Iran

A senior Iranian official said Friday that Tehran will stand with Lebanon in “all circumstances,” as the United States and others work to secure a cease-fire deal between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

The senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Larijani, traveled to Beirut on Friday and held talks with Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati. He spoke with reporters following those talks, saying Iran “supports the people of Lebanon and its officials.”

He said Iran was not seeking to disrupt anything but to resolve issues. He called Hezbollah a “wise movement” and Lebanon, a wise nation, “but they themselves know what actions they need to take.”

Larijani said Iran hopes the situation improves “as soon as possible” and people who were forced to move from the south can return home. Iran supports Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Both groups have been designated as terror organizations by the United States, Britain and other Western countries.

The adviser’s comments are viewed as a direct signal Iran would support a negotiated cease-fire agreement with Israel.

Larijani’s visit comes a day after Lebanese officials and media reported the U.S. ambassador to the nation, Lisa Johnson, submitted a draft of an Israel-Hezbollah peace proposal to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who has been leading the talks representing Hezbollah. Larijani held a separate meeting Friday with the speaker.

The details of the proposal were not released, and the U.S. Embassy in Beirut did not confirm or deny the reports.

Continued bombardment

Despite such negotiations, Israel continues its aerial bombardment of Lebanon, with airstrikes hitting buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs Friday, after the Israeli military issued an evacuation order in the Lebanese capital.

Video from the scene shows massive explosions and buildings crumbling in the aftermath. Major strikes hit the Dahiyeh and Tayouneh areas, among others.

In a statement posted to its X social media account, the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, said air force fighter jets, under the direction of Israeli intelligence, launched two waves of attacks Friday as part of an effort to destroy Hezbollah targets “hidden in the heart of the civilian population” in the Dahiyeh section of Beirut.

The statement said the targets included Hezbollah munitions warehouses, headquarters and other terrorist infrastructures.

A report from the World Bank Thursday showed the cross-border fighting between Hezbollah and Israel has inflicted $8.5 billion in physical damages and economic losses to Lebanon. The report said Lebanese housing has taken the hardest hit, with nearly 100,000 housing units partially or fully destroyed, amounting to $2.8 billion in losses.

Israel invaded the Gaza Strip last year after Hamas led a terror attack on communities in southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities, and abducting more than 250 as hostages. About 100 of the hostages are still in Gaza, and a third of them are believed to be dead.

Since then, the Israeli counteroffensive has killed more than 43,700 people, according to Gaza health authorities. An additional 103,000 Palestinians have been injured. The Israeli military says the death toll includes thousands of Hamas militants. Israel also has destroyed much of the enclave's infrastructure, forcing most of the 2.3 million population to move several times.

The war spread to Lebanon in mid-September after months of rocket fire from Hezbollah into Israel and drone and airstrikes by Israel's military in south Lebanon escalated. More than 3,200 Lebanese have been killed, most of them in the past six weeks.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.

VOA’s Persian Service has expressed shock and grief at the suicide of a former colleague, Kianoosh Sanjari, who jumped to his death from a building in Tehran on Wednesday in protest against Iran’s authoritarian rulers.

Sanjari, a 42-year-old Iranian, was a former journalist and rights activist who worked at VOA Persian’s Washington bureau from 2009 to 2013 before returning to Iran in 2016 to care for his parents.

Sanjari had been jailed in Iran for his activism before and after his work in the United States. He spoke publicly about how he suffered psychological harm from solitary confinement and other ill treatment by Iranian authorities.

VOA Persian Service Director Leili Soltani wrote on Instagram that she and her staff are “heartbroken and deeply affected” by the loss of their former colleague.

“This devastating loss has been extremely difficult and shocking for everyone at VOA Persian, especially for those of us who worked closely with him,” Soltani wrote. “Kianoosh was only 17 when he was arrested, tortured and kept in solitary confinement. Though he is gone, his passion for freedom and human rights will live on.”

VOA Director Michael Abramowitz said he also was “deeply saddened” to learn of Sanjari’s death.

“Kianoosh, a former VOA journalist & a man who loved his country, suffered imprisonment & faced severe repression from the Iranian regime that ultimately led to his passing. He will be deeply missed,” Abramowitz wrote in a post on the X platform.

Responding to a VOA query, a State Department spokesperson said the Biden administration is “saddened” by Sanjari’s death and expresses condolences to his family.

“His and other recent youth suicides in Iran indicate growing despondence on the part of Iranian youth with a regime that suppresses their most basic human rights,” the spokesperson said in an email.

“We again call for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners detained in Iran without just cause. The Iranian regime’s campaign to silence critics and human rights activists must stop,” the U.S. official said.

Sanjari had posted a message on his X account early Wednesday saying he would end his life in protest of the “dictatorship” of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei if judicial authorities did not announce the release of four political prisoners by 7 p.m. that day. No such announcement came.

At 7:20 p.m. Wednesday, he made two more posts on his X account, one of them a photograph taken from the terrace of Tehran’s Charsou shopping mall complex showing a bridge and the street beneath him. In the other, Sanjari wrote that he would end his life after the post, in which he also said, “No one should be imprisoned for expressing their opinions. Protest is the right of every Iranian citizen.”

Video posted to social media shortly after Sanjari’s final social media posts showed the body of a man lying on a sidewalk beside the Charsou mall, as onlookers gathered and emergency service personnel arrived at the scene. Informed sources told VOA Persian that the body was that of Sanjari, who had jumped from the terrace to his death.

Iranian state news agency IRNA cited Judge Mohammad Shahriari, head of Tehran's Criminal Affairs Prosecutor's Office, as saying he has opened a “suspicious death” case related to Sanjari.

Before visiting the mall, sources told VOA Persian, Sanjari had been at his parents’ Tehran home, where several friends had visited him and believed they had dissuaded him from taking his life.

Sanjari’s death as an act of antigovernment protest has drawn expressions of sadness from other rights activists and journalists around the world.

“The Islamic Republic is undoubtedly responsible for this tragic death,” wrote Roya Boroumand, executive director of Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, a U.S.-based group dedicated to the promotion of human rights and democracy in Iran. In a statement sent to VOA, Boroumand said Sanjari was politically active after his release from prison, “campaigning for others languishing in prison and also against the death penalty.”

“He always held Iran dear in his heart and did not let the brutality of the Islamic Republic and strains of his personal life stop him from fighting against repression. By ending his life and the message he left behind, he reminded us of this bitter reality and condemned his oppressors and those who claim to be ruling on behalf of God,” Boroumand wrote.

VOA’s Persian Service contributed to this report.