TEHRAN – Mehdi Shoushtari, an aide to the Iranian foreign minister and the head of the bureau of West Asia and North Africa at the Iranian foreign ministry, met with Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Lebanon’s Hezbollah. 

The meeting took place in Lebanon and was also attended by Mojtaba Amani, the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon. 

“In this meeting, the latest developments in Lebanon, the region and current regional political contacts were discussed,” according to Fars News. 

Shoushtari also met with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Friday. They discussed the general situation in Lebanon and the region and bilateral relations between Tehran and Beirut.

The meeting with Nasrallah comes against a backdrop of a diplomatic thaw between Iran and Arab heavyweights and an escalation of tension between Lebanon and Israel.

Earlier this month, the secretary-general of Hezbollah warned Israel against waging war on Lebanon. 

“What's new in Lebanon? What is the resistance in Lebanon? What is it capable of doing? This is what the Israeli leaders know but try to hide with their media propaganda, which has no value attached to it. Therefore, I tell this to the enemy. Today, I can tell them this: you will also return to the stone age. If you were to wage a war against Lebanon, you would return to the stone age Some might say I am exaggerating. I will respond with two quick points,” Nasrallah said, addressing the Israeli regime. 

He added, “We have a map of the occupied Palestinian territories and a list of targets [that will take Israel back to the stone age]. If the Israeli minister doesn't have it, we can send it to him. Their airports, military air bases, military depots for air force weapons, electricity plants and their delivery points, ports, main communications points, a group of vital infrastructure, which we have updated, oil and gas installations, the Dimona nuclear plant.”

The top resistance leader continued, “All of these are in a tight space. We are not speaking about a country here, like Russia or America or even Sudan, for example. He can calculate how all these targets can be destroyed with how many precision-guided missiles Hezbollah has. And if the enemy places the Iron Dome, David's Sling, and Patriots they have, Israeli generals have said our precision-guided missiles are like being attacked by nuclear missiles. We are only talking here about the critical infrastructure if we were to talk about other things, which I will not speak about here, but the Israelis are aware of.”