Report: Hizbullah Tightens Belt over Oil Price Slump, Sanctions on Iran

Hizbullah is facing financial austerity because of the slump in global oil prices and the sanctions on its main backer Iran, The Christian Science Monitor reported.

The party has had to impose salary cuts on personnel and defer payments to suppliers, The Monitor quoted political and diplomatic sources in Beirut as saying.

Randa Slim, a Hizbullah expert and a director at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, also said that Iran's assistance to the Syrian regime against rebels seeking to topple it have forced Tehran “to divert more resources away from Hizbullah at a time when the resource base in Iran is shrinking.”

But a Lebanese oil industry expert, who has extensive contacts in Iran, said that lower funding by Iran does not threaten Hizbullah's life.

Iranian funding to Hizbullah comes from the multi-billion-dollar private resources at the disposal of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said The Monitor.

While the institutions will be “indirectly effected” by Iran’s worsening economy, “you are talking about a solid money reserve, you are talking about tens, maybe hundreds, of billions (of dollars) of reserves,” said the expert.

“Those organizations (like Hizbullah) are kind of sacred and they (Iran’s clerical leaders) are even ready to cut off any internal budget but not to touch those allocated budgets (to Hizbullah),” the expert added.

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday that foreign investors should no longer be viewed as a threat and signalled his country's decades-long isolation from the world economy could soon end.

Iran is engaged in long-running negotiations with world powers aimed at a comprehensive deal over its disputed nuclear programme which, if successful, will likely result in an investment boom.

A key point in any agreement would be the lifting of wide-ranging sanctions -- imposed on Iran as punishment for its atomic activities -- blamed for neutering its oil- and gas-rich economy.