and Israel to disarm Hezbollah, and its leaders fear Israel could escalate strikes.

Lebanon’s army was expected to complete the disarmament south of the Litani River – 30km (12 miles) from the border with Israel – by the end of 2025. Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on Sunday called the disarmament efforts “far from sufficient”.

Israel claims the drone attack on a car targeted a Hezbollah member.

An Israeli drone attack on a car has killed two people in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese Ministry of Health has said.

Al Jazeera’s Ihab al-Aqdi, reporting from Lebanon, said the attack took place on Sunday in the Ayn al-Mizrab area north of the town of Bint Jbeil. He added that the targeted car was destroyed and that nearby buildings were damaged.

The Israeli military said the attack targeted a Hezbollah member, accusing the Lebanese group of not adhering to a ceasefire that began in November 2024.

Israel has repeatedly struck Lebanon since the ceasefire, despite the agreement, which ended a yearlong conflict that devastated Lebanon as well as Hezbollah’s leadership. Israel also continues to occupy five sites on the Lebanese side of the border.

Israeli attacks have killed more than 300 people in Lebanon since the ceasefire, including at least 127 civilians.

Israel, backed by the United States, expects Hezbollah to disarm. The Lebanese group has refused, however, leaving the Lebanese government and army in the difficult position of attempting to placate Israel and the US, while also avoiding a military confrontation with Hezbollah, which remains powerful despite the losses it has sustained at the hands of Israel.

The losses include the killing of its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in September 2024, in an Israeli attack on Beirut.

The Lebanese government is expected to meet on Tuesday to discuss the army’s progress in disarming Hezbollah, beginning in southern Lebanon. It had previously set a deadline for the end of 2025 to do so, before continuing the disarmament process in the rest of the country. However, the plan has been dismissed by Hezbollah.

A ceasefire monitoring committee, including peacekeepers from Lebanon, Israel, France, the United States and the United Nations, is also set to meet in the upcoming week.

Highlighting Israel’s uncompromising position, the country’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, said that the Lebanese government’s efforts to disarm Hezbollah were “far from sufficient”, and that the group was aiming to rearm “with Iranian support”.

In 2025, Israel carried out thousands of attacks in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, with at least 10,600 attacks recorded across multiple countries including Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Yemen and Qatar.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec. 24 (UPI) — Once hailed as the “Switzerland of the Middle East,” Lebanon has undergone an infernal descent into deeply rooted corruption, financial collapse and state failure, suggesting that the country is governed by a unique model of “mini deep states” that have flourished under its sectarian and clientelist system, political and financial analysts said.

Endemic corruption, misgovernance, sectarianism, wars and political disputes have long fueled Lebanon’s multiple crises.

The 2019 financial collapse — described by the World Bank as a “deliberate depression” and the worst globally since 1850 — was the tipping point that revealed the country’s situation to be far worse than anyone had realized.

Six years later, the situation remains almost unchanged. No one has been charged or put on trial and no official has acknowledged responsibility for the crisis or the estimated $110 billion in bank deposits squandered under state mismanagement.

The first serious attempt to address the financial crisis came Friday, when Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s government presented a draft law aimed at tackling the financial system’s huge funding gap and enable depositors to gradually regain access to their frozen savings — though probably not in full.

The draft law, yet to be debated and expected to be amended, was quickly met with opposition from the banks and depositors, arguing that its provisions are insufficient or unfair. Crucially, it fails to address corruption as the root cause of the crisis and provides no mechanism for accountability.

However, Lebanon’s problems extend far beyond the recent financial crisis, stemming from a corrupt and inept political elite whose sectarian and clientelist networks consistently put personal gain above the nation’s survival, analysts say.

One of the most striking examples of deliberate systemic failure is the chronic power shortages, which have forced most citizens to rely on private or neighborhood generators — run by what many describe as a “mafia” protected by influential political leaders — since the end of the 15-year civil war in 1990. This has created cumulative deficits of about $43 billion.

The same pattern applies to nearly every other sector and extends to the country’s political system, reflecting the reality that all major political forces have blocked meaningful change and prevented reforms for decades.

Despite their political divisions, these forces share common interests, effectively acting as a deep state rather than merely an elite sectarian cartel.

To Mohammad Fheili, a risk strategist and monetary economist, Lebanon is better understood as a system of “multiple, competing and at times cooperating mini-deep states operating within a consociational (power-sharing) confessional framework.”

