Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived to a hero's welcome in southern Lebanon on Thursday as he attended a rally in Bint Jbeil, a Hezbollah border stronghold flattened in the Shia group's 2006 war with Israel. A frenzied crowd of thousands of men, women and children crammed into an outdoor stadium and on rooftops waving Iranian, Lebanese and Hezbollah flags and cheering the hard-line president on stage as he again predicted the demise of the Jewish state.
"Bint Jbeil is alive and well," Ahmadinejad told the crowd. "I salute you, people of the resistance. "You are a solid mountain. We are proud of you and will remain forever by your side." The visit to the south brought the hardline leader the closest he has ever been to arch-foe Israel and was seen as a joint show of defiance with ally Hezbollah. Ahmadinejad reiterated his trademark rhetoric on the inevitable demise of Israel and hailed Lebanon's resistance to the Jewish state.
"The whole world knows that the Zionists are going to disappear," he said to thunderous applause. "The occupying Zionists today have no choice but to accept reality and go back to their countries of origin." Nabila, who attended the rally, said "Ahmadinejad is going to terrify the Israelis." "We hope to see (Hezbollah chief Hassan) Nasrallah with him here and to see them both one day on the other side of the border," added the 36-year-old, who declined to give her last name.
Ahmadinejad later headed to Qana, which has earned a grim place in history after being targeted by Israeli shelling that killed 105 civilians who had sought shelter in a UN base in 1996 during the Jewish state's "Grapes of Wrath" offensive on Lebanon. The village was again the site of tragedy when a shelter collapsed on dozens of residents, including disabled children, during Israeli strikes at the height of the month-long 2006 war.
Israeli officials have slammed Ahmadinejad's two-day official visit as a sign Lebanon had "joined the axis of extremist states," while the United States said it was a "provocation". "It appears his intentions are blatantly hostile and he is coming to play with fire," Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AFP. The visit has underscored Iran's reach in Lebanon through its proxy Hezbollah, the most powerful military and political force in the country. However, the trip has drawn criticism from Lebanon's pro-Western parliamentary majority, who see it as an attempt to turn the country into "an Iranian base on the Mediterranean."