Aoun denounced Hezbollah’s attack on Israel as “a trap, and an almost overt ambush for Lebanon, and the Lebanese state, and the Lebanese people.” He said Hezbollah and its paymasters in Tehran were trying to “buy the fall of the Lebanese state” without concern for the price, which included “destroying dozens of our villages and the fall of tens of thousands of our people for the sake of the Iranian regime’s calculations.” Aoun said over 700,000 Lebanese citizens have been displaced by the fighting, including 200,000 children, creating a massive humanitarian crisis. “Some of them are on the roads. They have no shelter and not even the most basic necessities of life,” he said.
The president’s criticism of Hezbollah was unusually sharp, as the Iran-backed terrorist group is also a potent political force in Lebanon. He slammed Hezbollah as an “armed faction” that gave “no weight to Lebanon’s interests, or to the lives of its people. Aoun also voiced his support for countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that have been “treacherously and reprehensibly targeted by the Iranian regime.” (Ed note: The Lebanese government and military has neither the will or power to rein in the forces of Hezbollah, thus Israel will have to do it for them.) (Read More)
