US Sends High-Level Team To UAE Aiming To Mend Frayed Ties

“Iran has never tried to interfere in Lebanon’s internal affairs,” foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told his weekly news conference. While the grip of Lebanon’s sect-based parties remained strong, there were small gains by independent candidates reflecting desire for change since the 2019 ‘al-Thawra’ protests, an economic crisis that has left 80 percent of citizens in poverty, and the 2020 Beirut port explosion.

Reuters news agency cited three “sources” close to Hezbollah saying its alliance – with fellow Shia party Amal, the Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), and some smaller groups – would lose its parliamentary majority.

But Lebanese government formation is always protracted given the reservation of political positions for members of particular sects. One picture caption doing the social-media rounds sarcastically highlighted a “leaked picture of the future head of the Lebanese parliament” – Amal leader Nabih Berri who has held the post since 1992 and will likely continue once various deals are done.

The speaker is a Shia under an understanding dating to 1943, with the president a Christian, and the prime minister a Sunni.

Critics of Hezbollah, including the Lebanese Forces, led by wartime Christian militia leader Samir Geagea, made gains, leaving analysts to suggest that no alliance would win the 65 seats required for a majority in the 128-seat parliament.

The Lebanese Forces, according to press spokesman Antoinette Geagea, won at least 20 seats, up from 15 in 2018, while its main Christian rival, the Hezbollah-allied Free Patriotic Movement, won 16, down from 18, its campaign manager Sayed Younis told Reuters.

Economic meltdown, political rivalries

Voter turnout across was down from the 49 percent of 2018, although there were reports of heavy voting by Lebanese expatriates. These elections were the first since the economy slid into meltdown in late 2019 following the collapse of a post-1990 economic system based on massive government borrowing from a banking sector buoyed by expatriate deposits attracted by high interest rates.

Rivalries between sect-based parties linked to regional powers have stymied efforts at structural reform while European donors have lost patience with corruption.

Since it first entered the cabinet in 2005, Hezbollah has become associated with government failings and has lost support among Shia voters. While the party has continued to provide valued social services in the face of growing economic hardship, many Lebanese questioned its role in the Syrian war, where it sent fighters to support President Bashar al-Assad.

Iranian allies also lost ground in the Iraqi elections of December 2021. But in Lebanon, as in Iraq, the formation of a new government is likely to be a protracted process while citizens deal with issues like inadequate electricity and rapidly rising prices.

It remains to be seen whether Hezbollah’s electoral setback will encourage the Sunni Arab Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, to reconsider their political and financial disengagement from Lebanon going back to around 2015.

Tehran has also welcomed the appointment of the new ruler Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan also known as MbZ.

The trip by Hossein Amirabdollahian is the highest level visit by an Iranian official to the Gulf country since Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi movement launched a deadly strike on the UAE in January.

While indirect talks between arch-foes Tehran and Washington to revive a 2015 nuclear deal have stalled since March, Amirabdollahian's trip coincides with the visit of a high-ranking US delegation, headed by Vice President Kamala Harris, to Abu Dhabi to also offer condolences on the death of President Khalifa bin Zayed last week.

In 2019, the UAE started engaging with Iran following attacks on tankers off Persian Gulf waters and on Saudi energy infrastructure.

Iran's deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani visited the UAE in November, when he said the two countries had agreed to open a new chapter in bilateral relations.

UAE strongman Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who was formally elected president by the country's federal supreme council on Saturday, led a realignment of the Middle East that created a new anti-Iran axis with Israel and fought a rising tide of political Islam in the region.

Reporting by Reuters

US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said in a tweet on Sunday, “We support their rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression online and offline -- without fear of violence and reprisal”. “Brave Iranian protestors are standing up for their rights”.

This is the first official reaction by the Biden Administration to the ongoing protests in several Iranian cities, triggered by a sudden hike in food prices. But the unrest has quickly turned into anti-Islamic Republic protests with people chanting slogans against top government leaders.

Sunday night, people were heard chanting “Death to Raisi”, “Death to Khamenei”, as some gunshots were heard in Shahre Kord, the center of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari provinc. Some reports said that security forces directly fired at demonstrators. So far, five deaths have been reported in more than a week of protests. Security forces also use batons and tear gas against protesters.

Many citizens have also been detained but there is no total number reported by reliable sources. Many younger people are among the detainees and some reports speak of security forces arresting whole families if some members were identified during protests.

Head of Tehran's Chamber of Commerce's Exports Committee Razi Haji Aghamiri told ILNA on Sunday that unprofessional measures by the trade authorities have decreased the exports to such a low point that practically there is nothing left of this business.

He described the restrictions by Iran’s Central Bank for the revenues of carpet exports as the “coup de grâce” to the sector, but the sharp drop in exports seems to be more related to the US sanctions.

Data from the Trade Ministry show that the export of traditional Iranian hand-woven carpets in 2001, when nuclear sanctions against Iran had not yet been imposed, was more than half a billion dollars, over a quarter of which was imported by the United States, with Germany, Lebanon, and Britain as other major customers.

The exports picked up again in 2017, immediately after the implementation of Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), reaching about $426 million. But the figure started to fall again after the US withdrawal from the deal in 2018 when Washington reimposed sanctions on the import of Iranian rugs. Importing Iranian carpet to the United States is forbidden even through a third country.

In August 2018, Fereshteh Dastpak, the head of Iran's National Carpet Center at the time, claimed that the value of the hand-woven carpet exports amounted to $1.2 billion annually over the past decade.

An opposition candidate and two Hezbollah officials confirmed the result, citing preliminary results.

Two Hezbollah officials said Elias Jradi, an eye doctor running on the opposition-backed "Together Towards Change" list, won an Orthodox Christian seat previously held by Assaad Hardan of the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party, a close Hezbollah ally who has been an MP since 1992.

Jradi told Reuters his list had secured enough votes to win one seat, an opposition breakthrough in an area dominated by the Iran-backed group and its allies, but would not confirm it would go to him before results were finalized.

Shi'ite Muslim Hezbollah and its allies are expected to retain control of the remaining 10 seats in the district, the Hezbollah officials said.

The election for the 128-member parliament is the first since Lebanon collapsed into economic crisis in 2019. Results are expected to emerge through the night.

Opposition candidates are mainly from leaders of protests that rocked Lebanon in 2019, aimed at a political elite that has controlled politics in the small but strategic country for decades, eventually leading the economy into disintegration. Hezbollah has dominated the sectarian political landscape in the past decade.

Hezbollah and its allies won a majority in 2018.