Israel said Thursday it was closely monitoring Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to its border with southern Lebanon, DPA reported.
"Iran wants to turn Lebanon entirely into an Iranian extension," charged a top official in charge of Israel's security, Amos Gilad.
Gilad, the head of the Israeli Defence Ministry's political- security branch, called it a "tragedy" that Lebanon's leadership was allowing "a man who is not Arab and an extremist leader to destroy Lebanon from the inside."
Ahmadinejad's visit "illustrates the Iranian trend to take control over southern Lebanon especially," he charged, adding:
"It is very important to prevent that."
Hezbollah, he blasted, was becoming "an entity which is eating Lebanon like cancer eats the body."
Israeli media were devoting extensive coverage to the visit of the Iranian leader, who has called for Israel's destruction, to the Lebanese-Israeli border region.