Shiite Iran has denounced the European Union for its decision to blacklist Hezbollah’s armed wing as a terror group, accusing it of acting in Israel’s interests, Iranian media reported Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Iran and Hezbollah are both sworn enemies of Israel and the Lebanese Shiite group has received Tehran’s moral, financial and military support since its inception.<\/p>\n
Iran “strongly denounces the [EU] decision… and believes [it] is in line with the illegitimate interests of the Zionist regime,” Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted as saying by official media.<\/p>\n
“The European Union, due to lack of correct judgment about the regional crisis, took this wrong decision,” Salehi said.<\/p>\n
The action, he added, is “against the Lebanese people since Hezbollah has put up a legitimate defense against the Zionists’ aggressions,” he added.<\/p>\n
Hezbollah fought a bitter war with Israel in 2006 and more recently has been providing military support to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as it tries to put down an insurgency that has escalated into civil war.<\/p>\n
Salehi’s comments come after the EU on Monday put Hezbollah’s military wing on its of terrorist organizations, a move the Lebanese Shiite movement slammed as aggressive and unjust.<\/p>\n
To get the required agreement of all 28 EU member states, ministers had to overcome reservations in some members that the move would further destabilize Lebanon, where the militant group plays a key role in politics and has dominated the government since 2011.<\/p>\n
Accordingly, EU political and economic ties with Lebanon will be fully maintained in a delicate balancing act.<\/p>\n
Hezbollah’s military wing was blamed for a deadly attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria last year.<\/p>\n
In March, a Hezbollah operative was also convicted in Cyprus of plotting a similar attack.<\/p>\n
Iran and Hezbollah have remained steadfast allies of Assad’s regime throughout the conflict roiling Syria.<\/p>\n
Source:Agencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Shiite Iran has denounced the European Union for its decision to blacklist Hezbollah’s armed wing as a terror group, accusing it of acting in Israel’s interests, Iranian media reported Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Iran and Hezbollah are both sworn enemies of Israel and the Lebanese Shiite group has received Tehran’s moral, financial and military support since its inception.<\/p>\n
Iran “strongly denounces the [EU] decision… and believes [it] is in line with the illegitimate interests of the Zionist regime,” Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted as saying by official media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":10014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}