Ahmadinejad Tours Lebanon, Taunts Israel, While Iranians Stew at Home

James Phillips / October 18, 2010

In a provocative and divisive two day state visit to Lebanon last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad basked in the adulation of Lebanese Shiite crowds assembled by his Hezbollah allies. Ahmadinejad’s controversial trip was designed to: bolster his status as a world leader at a time when he increasingly is under attack at home; give him a platform for shaking his fist at Israel; and boost his Hezbollah clients. Iran has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Hezbollah’s coffers and supplied it with over 40,000 rockets and missiles in recent years to replenish Hezbollah’s arsenal, depleted in its 2006 war with Israel.

Ahmadinejad praised Lebanon as a “university of Jihad” and traveled to Bin Jbeil, a bastion of Hezbollah support near Lebanon’s border with Israel where he denounced Israel, which he said would “disappear” and proclaimed that “the occupying Zionists today have no choice but to accept reality and go back to their countries of origin.” (more…)