Before leaving office last month, former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reportedly expressed concern to the UN Security Council that Iran’s supplying of weapons to the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah violates a longstanding arms embargo against the country.
According to Reuters, in his second semi-annual report to the UN Security Council on the implementation of a resolution endorsing the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, he noted a televised speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah boasting of receiving military support from Tehran.
The Reuters report states that Ban wrote: “[Nasrallah] stated that the budget of Hezbollah, its salaries, expenses, weapons and missiles, all came from the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
He additionally said: “I am very concerned by this statement, which suggests that transfers of arms and related material from the Islamic Republic of Iran to Hezbollah may have been undertaken contrary [to a Security Council resolution]”.
While most international sanctions against Iran were lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal, Tehran remains subject to longstanding UN and Western embargoes on conventional weapons.
