On September 4 the third shipment of Iranian fuel had been received by authorities in Lebanon despite U.S. exporting sanctions, while Iranian citizens are left to suffer from consistent power outages.
On August 19, AP reported that the leader of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group said Thursday that an Iranian fuel tanker would sail toward Lebanon ‘within hours’. This was the first fuel shipment from Iran to Lebanon.
Instead of finding a solution to prevent the constant power outages in Iran, the regime’s Ministry of Energy has done nothing other than announce their plans for ‘scheduled blackouts’. Insufficient fuel for power plants is the excuse that the regime has given for the outages, claiming they have no choice but to use fuel oil instead. The downside of this is that it causes a lot of air pollution, which in turn is worsening respiratory problems in Iranian people.
Constant blackouts in Iran disrupt people’s daily lives and increases the Covid-19 casualties as the oxygen machines stop functioning.
The cause of the constant power outages in Iran is the regime’s plundering of electricity resources. When they are not exporting electricity abroad to generate income for themselves, they are consuming too much of it to extract cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin.
On January 12, eight provinces witnessed widespread and serial blackouts. The blackouts extended to seven other provinces, namely Gilan, Alborz, Central Khorasan, Mashhad, Markazi, Semnan, Qom, and Ardabil.
According to Mostafa Rajabi Mashhadi, the spokesman for the electricity industry, the cause of the blackouts was the lack of fuel needed to run power plants. The regime, on the other hand, blamed the Iranian people for their ‘high usage of gas’.
The regime refuses to use Iran’s vast resources of natural gas and other fuels as it ships them abroad. Besides, since the regime uses fuel oil for power plants, Iran’s electricity is cheaper than other countries.
Saeed Khatibzadeh, Spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on August 30, 2021, said: “It is a sovereign decision for us to sell our oil and fuel to which countries or customers. Neither the United States nor any country is in an extrajudicial position to prevent legitimate trade, while we are very serious about exercising our sovereignty. We went down the same route to sell our fuel shipments to Lebanon, as long as we have customers and demand it will continue.
For the past 4 decades, the clerical regime has always supported terrorist groups in their attempt to export domestic crisis. One such group is the Hezbollah in Lebanon. With support from the Iranian regime, Hezbollah has risen to become a major force in Lebanon, with many members occupying the country’s top positions.
Like Iran, Lebanon is also facing a major poverty crisis. This is leading to Lebanese citizens openly denouncing Hezbollah, blaming them for the crises in the country, as well as the shortages in medicines and fuel and the currency crash.
Tehran is now implicated in conflicts in Yemen and Syria. Hezbollah has been acting as the regime’s boots on the ground in the region, allowing the regime to use its oppressive forces to control Iran’s society.
As the downfall of Hezbollah and a possible uprising in Lebanon would spell disaster for the regime, they choose to support the terror group to protect themselves. However, this decision poses the risk of further pressure from western governments due to the regime’s consistent violation of international sanctions.
The Iranian people’s hatred towards the regime continues to increase as they witness the regime plundering the country’s wealth, leaving them facing crisis after crisis and spiraling further in poverty.
Sending fuel to Lebanon wouldn’t resolve Hezbollah’s problems in the long term. It also rejects the regime’s propaganda of not having enough resources to help its own people amid the Covid-19 outbreak.