Rather than a single hidden chain of command, power, Fheili notes, is distributed across overlapping circuits involving security services, the banking and financial sector, senior judges and prosecutors, and top public officials. These networks outlast governments and are bound together by mutual protection.

“Sectarianism is the main channel of organization and veto, but it is not the only engine,” he told UPI. “It provides quotas, patronage pipelines and narratives of legitimacy. However, the driving incentives are often clientelism, rent extraction, protection from prosecution and control of state resources.”

As a result, the same political establishment came to dominate legislation, government and the economy, with decisive influence over appointments, contracts and financial regulation.

Such a “deep state” is not a new phenomenon. Its roots can be traced back to Lebanon’s founding in 1943, when it developed alongside a “rentier economic model,” according to Makram Rabah, a political activist and history professor at the American University of Beirut.

While the civil war saw the rise of militia leaders who later became powerful political figures in peacetime, Rabah said that Syria’s military presence in Lebanon after 1990 introduced “a kind of dual system, in which local actors were allowed to benefit economically as long as Syria controlled foreign policy and security.”

“This is what gave the system its longevity,” he told UPI.

The civil war also normalized militia power, wartime political economy and impunity, Fheili noted, adding that the post-war order “recycled many wartime actors into peacetime governance through a spoils-and-veto arrangement rather than institutional reconstruction.”

A sectarian cartel, he said, then emerged, dividing ministries, contracts and regulatory favors –and transforming political competition into a struggle over access to the state.

The withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon in 2005 — just a few months after the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut — paved the way for Iran-backed Hezbollah to consolidate its control over the country.

Although the militant group has consistently denied involvement in Lebanon’s entrenched corruption — arguing that its funding from Iran is sufficient — experts contend that it nonetheless benefits from the country’s clientelist system, even operating a shadow parallel economy.

Lebanon’s financial collapse, Rabah argued, revealed Hezbollah as both a beneficiary of and a participant in the system, as many of its institutions faltered during the meltdown. Moreover, the perception that it relied solely on Iranian funding and was free from corruption has proven to be “a fallacy.”

With each sect — Muslims and Christians alike — protecting its own corrupt members, it became impossible to hold anyone accountable or bring them to justice. A few exceptions were recorded, but only because those arrested had lost the political protection of their patrons.

“There are many ministers and officials who are extremely corrupt, but no one dares to act against them, as they are protected by their sect and political leaders,” said Mohammad Chamseddine, policy research specialist at the Information International research and consultancy firm.

Although the Lebanese government adopted a new, anti-corruption law in 2020 and began work on a national anti-corruption strategy, he said these efforts failed to yield any results due to the prevailing sectarianism.

“Such an interaction of religion, politics and money is everywhere and consolidates corruption,” Chamseddine told UPI. “Only a real revolution — when people storm the houses and palaces of the corrupt and put them in jail — can change this.”

Lebanon’s losses from corruption and the deep state, accumulating since the 1990s, are difficult to estimate, exceeding tens of billions of U.S. dollars, according to Chamseddine.

However, dismantling the country’s “mini deep states” and eliminating corruption is possible –even if only partially — but it would require a long process of gradual, progressive steps, starting with an independent judiciary, the analysts said.

Would the disarming of Hezbollah, which was significantly weakened by Israel during last year’s war, be the starting point?

“It may open tactical space, but only if reforms target the entire ecosystem, not just Hezbollah or the banks,” Fheili said.

Deadly Israeli air strike is latest in Israel’s near-daily violations of 2024 ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah.

At least three people have been killed in an Israeli attack near the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, the country’s National News Agency (NNA) is reporting, in the latest Israeli breach of a ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah.

Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said on Monday that the three people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a vehicle on Quneitra Road in the southern Sidon district, according to NNA.

The Israeli military said in a statement that it had targeted Hezbollah members in the Sidon area, without providing further details.

The deadly strikes come a day after another Israeli attack on southern Lebanon on Sunday killed one person and wounded two others. The Israeli army said it killed a Hezbollah member in that attack.

Israel has repeatedly violated the November 2024 ceasefire agreement with the Lebanese group, carrying out near-daily attacks across Lebanon, particularly in the south, that have drawn widespread condemnation.

Between January and late November, Israeli forces carried out nearly 1,600 strikes across Lebanon, according to data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED).

