President Joseph Aoun of Lebanon is travelling to Washington, DC, in the United States to meet with US President Donald Trump in person for the first time. The two heads of state are set to discuss plans on how to disarm the Islamist terror group Hezbollah operating from Lebanon.
Foreign policy expert Rajmund Kiss has appeared on the morning show Napindító (Day Starter) on the Hungarian cable news channel HírTV to give his expert analysis of the developments.
Kiss told the audience that these are plans that have been in the making for over a decade and described Hezbollah as a ‘leech’ on Lebanon, as well as the ‘extended arm of Iran’ that has been engaging in a proxy war with Israel. He also pointed out that the terror group has more missiles in its stockpiles than many Member States of the European Union.
The expert went on to state that Iran has influence over a network of dangerous terror organizations in the Middle East, namely the Houthis, Hamas, and the aforementioned Hezbollah. However, he also noted that their military power is only a fraction of what it was three years ago.
On the negotiations between President Trump and Lebanese President Aoun, Kiss expressed his hope that they will be fruitful. However, he also pointed out that there have been ceasefire and other types of agreements made between nations since the US–Israeli attacks on Iran on 28 February, but none of them has held for long. He was cautious about the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the United States and Iran on 19 June as well, and has always viewed it as ‘the calm before the storm,’ he stressed. The MOU ended up collapsing within a month.
The speaker explained that the main goals of the US regarding Iran are to stop it from sponsoring terrorist groups abroad, stop its ballistic missiles programme, and to get them to stop enriching uranium.
However, during the war, Iran has proven that it has the capability to close the Strait of Hormuz, something that many in the American intelligence agency CIA were not convinced of prior. Kiss pointed out that the Strait of Hormuz has been a vital commercial bottleneck for thousands of years, going back to the Middle Ages; and while most people focus on the shipment of crude oil through the corridor, many other important goods are also transported through the Strait.
On the recent escalation in the US–Iran war, Kiss stated it was not Trump who initiated it this time. He ‘struck back’ after Iran fired on multiple commercial vessels attempting to cross the Strait of Hormuz while the Memorandum of Understanding was still in place.
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