Saudi Arabia said on Friday it had blacklisted four companies and three Lebanese men for having links to Hezbollah, a close ally of Riyadh’s arch regional adversary Iran.
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His remarks came after the Wednesday statement of the Saudi-dominated council of the Arab states of the Persian Gulf which declared implementing the terrorist designation for Lebanese resistant group Hezbollah.
Last month, Saudi Arabia halted a $3 billion programme for military supplies to Lebanon to protest what it said was “the stranglehold of Hezbollah on the state”. The row has raised concern for Lebanon’s political and economic stability by exacerbating tensions between its Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims and prompting concerns about the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese expatriates the Gulf.
According to a statement from GCC Secretary-General Abdullatif al-Zayani, the declaration was made because Hezbollah members conducted several hostile acts within GCC states.
The Syrian government says the move by the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) in declaring the Hezbollah resistance movement a “terrorist group” is in line with the Israeli regime’s agenda.
The kingdom and other Gulf states, including the UAE and Bahrain followed up that move by urging their citizens to leave Lebanon and placing a travel ban on them going to Lebanon, dealing a blow to the country’s tourism industry. Saudi Arabia and its allies have condemned the organization in the past. In January, Riyadh led several Arab countries in cutting diplomatic ties with Tehran after demonstrators burned its embassy and a consulate in protest at its execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.
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He repeated his accusations that Saudi Arabia was directly responsible for some vehicle bombings in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, and he denounced Saudi “massacres” in Yemen. But a day earlier, its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah had said Saudi Arabia had pushed Lebanon into a new phase of political conflict by announcing it was suspending an aid package to the Lebanese army. Nasrallah has said that such conflict will not be repeated, Jpost.com reported.
