Jalili requested Hezbollah to stir “strife” in Lebanon

Now Lebanon - March 14 General Secretariat Coordinator Fares Soueid said that Iranian Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Saeed Jalili had requested Hezbollah aid the Syrian regime through whipping up strife in Lebanon.

Jalili visited Lebanon last week to discuss local and regional developments with top Lebanese officials.

“[Jalili] asked Hezbollah to assist the Syrian regime through stirring strife in Lebanon in order to divert attention from what the [regime in Damascus] is carrying out inside Syria,” Soueid told the Kuwaiti newspaper As-Seyassah during an interview published on Friday.

“The first plan was to assassinate [Maronite] Patriarch [Bechara Boutros al-Rai] during his visit to Akkar and some [Lebanese politicians, through using former information Minister] Michel Samaha [to execute the plan],” Soueid added.

Former Information Minister Michel Samaha was arrested last week in connection with a seizure of explosives that were allegedly to be used in northern Lebanon, a region of tension linked to the Syrian conflict.

Furthermore, the March 14 official said that after the first plan failed, “attention was turned away towards the Moqdad family through fabricating a video showing one of [Moqdad family’s] sons taken hostage by the Free Syrian Army. [Afterwards], Moqdad [members] blocked the road [leading to Beirut’s Rafiq Hariri International Airport] and kidnapped a number of Syrian oppositionists [before] handing them over to the [Syrian regime].”

Members of the Lebanese Moqdad family said on Wednesday that its “military wing” abducted “more than 20 FSA members” and a Turkish national.

The kidnapping followed the abduction of Hassan al-Moqdad in Syria. The FSA identified the abductee as a Hezbollah member, a statement denied by the Shiite party.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah is mainly backed by Tehran and Damascus. The Shiite group also spearheads the pro-Syrian regime March 8 alliance in the country.

Lebanon’s political scene is split between supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, led by Hezbollah, and the pro-Western March 14 camp.