IRAN: Tehran offers to help rebuild Gaza

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Western governments may be deliberating about how and whether to give reconstruction help to the war-ravaged Gaza Strip without strengthening Hamas.

But has Iran has had no such compunctions.

On Sunday, the speaker of Iran’s parliament said that his country would rebuild the Palestinian legislature building destroyed by Israel during the recent war in the Gaza Strip. Ali Larijani, speaker of the Iranian majlis, or parliament, announced that the Islamic Republic’s legislature would take responsibility for the reconstruction effort, according to Iranian state media.

Larijani also said that Iran’s parliament would soon organize a conference on Gaza reconstruction.

“We feel it is our duty to continue our endeavor to reconstruct the glorious Gaza,” Larijani said, according to Iranian state television, announcing that along with cooperating with Gaza’s Hamas-dominated government to rebuild homes, hospitals, schools and mosques, “the Iranian majlis will undertake the reconstruction of the Palestinian parliament building in Gaza which has been destroyed during [Israel’s] bombardment.”

Larijani didn’t get into details, such as whether Iran would try to circumvent an Israeli-Egyptian blockade to dispatch contractors and construction material to the Gaza Strip or whether it would simply transfer suitcases full of cash.

Following Israel’s war against Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in 2006, Iran did both to help rebuild southern Lebanon and South Beirut.

-- Borzou Daragahi in Beirut