BEIRUT (AP) — Iran’s acting foreign minister arrived in Lebanon on Monday, his first official diplomatic visit since his predecessor was killed in a helicopter crash last month.
Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported that Ali Bagheri Kani would visit Lebanon and then Syria “to meet with officials of the two countries and officials of the resistance front to discuss ways to counter (Israel).”
Iran supports a number of armed factions in the region, with the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah widely seen as the most powerful. Hezbollah would be Tehran’s first line of defense in the event of a direct conflict between Iran and Israel.
Bagheri Kani’s predecessor, Hossein Amirabdollahian, a hardliner close to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards, was killed in a helicopter crash in a mountainous area near Iran’s border with Azerbaijan on May 19, along with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and a delegation of other officials.
Bagheri Kani met with his Lebanese counterpart, Abdallah Bou Habib, on Monday and praised the “close relations” between the two countries. He told reporters that “resistance is the basis for stability in the region.”
“We agreed that all countries in the region, especially Islamic countries, should build a joint movement to counter Israeli aggression and protect the Palestinian people, especially in Rafah,” he said.
Bou Habib said Lebanon, in turn, wants to avoid a broader war and is looking for “durable solutions that restore peace and stability in southern Lebanon.”
Hezbollah has been clashing with Israeli forces along the Lebanon-Israel border since October, against the backdrop of Israel’s war against the allied Hamas group in Gaza. Cross-border fighting has intensified in recent weeks since the Israeli raid on the key city of Rafah in southern Gaza.
The border clashes have killed more than 400 people on the Lebanese side – most of them militants, but also more than 70 civilians and non-combatants – and at least fifteen soldiers and ten civilians on the Israeli side.
The danger of direct conflict between Iran and Israel has also increased since October 7.
An apparent Israeli airstrike on an Iranian consulate in Syria in April caused one series of escalating attacks between Iran and Israel threatened to spark a wider war, although the two regional arch-rivals recently appeared to be pushing back on tensions.