Lebanese media announced last week that Iran’s shipment of 29 million liters of fuel had entered Syria and recently reached northern borders of Lebanon to be distributed in the country stuck with fuel shortage.
This was the first part of Iran’s promised fuel to Lebanon facilitated through Hezbollah; two other shipments are on the way to reach Syria, indicating Iran’s determination not to abandon Lebanese people alone in the times of hardship.
However, the US has always cause new problems and made the existing ones even more complicated - a fact that could be observed in the one-year-long impasse in the formation of a cabinet which was finally solved by Najib Miqati being tasked by the Lebanese President last Friday to form the cabinet.
After resignation of US-Saudi-backed Saad Hariri, Lebanon has been struggling with lots of troubles in the last two years, including electricity shortage, devaluation of Lebanese lira, fuel shortage, uncontrollable inflation, and the spread of the coronavirus, causing a popular uprising which led to the last's resignation of Prime Minister Hassan Diab.
US, France, and Saudi Arabia made a lot of effort to impose their wishes in forming the cabinet, but they attempted to make a chaos when they were unable to do what they wished for.
In the meantime, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah’s announcing that Iran was sending fuel shipments was a game changer which made Americans so angry that they began to promise the moon by vowing to supply Lebanon’s electricity and natural gas needs through Jordan and Egypt.
However, as Syrian analyst Yunus Karim noted, both projects were old ones, with the Egypt gas pipeline known as the Arab Gas Pipeline being active until 2009, but stopped in 2012 because of a reduction in Egypt’s gas production.
He also doubted that the project was practical due to US’ Caesar sanctions against Syria that inevitably would host a part of the pipeline.
On the other hand, Syrian-produced electricity would be even cheaper for Lebanon, if it is generated in Tishrin Power Plants provided that the US allows Syrian Democratic Forces to supply its gas, according to Karim.
The analyst believes that the United States hasn’t so far had a clear stance on the supply of gas and power by Arab nations and this promise would also be a void one like the previous ones.
This should be noted that the US and Saudi Arabia are the biggest producers and exporters of oil and they would provide the Lebanese with the fuel they need if they were seriously well-intentioned.
9416**9417
Follow us on Twitter @IrnaEnglish