TELL AVIV, February 3. /TASS/. Iran controls the Lebanese government via the Hezbollah movement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.
"Iran has proxies. One of them is Hezbollah. Hezbollah just joined the government of Lebanon. That's a misnomer; they actually control the government of Lebanon. It means that Iran controls the government of Lebanon," Netanyahu’s office quoted him as saying at a meeting with a delegation of UN ambassadors who arrived in Israel to make a trip of the northern border.
It was Netanyahu’s first commentary following the formation of a new Lebanese government next Thursday.
"A great shift has taken place in the Middle East. That shift is the rise of the aggressive theocracy of Iran that seeks to conquer the Middle East, eliminate Israel and dominate many other parts of the world," the Israeli prime minister said and asked the UN ambassadors to convey the message that Israel will "stop all the aggression; from Lebanon or from Syria or from Iran itself."
"We are committed to preventing this aggression, and in so doing we're not only protecting Israel itself, but also protecting our neighbors and world peace," he stressed.
It took Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri more than eight months to form a new government of 30 ministers. Two of the thirty are women. Eleven ministerial portfolios went to the Strong Lebanon Bloc which supports the country’s President Michel Aoun. The government also includes representatives of the Al-Mustaqbal Sunni movement, the Lebanese Forces Christian party, the Hezbollah and Amal Shia movements, the Druze and Armenian communities.