The political debate between Beirut and Tehran escalated against the backdrop of the ongoing war and regional tensions, after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi responded to statements by President Joseph Aoun in which he accused Iran of using Lebanon as a negotiating card at the international negotiating table.
Araqchi said in a post on the “X” platform, today, Saturday, that “If Lebanon were a bargaining chip for Iran, we would have reached an agreement with Washington a long time ago,” rejecting Lebanese accusations about exploiting the Lebanese arena in the ongoing negotiations with the United States.
He added that Aoun’s statements suggest that Iran is the one who “occupies a fifth of Lebanon, displaced a quarter of the Lebanese, and bombs the country daily,” in a direct reference to Israel, before concluding his message by saying: “Save Lebanon from its true enemy, Mr. President.”
The Iranian response came after President Aoun, in an interview with the American CNN network yesterday, Friday, called on Tehran to stop interfering in Lebanese affairs, stressing that Lebanon is not an arena for settling regional scores.
Addressing Iranian officials, Aoun said: “This is not your country, it is our country, and your job is not to interfere in our country,” adding that the Lebanese are the ones paying the price for the wars and tensions taking place in the region.
The President of the Republic stressed that the Lebanese state alone has the sovereign decision, considering that Hezbollah does not represent the entire Lebanese people, and that political and negotiated solutions remain the only path to addressing the existing crises.
In the same context, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam sent a direct message to the Iranian leadership during a press conference yesterday, calling on Tehran to “have mercy on southern Lebanon” and stop dealing with it as a tool to improve the conditions for negotiation in regional and international files.
Salam stressed that Lebanon refuses to be a “mailbox” for exchanging messages between external powers or an open arena for others’ conflicts, stressing that southern Lebanon is not a reserve front for any party.
This unprecedented debate between Lebanese and Iranian officials coincides with the escalation of tension between Tehran and Washington after the exchange of military strikes during the past hours, and with the continuation of discussions about the ceasefire agreement that was negotiated during four rounds of direct Lebanese-Israeli talks in Washington under American sponsorship.
The Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Sheikh Naim Qassem, recently criticized the American ceasefire proposal, considering that it violates Lebanese sovereignty, and rejecting any withdrawal of the party’s members from southern Lebanon before Israel completely withdraws from Lebanese territory and stops attacks on various regions.
The commander of the Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Ismail Qaani, had previously confirmed that the minimum demands of the “resistance” were for Israel to return to the positions it controlled before the outbreak of the last war, which reflected Tehran’s insistence on linking any settlement in Lebanon to the path of the broader regional confrontation.
This discrepancy comes at a time when international pressure is increasing to reach an agreement to stop the confrontations that have been ongoing for months, amid fears of the collapse of the negotiations and the widening of the escalation, especially after the Israeli threat to target the southern suburb of Beirut, in exchange for Iran’s insistence that any understanding include stopping military operations on various fronts related to the ongoing conflict in the region.
