City Beirut Financial News

Iran that escalation in the Middle East is not in their interest, a State Department spokesperson said on Monday, at what Secretary of State Antony Blinken called a «critical moment» for the region. Blinken said Washington was «engaged in intense diplomacy, pretty much around the clock» to help calm tensions amid fears Iran is preparing a retaliatory strike against Israel. «All parties must refrain from escalation,» Blinken said during a signing ceremony with his Australian counterpart in Washington.

Jordan's foreign minister is expected in Iran on Sunday, as the United States and its Arab allies try to prevent a wider war after the back-to-back killings of top Iran-allied militants sparked vows of revenge against Israel. Ayman Safadi would be the first senior Jordanian official to pay an official visit to Iran in over 20 years. Jordan is a close Western ally and helped intercept scores of missiles and drones fired by Iran toward Israel in April. Iran said it was retaliating for the killing of its generals in an Israeli strike in Syria. Many fear Iran and its regional allies could launch a similar attack following the killing of a senior Hezbollah commander in an Israeli strike on Beirut last week and of Hamas' top political leader in an explosion in Tehran a day later. Both attacks were widely blamed on Israel, which has acknowledged killing the Hezbollah commander. Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas have vowed to avenge the killings.

Middle East simmers with tension and stares at the possible Israel-Iran war, the United States announced plans to bolster its military presence in the region. Now the question is — Will it be 'Abraham Alliance' vs 'Axis of resistance' battle? Three US and Israeli officials told Axios that they expect Iran to launch an attack on Israel as early as Monday. This move comes in response to threats of retaliation from Iran and its regional allies following the killings of a Hamas leader in Tehran and a Hezbollah commander in Beirut, heightening fears of a broader conflict.

Iran and its allies readied their response to the assassination of Hamas's political leader, blamed on Israel, spurring fears of a regional war. Israel ally the United States said it would move warships and fighter jets to the region, while Western governments called on their citizens to leave Lebanon — where the powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah movement is based — and airlines cancelled flights. The killing this week of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, hours after the Israeli assassination of Hezbollah's military chief in Beirut, has triggered vows of vengeance from Iran and the so-called «axis of

Gaza Strip, Israel has fought a parallel, slower-paced conflict with Hamas' allies across the Middle East in which all sides have risked major escalation but ultimately avoided dragging the region into a bigger, multi-front war.

Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut within hours of each other on Tuesday-Wednesday, Israel has successfully conducted what it had purportedly set out to do: take out what lay at the core of the Hamas October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel that led to more than 1,000 deaths and over 250 people taken hostage by the Palestinian terrorist group. In the process, Tel Aviv has pushed the region further to wider conflict. Predictably, Iran has vowed vengeance. It is now the job of Israel's allies, especially the US, to ensure that Tel Aviv doesn't go for an over-overkill. Further escalation must be nipped in the bud.

Oil futures clawed back some losses on Wednesday, recovering from 7-week lows as geopolitical tensions rose after Israel retaliated against an attack by Hezbollah, although prices remained under pressure from concerns about demand in China. Brent crude futures climbed 39 cents, or 0.5%, to $79.02 a barrel by 0020 GMT ahead of expiry on Wednesday, while the more active October contract was at $78.54, up 47 cents.

Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the target of the strike, Fouad Shukur, was behind the Saturday rocket attack on the town of Majdal Shams that killed 12 young people in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights of Syria.Hezbollah, which denied it was behind the Majdal Shams attack, didn't confirm that Shukur was the target of Tuesday's airstrike or that he was killed. If Israel's claim proves true, Shukur would be the most senior Hezbollah commander to be killed since 2016, when Mustafa Badreddine, the group's military commander in Syria, died in an explosion in the Syrian capital of Damascus.The Israeli military said that Shukur had directed Hezbollah's attacks on Israel since October 8, after the Israel-Hamas war erupted, and that he was also involved in “the killing of numerous Israelis and foreign nationals over the years." It said Shukur was responsible for the majority of Hezbollah's most advanced weaponry, including guided missiles, cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, long-range rockets and UAVs.The 62-year-old, secretive Shukur was in charge of Hezbollah's forces in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel as well as being a top official in the group's missile program.He had been a close aide to Hezbollah's top military chief, Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated in 2008 by a car bomb in Damascus.

An Israeli drone strike on a car near the Lebanon-Syria border HAS killed a prominent Syrian businessman who was sanctioned by the United States and had close ties to the government of Syria’s President Bashar Assad

Lebanese militant group, increasing the pressure on the Netanyahu government to secure its northern border, according to a report published by The Wall Street Journal. Hezbollah, a US-designated terrorist organization closely aligned with Iran, opened a battlefront with Israel on October 8, one day after the deadly Hamas-led raid inside Israel triggered the current war in Gaza.On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel was prepared for a “very intense operation" along the border with Lebanon.

Lebanon's caretaker economy minister says the country's rulers, fuel companies and private electricity providers have blocked an offer by gas-rich Qatar to build three renewable energy power plants to ease the crisis-hit nation’s decades-old electricit...

International donors meeting in Brussels say they will commit 7.5 billion euros, about $8.1 billion, in both grants and loans to support Syrians battered by war, poverty, and hunger for the rest of this year and beyond

The World Bank says poverty in Lebanon has tripled over the course of a decade during which the small Mediterranean country slid into a protracted financial crisis

The European Union has announced an aid package for Lebanon of 1 billion euros — about $1.06 billion — that will mostly go to strengthening border control to halt the flow of asylum seekers and migrants from the small, crisis-wracked country across the...

Hamas under attack in Gaza, the head of Iran's Quds Force visited Beirut in February to discuss the risk posed if Israel next aims at Lebanon's Hezbollah, an offensive that could severely hurt Tehran's main regional partner, seven sources said. In Beirut, Quds chief Esmail Qaani met Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the sources said, for at least the third time since Hamas' deadly Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel and Israel's devastating retaliatory assault on Gaza. The conversation turned to the possibility of a full Israeli offensive to its north, in Lebanon, the sources said. As well as damaging the Shi'ite Islamist group, such an escalation could pressure Iran to react more forcefully than it has so far since Oct. 7, three of the sources, Iranians within the inner circle of power, said.

Three and a half years after hundreds of tons of improperly stored ammonium nitrate ignited at the Beirut port, setting off one of the world’s biggest non-nuclear explosions, Lebanese and French officials have put forward a plan for reconstruction and ...

A top U.S. Treasury official has pressed Lebanese authorities to prevent funds from being funneled to Hamas by way of Lebanon during a visit to Beirut

GPS signals that deceive on-board plane systems and complicate the work of airline pilots are surging near conflict zones, industry employees and officials told AFP. A ground collision alert sounds in the cockpit, for instance, even though the plane is flying at high altitude — a phenomenon affecting several regions and apparently of military origin. This includes the vicinity of Ukraine following the Russian invasion two years ago, the eastern Mediterranean and the air corridor running above Iraq, according to pilots and officials interviewed by AFP.

By Kinda Makieh and Laila Bassam

In the last week alone, an Israeli airstrike has killed a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon, Hezbollah struck a sensitive Israeli base with rockets and Israel killed a senior Hamas militant with an airstrike in Beirut

Israel and Lebanon-based Hezbollah traded fire Saturday in one of the heaviest days of cross-border fighting in recent weeks, a day after the militia's leader urged retaliation for the targeted killing, presumably by Israel, of a top Hamas leader in Lebanon's capital. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said that if his group didn't strike back for the killing Tuesday of Saleh Arouri, Hamas' deputy political leader, all of Lebanon would be vulnerable to Israeli attacks.