Saad Hariri: What Did Lebanon Do to Iran to Be Dragged Into a Devastating War?

A statement was issued by Saad Hariri:

“After exhausting all attempts to understand the reasons behind the Iranian regime’s destruction of Lebanon and its targeting of the Gulf, and after considering it either a military mistake that would be corrected or a reckless message that would stop at certain limits, it is no longer possible to escape the truth.

What did Lebanon do to the Islamic Republic of Iran for it to drag the country into a devastating war that claims the lives of its people and destroys what remains of its already exhausted infrastructure — worn down by the ‘proxy wars’ that Iran has fought on its soil — expanding the scope of attacks to include the capital, Beirut, terrorizing its residents and those displaced to it?

While Tehran declares that its enemy is Israel, the Gulf states have in reality received the largest share of its treacherous strikes. This confirms that the military arsenal amassed under the pretext of liberating Jerusalem was in fact prepared solely to destroy the capitals of the Arab Gulf.

How can it be that the United Arab Emirates receives the largest number of missiles and drones in a war that Iran claims it is fighting against Israel and the United States, despite Abu Dhabi’s repeated and clear declaration that it would not allow its land or airspace to be used as a platform for any military action against Iran? And who could believe that the surroundings of Louvre Abu Dhabi or its airport are a regional branch of the Pentagon? Or that Burj Al Arab, Burj Khalifa, the luxury hotels of Dubai, and its airport are military bases from which wars are run?

As for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which made exceptional efforts to spare Iran from being struck and spent significant political, diplomatic, and moral capital to reduce tensions, its oil facilities and civilian infrastructure continue to be targeted by Tehran’s missiles and drones — a response marked by ingratitude and betrayal.

How then did the Social Security building in the Kuwait and hotels in the Bahrain become aircraft carriers for Washington? And since when did Qatar — which has defended Iran in many forums — and the Oman, which has played the role of a diplomatic bridge between Tehran and the world, become American bases used to stab the Islamic Republic?

Without bias, one reality is becoming difficult to ignore and must be said out loud: the rulers of Tehran harbor a deep and pathological hostility toward their Arab neighbors in general and the Gulf states in particular.

Iran’s aggression against all its neighbors, including the launching of missiles and drones toward Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Cyprus, is not merely a miscalculation but a highly dangerous hostile behavior. More dangerously, it has provided the world with proof that the Iranian regime is inherently aggressive, responding with fire and destruction to neighbors who have shown it nothing but goodwill.

The evident truth today is that if Israel has, over decades, undermined the meanings of coexistence and peace in the region, the missiles of the Iranian regime have not fallen alone — with them has fallen the meaning of neighborhood itself, and what remained of the trust that some had once imagined in a regime that betrayed its own people when it chose to betray its neighbors and friends.”