Lebanon's top Christian party has indicated it is considering ending a political alliance with Iran-backed Hezbollah, threatening a fragile union that has shaped Lebanese politics for nearly 16 years.
The old bazaar in the affluent northern Tehran is very popular with people from every walk of life. The busy Shiite shrine of Emamzadeh Saleh in one of the narrow passages of the bazaar is nestled among shops with massive displays of pomegranates, watermelons and nuts - staples for the celebration of the pre-Islamic Winter Solstice festival – and not far from it, Christmas trees and decorations catch the eye.
But it's not only the bazaar that looks Christmassy. "You wonder if this is really Tehran or a street in Europe when you walk in the streets of Tehran these days and look at shops. Shops are filled with Christmas trees and Santa Clauses. Street vendors are also selling Christmas trees and decorations everywhere in the city," Didar News wrote.
This winter, Tehranis alone paid over 60 billion rials (over $200,000) for Christmas trees. According to Didar News, 90 percent of the trees were purchased by non-Christians -- that is, Iranian Muslims -- who in the past twenty years have also been celebrating western festivals such as Halloween and Valentine's Day. Fresh pines this year sold for around five million rials while small artificial trees cost around a million.
There are around 120,000 Armenian and Assyro-Chaldean Christians in Iran. Unlike converts to Christianity, they enjoy some degree of freedom of worship and have their own representatives in the parliament.
Iranian Armenians celebrate Christmas on January 6 and cook herbed rice and pan-fried fish , the same dish as other Iranians make for the Nowrouz festival, and make traditional Armenian sweets such as perog and gata loaves.
Earlier this week Iranians sent each other millions of text messages to congratulate the Winter Solstice festival (known as Yalda or Chelleh Night) just as they do on the ancient Iranian New Year, the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, and increasingly more in recent years, Christmas and western New Year.
The celebration of Yalda on the night of Winter Solstice and the Iranian New Year (Nowrouz) on the day of Spring Equinox both date back to ancient, pre-Islamic times. The non-Islamic Nowrouz is still the main calendar event for most Iranians. The strength of the Nowrouz tradition is such that even the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei makes a televised speech on the day.
Iran's religious establishment and hardliners often refer to such festivals, especially the Winter Solstice festival as "pagan" calendar events. They call on people not to celebrate such festivals and sometimes even call for banning them. But ancient traditions appear to have gained more popularity since the 1979 Islamic Revolution despite non-stop religious propaganda.
Many other Iranians think that celebrating pre-Islamic festivals is not against their Islamic beliefs and adopting other traditions such as Christmas is fine, as long as it is not at the cost of Iranian traditions such as Nowrouz.
"Different groups of people may feel they don't belong to their homeland if selling Christmas trees and Yalda food at Tajrish Bazaar is banned or if the Shrine of Emamzadeh Saleh is shut down to pilgrims. Feeling a stranger in one's homeland will breed anger and hate," a commentary in the moderate conservative Asr-e Iran website said Wednesday. "One can proudly say that in the Iranian society the Islamic, Western, and ancient Iranian cultures have somehow reached co-existence even though the government does not approve of it."
A State Department spokesman on Wednesday [Dec. 22} had confirmed to Iran International that Hassan Irloo, the Iran envoy with Houthis who was evacuated from Sanaa earlier and died shortly after was a senior member of the Revolutionary Guard, but had not clarified if he was a person wanted by the United States.
On Thursday however, the State Department confirmed to Iran International that Irloo was not general Shalaei, a mysterious figure sought by the US, with a $15 million reward on his head.
The Iranian government's official news agency IRNA in a Tuesday report on Irloo's death had said that "he was also known as General Shahlaei", raising suspicion about his identity and mission in Yemen.
Later in the evening, however, the agency had deleted the reference to Shahlaei – aka Hajj Yusef and Yusuf Abu-al-Karkh -- who is an IRGC’s Qods (Quds) Force commander classified by the US government as a terrorist.
