BEIRUT (Dispatches) -- Lebanon’s Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has repeated calls for the cabinet to seek a U.S. sanctions waiver to import Iranian fuel and alleviate crippling shortages.
Nasrallah said the government should make power shortages a priority, adding the total blackout that occurred on Saturday when Lebanon’s two largest power plants ground to a halt was like a “clinical death” for the country.
“Let the government ask for a sanctions waiver and let the Lebanese companies go and buy ... and then we will withdraw from this file completely,” Nasrallah said in a televised speech.
Hezbollah has been coordinating Iranian shipments of fuel oil and gasoline for Lebanon since August as shortages spread amid an economic meltdown, despite U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil sales.
Iran sends the fuel oil shipments organized by Hezbollah to the port of Baniyas in Syria and from there they are transported by truck to Lebanon. Syria is also under U.S. sanctions.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian, on a visit to Beirut last week, said his country was ready to build two power plants in Lebanon, one in Beirut and the other in the south of the country, in a period of 18 months.
On Monday Nasrallah urged the cabinet to respond to his offer.
The food crisis has significantly worsened in Lebanon in recent months amid fuel shortages and price rises.
The World Food Program (WFP) estimated that food prices have gone up by 628 percent in just two years, compounding Lebanon’s economic meltdown, which has plunged three-quarters of its population into poverty and devalued the Lebanese pound by about 90 percent.
The Lebanese government has gradually been lifting fuel subsidies since June and has increased petrol prices four times in under a month in a bid to deal with crippling shortages. At the same time, it has struggled to unroll a cashcard program to replace the subsidies.