Late last month, the United Nations said at least 127 civilians had been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since the ceasefire took effect, prompting a call from the United Nations human rights office for a “prompt and impartial” investigation.

Delegations meet in southern Lebanon

Israel’s attacks have continued despite the November 2024 ceasefire agreement, which includes provisions for Hezbollah’s disarmament in parts of southern Lebanon and the withdrawal of Israeli forces.

On Saturday, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Lebanon was close to completing the disarmament of Hezbollah in the area south of the Litani River.

That is a key provision of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which designates the zone between the Litani River and the Israeli border as an area where only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers are permitted to operate.

Hezbollah has long rejected calls for full disarmament, saying its weapons are necessary to defend Lebanon against Israeli attacks and occupation.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem has consistently said the group will end its military presence south of the Litani River in line with the ceasefire, but insists it will retain its weapons elsewhere in Lebanon.

Under the 2024 ceasefire agreement, Israeli forces were also required to withdraw fully from southern Lebanon, south of the Litani River, by January. But Israeli troops have only partially pulled back and continue to maintain a military presence at five border outposts inside Lebanese territory.

Hezbollah officials have previously said the group would not fully implement its commitments under the ceasefire while Israeli forces remain deployed in southern Lebanon.

Meanwhile, a committee overseeing the ceasefire agreement continues to hold talks in southern Lebanon as Israel and the United States increase pressure on Hezbollah to disarm.

Civilian and military delegations from Israel and Lebanon met in the southern town of Naqoura on Friday in closed-door discussions.

Following the talks, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun met with diplomat Simon Karam, who has been appointed as Lebanon’s chief civilian negotiator.

Hezbollah has been critical of the appointment of Karam, who has previously served as the ambassador of Lebanon to the US.

In a statement, the Lebanese presidency said Aoun stressed that enabling tens of thousands of displaced Lebanese civilians to return to their villages and homes was “an entry point for addressing all other details” of the agreement.

Aoun said the committee’s next meeting is scheduled for January 7.

He also welcomed a separate diplomatic agreement reached in Paris between the US, France and Saudi Arabia to organise an international conference in early 2026 to support the Lebanese army and internal security forces.

The PM says the part of the plan on south of the Litani River is ‘only days away from completion’.

Lebanon is close to completing the disarmament of Hezbollah in the south of the Litani River before a year-end deadline as part of a ceasefire deal with Israel, according to Prime Minister Nawaf Salam.

Saturday’s statement comes as the country races to fulfil the key demand in the US-backed deal agreed in November last year and ended more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

The agreement requires the disarmament of the Iran-aligned Lebanese armed group, starting in areas south of the river adjacent to Israel.

Lebanese authorities, led by President Joseph Aoun and Salam, tasked the US-backed Lebanese army on August 5 with devising a plan to establish a state monopoly on arms by the end of the year.

“Prime Minister Salam affirmed that the first phase of the weapons consolidation plan related to the area south of the Litani River is only days away from completion,” a statement from his office said.

“The state is ready to move on to the second phase – namely [confiscating weapons] north of the Litani River – based on the plan prepared by the Lebanese army pursuant to a mandate from the government,” Salam added.

Committee meeting

The statement came after Salam held talks with Simon Karam, Lebanon’s top civilian negotiator on a committee overseeing the Hezbollah-Israel truce.

In a meeting on Friday, the committee focused on how to return displaced people to their homes, addressing civilian issues to help prevent renewed war if the year-end deadline to disarm Hezbollah is not met.

The 15th meeting of the committee reflected a longstanding US push to broaden talks between the sides beyond monitoring the 2024 ceasefire.

At Friday’s meeting in the southern Lebanese coastal town of Naqoura, civilian participants discussed steps to support safe returns of residents uprooted by the 2023-24 war and advance economic reconstruction, the US Embassy in Beirut said.

Since the ceasefire, Israeli warplanes have repeatedly targeted parts of Lebanon, mostly southern Lebanon, but sometimes even the capital.

Israel says it is questioning the Lebanese army’s efforts to disarm Hezbollah.

Hezbollah, a Shia Muslim armed group, has tried to resist the pressure – from its mainly Christian and Sunni Muslim opponents in Lebanon as well as from the US and Saudi Arabia – to disarm, saying it would be a mistake while Israel continues its air strikes on the country.

Israel has publicly urged Lebanese authorities to fulfil the conditions of the truce, saying it will act “as necessary” if Lebanon fails to take steps against Hezbollah.