When asked if Irloo is the same person as Shahlaei on Wednesday, the spokesperson had not given a clear answer but said that "the reward for Abdul Reza Shahlaei still stands." Subsequently on Thursday, the State Department said that the two individuals were indeed different people.
On the third of January 2020, the night when the United States killed the head of the Qods Force Qasem Soleimani, the US military attempted to also assassinate Shahlaei via a drone strike. The drone strike in Sana'a, where Shahlaei was said to be based, failed to kill him but did lead to the death of a lower-ranking IRGC member Mohammad Mirza.
It remains a possibility that the IRNA statement saying Irloo and Shalaei were the same people could have been a diversionary move to throw others off Shalaei's tracks.
One thing remains clear that Irloo (Irlu or Irlou) himself was a senior IRGC operator who spent years on secret missions with militant groups throughout the region and was sent to Yemen as "ambassador" in Sanaa, controlled by Iran-aligned Houuthis.
Irloo's importance and staure cannot be underestimated. Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ali Khamenei issued a message of condolence Wednesday over Irloo’s death, describing him as an “efficient envoy” with a track record of” political struggle, diplomatic endeavors, and social activism”.
On Thursday, Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Bagheri called Irloo a martyr of the Islamic Revolution who dedicated his life to the resistance axis in the region.
The title shahid (martyr) is usually reserved for those killed in battle and 'resistance' is a term the Islamic Republic uses to describe its allies and proxies in the region.
At Irloo's funeral ceremony Wednesday, deputy commander of the IRGC, Ali Fadavi, also named him as a “fighter in the resistance front" and accused the US and its allies of delaying Irlou’s evacuation from Sanaa and his death.
Even before reportedly catching COVID-19, he was already suffering from respiratory problems sustained in chemical attacks during the Iran-Iraq war.
The Wall Street Journal in a report last week claimed that Houthis had asked Tehran to remove Irloo from Sanaa. Both Iran and the Houthi leadership denied the report, insisting that the ambassador suffered from Covid and needed to receive medical attention in Iran.
Gebran Bassil, leader of the Free Patriotic Movement party said earlier this week there would be "political consequences" for action taken against his party by Lebanon's two main Shiite parties Hezbollah and Amal.
Prominent figures close to the party have also said the 2006 Mar Mikhael Agreement between FPM and Hezbollah is at an end.
"Mikhael is dead," FPM pundit Charbel Khalil tweeted on Tuesday.
The party's support was critical in bringing President Michel Aoun, the FPM's founder, to power in 2016, and the FPM has provided critical Christian political cover for Hezbollah's armed presence under Lebanon's sectarian power-sharing system.
Hezbollah has not publicly commented.
Pro-Hezbollah Sheikh Sadiq Al-Nabulsi said on Wednesday that Hezbollah had "a very high tolerance for pain and criticism" but Bassil was at risk of losing its support.
"Today the FPM has no real ally other than Hezbollah, so why are you letting go of your last ally?" he said.
Bassil's party has faced growing political pressure to distance itself from Hezbollah since the country's 2019 financial meltdown.
Traditional allies in the Arab Gulf have been unwilling to provide Lebanon with aid, as they have in the past, because of what they have said is Hezbollah's grip on the country and its support for Iran-backed Houthi rebels battling Saudi-backed forces in Yemen.
The group is classified by the United States and major western nations as a terrorist group.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah has taken a hardline stance against the judge investigating the August 2020 Beirut blast, causing a row that has left Prime Minister Najib Mikati's government unable to meet since Oct. 12 even as poverty and hunger worsen.
But Hezbollah remains Bassil's strongest ally. And with presidential and parliamentary elections due next year, some analysts say the FPM could be posturing.
"The FPM is stuck between a rock and a hard place today. they certainly realise that the Christian street no longer condones any form of acquiescence to Hezbollah's demands," said Karim Emile Bitar, director of the Institute of Political science at Beirut's Saint Joseph University.
"But they simply cannot afford to completely let go of this alliance because it would ruin Bassil's presidential ambitions and would certainly prevent them from getting a significant parliamentary bloc."
Reuters report from Beirut
