Lebanon wants 'state-to-state' relation with Iran, Aoun tells Araghchi

President Joseph Aoun on Tuesday told visiting Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi that “Lebanon is looking forward to enhancing state-to-state relations with Iran.”

“Domestic dialogue is the gateway for resolving all the disputed issues, as well as dialogue between nations, away from violence,” Aoun added.

“Reconstructing what was destroyed by the Israeli war on Lebanon is among the priorities we’re working on with the government, in cooperation with the brotherly and friendly countries and according to the applicable laws,” the president said.

Araghchi for his part expressed his country’s support for “Lebanon’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as for the efforts it is exerting to end Israeli occupation.”

“Iran’s support for Lebanon falls under the good ties between the two countries and the principle of noninterference in domestic affairs,” Araghchi added.

He also voiced Iran’s support for “national dialogue in Lebanon between the various sects, groups and orientations.”

Araghchi’s visit comes after Iran’s main Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, was weakened by a 14-month war with Israel that left much of the Iran-backed group’s political and military leadership dead.

Araghchi’s visit is his first since October, which came at the height of the Israel-Hezbollah war that ended a month later with a U.S.-brokered ceasefire. The war killed more than 4,000 in Lebanon, displaced over 1 million people and caused destruction that the World Bank said will coast $11 billion in reconstruction.

Since the war ended, army commander Joseph Aoun was elected president and prominent jurist and diplomat Nawaf Salam became the country’s prime minister. Both Aoun and Salam have repeatedly said that only the state will monopolize the use of weapons in Lebanon.

The visit also comes after the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad was removed from power in December by insurgent groups opposed to Iran’s influence in the region. Assad was one of Tehran’s closest allies in the Arab world and his country was a main link for the flow of weapons from Iran to Hezbollah.

Over the past decades, Iran funded Hezbollah with billions of dollars and sent all types of weapons to the Lebanese group enjoying wide influence in the small nation through.

Since the Israel-Hezbollah war ended, Lebanese authorities have taken tight measures at Beirut’s airport to prevent the flow of funds from Iran to Hezbollah and flights by Iranian companies have been suspended to Beirut.