Lebanon searches Iranian plane over suspicion funds are being smuggled to Hezbollah

Live updates: Follow the latest on Israel-Gaza

Lebanon's Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut was put on a state of alert on Thursday night over suspicion that an aircraft carrying a delegation from Iran might contain funds intended for the Tehran-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, local media reported.

Members of the delegation aboard the Iranian Air Mahan flight attempted to bar Lebanese security officials from searching the plane, according to the Lebanese daily An-Nahar.

"The Iranian delegation tried to prevent the plane from being searched because it was a diplomatic delegation," the newspaper reported, citing sources.

The situation became tense and more security personnel were called in before the plane and the delegation were searched. They did not find anything on the plane, it said.

Lebanon’s Interior Minister Bassem Mawlawi confirmed the incident in statements to MTV channel, saying “the Iranian Mahan Air plane was being searched bag by bag at Beirut airport”.

Later on Thursday, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it had allowed two Iranian diplomatic bags into the country after receiving clarification from the Iranian embassy on their contents.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates received a written explanatory note from the embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Lebanon regarding the contents of two small diplomatic bags carried by an Iranian diplomat on board a Mahan Air flight on January 2, 2025," the ministry said.

The ministry added that the bags contained documents, papers and banknotes to cover the operational expenses of the embassy only.

"Accordingly, the two bags were allowed to enter in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1967," it said.

Hezbollah, a Shiite movement that holds considerable sway in Lebanon's confessional political system, is a key part of Tehran's "Axis of Resistance" to Israeli and US influence in the Middle East, along with the Iran-backed militant group Hamas in Gaza and the Houthi rebel group in Yemen. However, Israeli attacks on Gaza, Lebanon, Iran and Yemen have considerably weakened the axis over the past year.

Israel's continuing war on Hamas, which led a deadly attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, has killed the group's leadership while laying waste to Gaza. Hezbollah, which began cross-border fire into northern Israel in support of Hamas a day after the attack, has lost its top leaders as well weapons stores in Israeli retaliatory strikes and a two-month campaign involving heavy bombing and a limited ground incursion into south Lebanon. The fighting ended in late November under a US-mediated ceasefire.

The overthrow last month of Syrian president Bashar Al Assad, who was propped up with military support from Hezbollah and Iran's Revolutionary Guard after civil war broke out in 2011, has also exposed Tehran's dwindling strategic leverage in the region. Iran's clerical rulers spent billions of dollars to support Mr Assad while using Syria as a crucial transit route to supply arms and funds to Hezbollah.